Assalamualaikum
Recently, my company organize this new female mentoring program for us. It's a small book club kind of circles (4 mentees and 1 mentor in each circle) where we all need to read this book "How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back From Your Next Raise, Promotion, or Job".
First and foremost, let me talk about the book. I haven't finish the book as I want to follow the course of the program, but from the chapters that I've read, some habits are nothing new, bad habits that we ourselves know we have. However, some are really eye-opener. I find myself doing this a lot while reading the book, I stop and reflect on things that happened/did not happen because of the way I reacted to a certain situation.
I personally like the book. I think it’s a shame that it’s marketed only towards professional female adult. I think this book could benefit everyone; men/women, professional/non professional, matured/young.
- When giving example on unhealthy perfectionism within oneselves that we need to fix, our mentor mentioned about being so particular about font type and size. The rest of us literally went OMG me too! Well, what are the odds that all of us can relate? haha.
- While other mentees in the call are all successful woman with good career progression, we all confess that at a point in time, we all preferred to work with male bosses than women due to this unhealthy perfectionist women tend to be.
- We think men are a good sales person. Although not all, some really know how to sell themselves even when they know nothing, which is a good thing in a way, because they are always ready to take opportunity whenever it comes. The “fake it till you make it” thing. Women on the other hand are a bit reluctant to take up offers in areas that they are not quite well versed on and tend to self-doubt a lot.
- We all take a long time to draft emails. We read emails over and over and over again to make sure we use the right wording.
That font and email thing is so simple but why do we fall on this perfection trap? It’s not like it will change the business or anything. -_-
What the book says about "The Perfection Trap"
- Women are more vulnerable to perfection trap. Why? Because we were brought up that way. Thinking back, we are thought to be graceful, to be obedient. Girls are always expected to be a certain way; speak a certain way, sit a certain way, eat a certain way and many more. Therefore we react by striving to meet the expectation, to get everything right, to be perfect. Whereas boys are given much more latitude. Imagine a naughty kid, a girl will be seen as disgraceful while a boy, well, boys will be boys they say.
- The cost of falling into the perfection trap - As a boss, the person would be over controlling and judgmental; he/she will micromanage everything. He/she will want to be involve in everything; does not delegate work which in return is self sabotaging as he/she would get tired and stress from doing all the work. Other than that, from employees POV, having a perfectionist boss will limit their growth.
- They will not take responsibility for their own work as they have this default mentality that their boss will finalised everything.
- This can also limit creativity of the team members. No one wants to put out new idea if the idea is not throughly thought through yet.
- Perfection doesn’t exist. People will make mistake.
- The healthy perfectionist - He/she notice the detail, but considers things in a larger context.This person is good at delegating, knows how to prioritise and get comfortable taking measured risk.
Why I think this can be applied outside of professional setting?
If you’re a mom, ask yourself this; are you handholding your child in every turn of their life because you want them to be perfect? Do you do house chores yourself because if others do it, they’ll never be able to match your standard? If yes, then you too have fall into the perfectionist trap.
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I guess everyone’s mantra should be this going forward,
Perfection does not exist.
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