The Perfection Paradox: How Perfectionism Prevents You From Being Your Best Self and What You Can Do About It

By Marjon Bohré-den Harder and Elizabeth Lombardo

Combining a research-oriented framework with a practical and accessible approach, The Perfection Paradox explores how the endless pursuit of perfection ultimately leads to a worse outcome. In this book, author, business administrator, and organizational psychologist Marjon Bohré-den Harder, shares her exp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspirebytes Omni Media LLC
• Release date: Sep 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781953445438

Marjon Bohré-den Harder

Marjon Bohré is a seasoned executive (team) coach, with over 25 years of experience as a manager (interim), trainer, coach, and consultant. She founded her private practice in 2008 and works with leaders and their teams on humanizing organizations. She is a registered facilitator in the work of Professor Brené Brown, PhD. As a PhD-candidate, Marjon is researching the role of leadership in humanness within organizations. Her most recent book De Perfectie Paradox (Dutch) is currently being translated to English to be published in 2023 by IOM. Marjon lives in Rijswijk, the Netherlands with her husband and their two daughters.

Book preview

Introduction

One of the basic rules of the universe

is that nothing is perfect.

Perfection simply doesn’t exist.

Without imperfection neither

you nor I would exist.

-Stephen Hawking

It’s a Saturday evening in a hotel room in Copenhagen in June 2018… and my daughter’s sixteenth birthday. We are away for the weekend. Stretched out on the small double bed, we talk about my life, the mistakes I’ve made, and regrets about irreversible events. She listens, and after a while she says, I thought you were perfect for a long time, but it's actually a relief to hear that you're not doing everything right either.

I had never realized before that she believed I was a perfect mother. You might take it as a compliment, but her comment made it clear that it must have been a strain to see that as an example. I couldn't confirm quickly enough that nothing could be further from the truth. I decided there on the spot that I would be even more open with my children about when things go wrong in my life and when I stumble and doubt.

Perfection

Fast forward to the summer of 2020. In the middle of the first year of COVID-19, in a tumultuous period of uncertainty, fear, and panic, with concerns about health, work, and plans for the future, I received an email from a publisher in my inbox: Would I like to write a book about perfectionism?

As it happens, a few months earlier, I had written a blog titled Perfect Through the Crisis describing how insidiously perfectionism behaves. In it, I explored some commonly-held ideas about how to perfectly get through a lockdown, a pandemic, and a global health crisis, and how those ideals impacted me, including: what I thought of myself, how I thought I should feel, and how I thought I should behave. And yet, my reality was so very different.

Those patterns of perfectionism are so firmly anchored in our system that it takes hard work—heart work—to let that go and learn new ways of being, thinking, feeling, and doing. I don't have to go through a crisis (or a pandemic) perfectly, I concluded in my blog. Being myself—that's enough.

Writing this book was an invitation to be myself and to keep doing what I love. That means a combination of conducting research and translating scientific insights. I hope that sharing experiences and practical stories from my own life and describing skills I’ve learned to apply can help you too, in both your professional and everyday lives.

Hope

Ultimately, I hope this book is an invitation for you to be yourself. For you to do what you love to do. By becoming aware of how you are influenced by the impossible ideals of perfectionism, you can make choices that help you let go of the need to be perfect—which can then support you in creating a happier and more balanced life.

I also hope this book is an invitation to have conversations about humanness at work. Conversations about who you are and how you can grow and develop together without perfectionism.

Finally, I dream that this book is an invitation for us as a society to let go of the oppressive grip of perfectionism and create more room to be ourselves.

Marjon Bohré-den Harder

Rijswijk, 2021

Chapter 1

The Perfection Paradox— How We Fool Ourselves

Now that you don’t have to be perfect,

you can be good.

-John Steinbeck

And do you have any weaknesses? Both men in suits looked at me from behind the table with an expectant look. I really wanted the job. The work was substantive, and the terms of employment were just right for someone with both workplace ambition and a desire to raise a family. Plus, the prospect of being able to cycle to work every day beckoned after many years of sitting in traffic jams and delays. The reality was that I had little experience in this sector and my training did not exactly match the requirements. What answer could I give that would slightly increase my chances? I can be a bit of a perfectionist, I stammered. An eyebrow went up, followed by the comment: That doesn’t seem like a bad quality to me. Try again.

The irony of that response escaped me at the time. Even my honest answer about my perfectionism was not good enough. But this story raises an important question:

Is perfectionism a good or bad quality?

In order to arrive at an answer, there are more questions to ask, of course.

What does perfectionism produce? For yourself, as a perfectionist, or for your environment, your manager, your team, and the organization?

What does it actually cost to be a perfectionist? What’s the price of perfectionism?

