Perfectionists: How Do We Keep A High Standard Without Sabotaging Our Progress?

As I often confess, I’m a recovering perfectionist (who still relapses far to often for her own good!). Perhaps because of my own thinking style and preferences, I tend to also attract perfectionists and a common theme in my own life and the lives of my clients is, “How do we keep a high standard without sabotaging our progress?” Because we often get in our own way with our perfectionism.

We have such high standards that we stress ourselves out trying to meet our own high standards or we hold ourselves back from making a contribution, taking a stand or assuming a leadership position. Because we’re so busy focusing on what we don’t know (our critical skills make it easy to find these gaps) and still want to learn, we lose touch with the depth of knowledge, skills and experience we do have. And perfectionism is a big source of creative resistance that often prevents us from shipping.

The biggest problem – and the irony – is that perfectionism creates stress and stress shuts down the quality of our thinking and reduces our creativity and resourcefulness. So, while our perfectionism is intended to improve our performance, when it causes stress, it reduces the quality of our performance instead.

Well, being the INTJ fact-finder that I am, I’ve been doing some further research on perfectionism. I ask every author that I interview for the Bottom-line Bookclub for their tips for perfectionists and I’ve been collecting these up for a compilation project I’m working on (so far every author has given a different answer and they’re all great!). And this week I asked a friend of mine, Wendy Daunheimer, to share her take on perfectionism and her tips on how to leverage our strengths and work around or through our weaknesses.

Wendy is a Myers-Briggs consultant who helps people to identify their natural strengths and passions and align their life and work with that, so the unique perspective she shared was based on the Myers-Briggs profile. If you have the “NT” combination in your profile, as I do, then this audio will be particularly useful for you!

Click here to download the 30min audio.

In this audio lesson you’ll learn:

• What the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is and what it will measure/ reflect back to you when you find out your type.
• Which of the 16 Myers-Briggs types are most susceptible to being perfectionists – folks with the “NT” combination in their profile.
• The common thinking, deciding and behavior styles of perfectionists (NTs).
• How to leverage your strengths as an NT and how to prevent your perfectionism from sabotaging your success and holding you back.
• What types of people NTs should look to collaborate with so that they compliment their strengths and weaknesses.
• Work roles and industries that tend to be a good fit for the NT way of thinking.
• Tips for dealing with NTs when you’re not an NT and being driven crazy by their perfectionism.
• A “thought key” or mantra for NTs to help you keep moving forward with your best and to keep your perfectionism in check so that it doesn’t sabotage your success.

For more information about Myers-Briggs and Wendy’s custom Myers-Briggs consults, you can find Wendy at www.engageyourstrengths.com and on Twitter she’s @wdaunheimer.