The Perfection Trap with Rashmi Fernandes

Can being too good be bad? Welcome to the Perfection Trap, where seeking to be better may not be in your best interest. 

Rashmi Fernandes, Agile Leadership Journey Guide and Leadership Coach shares the difference between seeking improvement and striving for perfection and why you should know the difference.

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Pete Behrens:
Can being too good be bad?

Welcome to another episode of (Re)Learning Leadership, where we explore a specific leadership challenge and break it down to help improve your leadership, your organization, and, just possibly, your personal life. I'm Pete Behrens, and today I have the pleasure to welcome Rashmi Fernandes to help discuss a bit about when perfection—seeking perfection—might actually leave us less than perfect. Now, Rashmi, is an Agile coach and a Leadership Journey Guide from Bangalore, India. 

Welcome, Rashmi!

Rashmi Fernandes:
Thank you, Pete! It's great to be here.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. Well, it's great to have you, and I know we've been wanting to talk about this for quite some time. We call this a perfection trap. And I'm wondering if you would introduce that for us.

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah. So, you know, I'll introduce perfection for me first, and then we'll talk about the trap. So, perfection for me is the desire to do something really well, you know, or with a certain standard in mind. And then it's almost like saying, “Whenever I'm working on something, it has to be flawless.” Right? It's a good thing—right?—to be flawless, to do really well and maintain a certain set of standards. But it becomes a problem when you get obsessed with the process of doing the right thing and get caught up so much in the process that you forget about the end result. Right? So that's the perfection trap for me. I can share an example if you want.

Pete Behrens:
Sure! Yeah, please.

Rashmi Fernandes:
You know, so every time I sit down to write a blog, I do it because I've heard—I know I've heard a podcast, I've read an article or a book. Or maybe you have, you know, spoken to someone in a conversation. There was some powerful message that came up, and I'm like, “Wow! This needs to be shared.” Right? So I sit down; I write a couple of pages. And then I'm like, “Okay, this looks good! Now it needs to be posted.” The minute the word posted hits my mind, you know, I start googling for multiple things. 

One: I look for an image that will go with the blog that makes it more meaningful. I also start looking for the right quote to strengthen the message. I even go ahead and look for key industry leaders who have spoken about this. There may be something interesting that they have said; I want to add to it. Because someone else is reading it, and I want to give it my best shot, right? Now, if this happens for a couple of hours—let's say even five hours—I'm okay. But if it goes on for days and weeks, and I don't post it at all, and I think, that's when I, you know—I feel like I've got into the trap.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. So many—yeah—so many things are coming into my head as you're talking about that. You know, first is my partner saying, “Pete, can't things be good enough! Like, do they always have to get better?” You know, I think I'm probably your first candidate to join this club, if there's such a club! So, how do I know—like, I think of that as a strength, right? I look at that as that strive to get better, right? It may be a good consultant, right? That made me a great engineer, right? Looking for flaws and trying to improve designs and looking at an organization and seeing what's not working right. How do we know when we've crossed—like, is there a line? And do we know if we've crossed it?

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah, there is a line, you know. And it's a very subtle line. In one of the articles, Sarah Lewis explains it, you know. So, she speaks about perfectionism and mastery. And in another article, Brené Brown also says, you know, mastery and recognition—these are the two differences. So I'll explain a little bit. So, you know, when you're striving for mastery, you're really in a very personal, internal landscape, you know? You're looking at where you are today and where you want to go. And that gap looks, you know, very different to you than to the outside world. And that means it's intrinsic, you know? You're striving for mastery. But if the gap looks as similar, you know—if there's no change between what you see and what the outside world is expecting, then you're probably looking for recognition or perfectionism because you're looking for validation or approval or some of those. And it's not intrinsic for you.

Pete Behrens:
Hm. So it sounds like, to me—that the line between improvement to perfection is—who's recognizing, or who are you playing? Like, what's the audience? Is it yourself? That's mastery. And is it others? That's perfectionism. Am I reading that right?

