Perfection is the enemy of greatness

I am a perfectionist at heart – it’s something I battle with every day, and I’m the first person to hold my hand up and acknowledge it holds me back! I tell myself it’s pride which fits with my values but excellence does not require perfection – and letting go of that mindset is hard. It’s something I know many comms professionals battle with.

Accepting that sometimes good is good enough was the best feedback I ever received in a 360 review about ten years ago. It made me realise for the first time I was making things harder for myself and it was in fact my own confidence, anxieties and fears that were driving this relentless pursuit of perfection.

Looking back I was putting in really long hours, agonising over first draft copy, fiddling with news articles and strategies and plans spending hours overthinking, writing and rewriting. That voice and internal dialogue telling me it could be better.

10 years on – I’m better – not always but I work at it daily!

Perfectionism is not uncommon – and in fact many people I’ve coached or mentored grapple with it every day. So if you are one of them – you are not alone. When you think about the role we play in communication it’s only natural we’ve adopted this mindset –  helping organisations tell their story, profiling CEO’s and leaders, it’s about showcasing the best, it’s about articulating a vision, it’s about sharing key business updates and information that need to be accessible, coherent, relatable. It’s about managing reputations delicately and sensitively and having the eyes of our stakeholders, employees, leadership teams pouring over our work. And our work is often so subjective – we hold the pen and that’s a lot of pressure.

I remember in one early comms role I was working on the annual report and discovered that every year the finance team ran a competition to see who could spot errors in the final published glossy report. We’re talking stray commas and the like! I will never forget that feeling of being judged, of being scrutinised, it made me break out in a cold sweat.

I speak to a lot of people who feel stuck in this way, paralysed by perfectionism that’s holding them back, it’s causing them to miss deadlines, and agonise over copy, and become so inwardly focused that they are not moving forward.

Do you want to know what I did with the finance team? I realised if I did nothing it would eat away at me, I would get more and more stressed over the report and the editing that I took things into my own hands. I said if you’re being shadow editors you do it as part of the process. And guess what, the report was published and they had missed things! Nobody is perfect – but sometimes it can feel we have all eyes on us!

This year don’t let perfectionism hold you back – consider this:

• A first draft – is just a first draft.
• Embrace the fact that everyone has a different model of the world, this diversity of perspective and experience will make your work richer, and better and the earlier you get others involved the better.
• Feedback will feel less personal if you haven’t invested hours into an early first draft.
• The moment and the timing to send it out will never be perfect.

Vulnerability is hard when we are invested in something, don’t struggle alone drop me a message, connect on LinkedIn or Instagram and let’s have a chat. There are simple things you can do to help you build your confidence.

You are not alone on this one!