On the outset one might think that being a perfectionist is a wonderful thing but it’s actually a toxic trait that leads to all kinds of problems especially if you are working for a perfectionist boss.
This is the view of the former president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IBM Ginni Rometty. Rometty worked at IBM for 39 years from 1981 where she started off as a systems engineer.
Speaking at the World Business Forum summit on November 15 she said that at the time and throughout her career she was the poster child for perfectionism.
“My nickname in my early career was Red Pen. I mean, you’d send anything to me [and I’d send it back] completely red. I used to think that was a great skill … to find every mistake and improve it.”
Rometty
Her colleague then told her that her obsession with perfectionism was having a negative impact on her staff.
“One person was like, ‘You know, people just don’t even want to try hard, because you’re going to change it and fix it. It’s never going to be good enough. That’s pretty disabling for people… I was disempowering them. Of course, it was never my intent, but I learned to stop it.”
Rometty said this attitude of wanting everything to be perfect can make your team anxious and affect productivity.
“Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. And it’s what polarizes people, ideologically. And this is why we make no progress on many things.”
How to handle such bosses
Psychologist Kate Rasmussen says it’s a growing problem. In an interview with the BBC in 2018 she said, “As many as two in five kids and adolescents are perfectionists. We’re starting to talk about how it’s heading toward an epidemic and public health issue.”
Mental health author Morra Aarons-Mele said that the first step is to help them recognize that they are creating a negative environment. The more someone realizes their tendencies, the more they can focus on changing them.
Cover Photo: Wikipedia
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