The Hidden Price of Perfection

What is the hidden cost of expecting perfection from our employees, our children or ourselves?  What does it drive us to do and how does it drive us to behave?  I have come to believe that many of the issues companies are having with productivity, disengagement or dispassionate employees may fall squarely on our behavior as leaders.  The unintended result being an employee who takes extra care and extra caution to get it exactly right which reduces the mental and physical bandwidth to think freely about how to do it better.

Allow me to share with you my thoughts on the matter.

Most successful companies have spent a lot of time, money and energy setting a vision of success for their human capital.  These companies are lead by good leaders who know full well that you need a goal and vision to aim for in order to move an entity in the proper direction.  They communicate their vision with varying degrees of success and leave the bolt turning to the mid and lower level managers.  These managers can be quite literal in their interpretation and set down rules and guidelines to insure the vision.  After the guidelines are set and communicated, policies are established to insure that all the companies’ human resources are following what have determined to be Best Practices.  Now this is not, in and of itself, a bad thing but we must consider where these best practices come from and how they are enforced.

Many best practices come from the human capital ranks.  Outstanding corporate performers who have found a way to utilize their unique strengths, talents and abilities to support and represent the companies vision to the customer base.  The word to pay attention to here is Unique.  We all have unique attributes that, when leveraged appropriately and nurtured carefully, can lead us to perform in a flow state.

Here is where things become interesting and counterproductive.

The widely excepted best practices become the standard for the rest of the organization.  No consideration is paid to if the practice leverages your unique attributes and the employees are forced to perform a certain way because it’s been proven to get the best results!  That is, the best results for a particular few who may share similar attributes.  And because we want to succeed and be a contributor to the company’s success as well as impress our boss, the employee stops nurturing their unique talents and skills because they are now outside of the desired behaviors.

So what’s the impact?

Well, anyone who has tried to write with their less dominant hand can tell you, it does not feel natural.  It leaves us second guessing our abilities and forces us to check often to insure we are behaving or performing correctly.  The leader’s job becomes less about leading people and growing their skills and talents and more about managing the checks and adjustments.  Our employee’s free spirit, ingenuity and ability to flow into uncharted and possibly more impactful waters are dampened and often completely snuffed out.  This is not sustainable and often leads to mental and physical fatigue, which is a forerunner to disengagement, and a lack of passion.

So……..how can companies avoid this?  How can parents avoid this?

More to come.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.

OKG