Can you get rid of perfectionism? Is it something you can learn or unlearn? Or is it hereditary? Are you born with it?

Assuming it is possible, would you want to unlearn perfectionism? Or are you actually happy that you are a perfectionist because you are convinced that you achieve much more within the pursuit of perfection than without?

Are you secretly afraid you’d be a failure if you didn’t have perfectionism constantly whispering to you that you need to go the extra mile and haven’t yet earned the chance to rest and enjoy what you’ve accomplished?

Let’s look at Lisa. After years of hard work, she has finally landed that coveted job as a communications consultant. A job that she puts everything into: her ambition, her talent, her energy, and yes, her evenings and weekends, too. It often happens that she declines an invitation for an outing because that press release could always be better. So Lisa often spends a lot of time in front of her laptop in the evenings, revising her word choice or fine-tuning that one sentence that is not quite right yet. It’s a lot, it’s busy, but that’s part of the job. ‘You can only do this job if you give everything and are never satisfied,’ Lisa thinks.

Perfectionism on the Rise

Perfectionism is not a recent phenomenon. In 1952, John Steinbeck wrote the novel East of Eden, from which this chapter’s opening quote originates. It seems that there were perfectionists in 1952, and even then it was clear that there were disadvantages to perfectionism. Nevertheless, the number of perfectionists has increased considerably over the years. Research among more than 40,000 students shows that perfectionism increased between 1989 and 2016 for both men and women in all countries surveyed.

Apparently, there is something about perfectionism that attracts people. Why else would people cling to it? Although many people acknowledge that there are considerable disadvantages to perfectionism, there are apparently still benefits to be gained. It would seem that many people think (just like in my job interview) that perfectionism is not really a bad quality.

Or are there other things at play?

Could it be that we are not really that fond of perfectionism but that it has just become impossible to deal with it and unlearn?

Meet Michael. Michael works as a manager at a software company. The company has grown considerably in recent years, and Michael has hired many new people—people who have a talent for software development, but especially people who can work independently and have a passion for the business. As his team grows, Michael has less and less time to deal with everyone directly. That is why Michael likes to hire perfectionists. In his opinion, they are loyal employees who always go the extra mile and keep working until they are really satisfied. These are the people he needs in this time of rapid growth, although he sometimes questions whether his people are doing well, whether they are happy, and sometimes even whether they are actually as productive as he thinks they are.

Many executives like to hire perfectionists. Perfectionists are employees who take on a lot of responsibility, put in extra effort, and don’t make a big deal about extra hours or tasks. They do not require too much supervision time, as they are hard working and self-disciplined. Always striving for better and more, perfectionists are tireless in their efforts to excel. That certainly sounds like the ideal employee. But the question remains whether perfectionism actually leads to better quality work. Because research has shown that perfectionism also leads to procrastination, hesitation, people-pleasing, and burnout. Additionally, when that lofty, unattainable ideal is not actually attained in practice, it leads to underachievement and paralysis rather than learning and development.

If you want to foster a creative and innovative working environment in which people learn from each other and achieve the best results together, perfectionism is more of a threat than an asset to your team.

A Bit of a Perfectionist—Is That Possible?

What about you? Are you a perfectionist? Maybe you say yes wholeheartedly because you have known for years that you are a perfectionist, or that you at least exhibit the traits of one. If so, you have probably already noticed what perfectionism costs you, including what the disadvantages are for you and for your environment.

Are you ready to say goodbye to your perfectionism? Or do you continue to think it will help you and make you better? Are you still convinced that perfectionism will help you to achieve your ambitions?

Ronda doesn’t see herself as a perfectionist at all. She does her work with pleasure and great effort, but she is very aware of the fact that she sometimes makes mistakes, just like everyone else. She knows that she doesn’t see everything and she doesn’t always get the work done—that would be impossible given the care team on which she works. There is always more work than there are available people. So Ronda does what she can, and when her shift is over, she closes out the day, leaving her worries in her locker. But at home, Ronda has a completely different mindset. Her house always looks like it’s about to be inspected. She doesn’t like clutter and is always tidying up and cleaning. Her partner is sick of it. Never mind the windows, I’d rather have a drink and a chat with you. But Ronda can’t rest until everything is done. And even then, she is regularly distracted by seeing dust on the cupboard or dirt on the floor—to the annoyance of her partner.

You may have doubts about whether or not you are a perfectionist. Maybe you notice that while you are a perfectionist in some areas of your life, in other areas you can live very well with a little less perfection. Chances are you think the way you do things is fine. In the coming chapters, we will see that many perfectionists feel this way, and that perfectionism can manifest in different parts of your life.

Perhaps you are in charge of a perfectionist at work and you wonder how you can best manage them. Do you actually enjoy having a perfectionist on your team? Later in this book, we will explore