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah, yeah. That's right, Pete. So, if I'm doing it to improve myself—because I know where I am today, and I want to get better at it. So I'm going to do whatever it takes—that sounds right for me or maybe will take me to the next level. But if I'm doing it for a promotion, you know, or for some kind of recognition or brand, it's not wrong, but how much are you, you know, getting caught up in the process of getting that recognition or the promotion? Is it hurting your well-being? If it is, and you are struggling to make that happen for someone else, I think that's when you're in the trap.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. Or if you're struggling to change someone else. Like, I think my case of my—with my partner, Jana. Are there other downsides to this? Like, what else—I know Brené Brown talks about the ability, you know, on the reverse side, the ability to create a shitty first draft—right?—is that vulnerability to put something out there that isn't done, to get feedback. I know that's the positive side. Talk to us a little bit more about the downside first.

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah. There are a lot of downsides, Pete. One of them, and the biggest one that's plagued our world, is anxiety and stress. As perfectionists, we often set very high standards for ourselves. And, you know, we may become anxious and get stressed if we ourselves don't achieve those standards, right? So, this will lead to frustration, disappointment, and self-criticism, and so on. And if your self-worth is dependent on an external source, I think you get more anxious and more stressed because you're not getting that from elsewhere, right? And because it's not intrinsic.

The second thing that might happen is procrastination. Because we want everything to be perfect, we either delay or miss deadlines or keep pushing it away, so much that we may not even do it, right? And most often, that could be, you know, stemming out of the fear of failure. Because you don't want to take risks because you think you may fail. Or you may not have the best of environments, and everything around you is not perfect for it to be placed, or something like that, right?

And all of this, finally, will lead to strained relationships. It could be with your family, with your team, with your friends. Because you keep yourself at such high standards, you're not only putting pressure on yourself, you're putting pressure on everybody else around you. Just imagine a wedding, right? If you want it to be in a specific way, you get stressed, and you're doing everything that you can. But you're also stressing the whole family, friends, and the whole network of people—you know?—who are trying to make the wedding perfect for you.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. Well—and I can see this as, you know, bringing this into the leadership realm, right? How much influence you already have. Now, if that translates to perfection, number one: how does that strive create stress in everybody else trying to strive to be perfect? But then, also, maybe your expectations of perfection from others. Do you want to say a few words around that?

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah. I think, as leaders—I have a personal experience. You know, I was up for promotion at one time, when I was a team leader. And, you know, my manager said “I want to get some feedback from your peers and colleagues so that there is enough business justification why we should promote you.” Right? I said, “Yes, go ahead.” And then he came back with one comment from one of her peers that said “Rashmi is great. You know, she's an amazing person, and so on and so forth—”

Pete Behrens:
Of course she is.

Rashmi Fernandes:
“—but she's also intimidating.” 

Pete Behrens:
Oh, no! [Laughs]

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah. And then it—you know, they said something like, “We are so caught up in trying to compete with her and meet her standards that we failed to do the actual work.” And that's when my manager said, “It's great to be good at what you do, and even perfect, but if it is not taking the team along, and if you're not able to work with the team as a team player, it's of no use.” Right? So, I think, as leaders, if we set high standards for ourselves, to a certain extent, I think it's okay. But expecting that from others, I think, is where we should avoid.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah, it's so fascinating how many things have such a fine line. You know, we think about that slippery line from influence to manipulation. Here you're talking about the slippery line from, you know, positive, like, inspiration and drive to be better, to influence towards that negative “I'm never good enough!”, right? How many things live on that razor's edge? You know, again, how is a leader to know? I guess, you know, one of the things we talk about with manipulation—you don't really know unless someone else tells you. You know, you had the fortune—like, you had the gift of feedback here. How can a leader—besides a 360 or something like that, is there a way a leader can, you know, pull themselves out of this or even recognize if they're in the trap?

Rashmi Fernandes:
I think one of the ways to do that is self-awareness, right? One thing that we teach in our ALJ class is seeking feedback, right? How can you have some casual conversations and seek feedback from people who work with you? Peers, colleagues, team members, direct reports, whoever that may be. Can we seek feedback from them on how we are doing and if it is impacting them in a certain way? Right? That could be one. And trying to be self-aware of our own power and presence of how we are coming across, how the words that we say, the body language that we have, is pushing someone to, you know, behave in a certain manner. I think that's the one.

So it's important to recognize the perfectionism that you have in you first, so that you can address it. What is the impact that it is creating? Is it making you get stuck in a specific space? What is causing it, and how is it impacting others? I think that’s—if you're able to recognize that, I think you will be able to move to the next level of, you know, challenging that thought process of why I am behaving in this manner. And most often, you know, perfectionists do a lot of negative self-talk, like “I'm not worth it!” or “I'm not good enough! Because this didn't go well last time, maybe this time I'm going to, you know, mess it up even more.” So setting realistic standards and seeing where we are today and where we want to go and being kind to ourselves and showing some self-compassion, probably, will take us a long way.

Pete Behrens:
Well, I think maybe that's where you and I differ a little bit on our perfection. You know, I look at it as a bit more of a superpower, you know? But maybe that's my self-talk to pump me up! You kind of got a little bit more of that negative connotation. But I know—you and I have talked about this in the past, like, the gender identity tied into perfection. And I know, you know, you've struggled with that, growing up as a child. Do you want to share a little bit about that, gender specifically?

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah. I think women face—I mean, go through the perfectionism trap a lot more than men, simply because the expectations from women are different from that of men. I think, as women, and as a girl, when you grow up, you're brought up saying that you must be pretty, you must be well-mannered, you must be submissive. You need to look neat and tidy and, you know, do everything perfectly. But for a boy or a man, I think it's okay to be naughty, it's okay to show off your leadership skills or be dominant. It's okay to bully someone also, maybe. So I think there is a lot more freedom of speech and expression for men than there is for women. And hence, women are striving so hard to prove themselves or their worth by being perfect.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. Well, I think, you know—and that's just a good reminder to all listeners, right? I think it maybe shows up differently, you know, depending on your, you know, how you're brought up, some of those expectations. And like you say, diving a bit more into your own self-awareness, recognizing, maybe, where some of that's coming from can be really, really helpful. Well, Rashmi, any final words or thoughts for today, I guess, in terms of, you know, help for leaders struggling? Or maybe, you know, surrounding this challenge a bit?

Rashmi Fernandes:
Yeah. I just want everyone to know that perfectionism can lead to negative outcomes and can be a huge detrimental factor for your own personal and professional growth, you know? So it's important to strive for excellence, but not at the expense of your own well-being. I think that's where, you know, you can draw the line. Is it really causing you so much stress, and is it even worth it, right? That's one. And so, please challenge your narratives. You know, if you are saying to yourself that you're not good enough or you're blaming yourself for the mistakes of the past, let go of them and stop it right there. And consider these mistakes as proof of learning, you know? Consider them as something that helped you move ahead because of the learnings you've had.

I remember one of the books that I read long back, and it's called Who Will Cry When You Die?, right? And Robin Sharma, in that book, says whenever you feel like you're talking to yourself negatively and addressing yourself with a negative connotation, make three columns. Take a piece of paper; make three columns. In the first column, write about all the mistakes that you made. In the second column, you know, against each of those items—right?—all the learnings you've had. And in the third column write about all the benefits because of those mistakes and learnings. And then it says, when you take a step back and look at it, you will realize that your life has been so rich and colorful, only because of those mistakes and learnings. So it's really natural for human beings to make mistakes, and it's a way to learn and grow, you know? So I think that's one key takeaway that I want to give everybody. And I also want to leave you guys with a quote. It says, “If you're willing to learn, then you need to be willing to be a fool.” [Laughs]

Pete Behrens:
Well, those are incredibly wise words, and I think I will just leave it at that. But I'm really looking forward to—I need the support group, Rashmi! So when you start the perfection trap support group, let me be your first candidate to join in.

Rashmi Fernandes:
Sure! Thank you, Pete. It was great talking with you.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us today!

Rashmi Fernandes:
Thank you.

Pete Behrens:
(Re)Learning Leadership is the official podcast of the Agile Leadership Journey. Together we build better leaders. It’s hosted by me, Pete Behrens, with contributions from our global Guide community. It’s produced by Ryan Dugan. With music by Joy Zimmerman. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, or share a comment. And visit our website, agileleadershipjourney.com/podcast, for guest profiles, episode references, transcripts, and to explore more about your own leadership journey.