Are you a hard-charging perfectionistic leader?

A friend of mine, prided himself of being a hard charging sales executive. He hit the gym every morning at 5:30 am, his schedule was always filled with meetings from 7 am until 7 pm. He bragged about working hard saying "I work only half days, from 7 am until 7 pm." He routinely showed up at work on Saturdays. He loved to run and when he got a Fitbit his daily goal was 15,000 steps a day. I remember one Sunday morning when he showed me his stats for the week, he just hit 140,000 steps, he was gunning for 150,000.

Before he became a sales manager he was the top performing sales rep in a company that employed over 400 salespeople. He routinely read one book a week and he stayed on top of every trend in his industry. As a manager he was a tough task master. He pushed salespeople to live up to the standards he set for himself. He only hired salespeople that worked hard and played hard. Although he had a little more turnover than average, the company's sales were significantly above average.

By now you may wonder, what's wrong with this picture? Well, the first time I noticed a chink in his armor was when he injured his knee in a 10K cross country race. He was leading the race, but stumbled and ended up in the hospital where had surgery to fix his kneecap. His doctor told him that it would take seven weeks to heal, but he was back running after five weeks. After his injury I ran into a sales rep who worked for him. I asked what it was like to work for an overachiever. He laughed saying, "I had to quit, no matter how well I performed, it was never good enough for him."

Six months later, my friend suffered another setback. At a wedding reception he challenged a friend to an explosive jump from the ground to the top of a table. He missed, fell backwards, hit a chair and suffered a concussion. A week later I visited with him and he complained that he had a hard time concentrating. He looked depressed and anxious. He worried that his brain wasn't as sharp and wondered if his salespeople would slack off and miss their numbers. For the first time in his life he worried about losing his job.

We sat in the living room of his luxurious home. His wife was out shopping and I asked him, "Where do you think your high achievement drive comes from?" He said, "I inherited this from my parents. My father was an attorney, he made a lot of money with class action suits. He taught me early on that life is a battle and the best insurance against losing was hard work. My dad was a straight A student and every time I came home with a B, I got punished. He would get very angry and slapped me across the face with the back of his hand. He send me to my room and told my mother that I wasn't allowed to eat dinner." When I asked him about his mother he said, "She was a dental hygienist, she was an efficiency machine. The house was always clean, and to this day, every time I visit with them, I have to take my shoes off."

I said, "It sounds like that your parents implanted the belief that you must be a high achiever, you must perform perfectly in everything you do and it you don't then they will judge you, punish you and make you feel ashamed. Does that sound right?" He said, "right on, when I told them about my concussion my dad said "How can you be that stupid? My mom said, "It serves you right. You don't get any sympathy from me for that." I could hear anger in his voice and said, "You seem angry at yourself and your parents." He agreed. I asked him, "do you know what's worse?" He said, "no, what?" I said, "Not knowing how your belief system was developed. Not knowing that this belief system is making you feel bad about yourself. Not knowing that you can let go of these beliefs and feel a lot better about yourself." He asked, "How?" I said, "Your parents implanted the belief that in order to earn their love you had to be perfect. You bought this idea and you nurtured this belief in your mind. Your mind is like a garden, and healthy beliefs are like flowers, and unhealthy beliefs are like weeds. You have a choice, you can continue to water the flowers, and you can stop watering the weeds." He nodded and came back with, "How to I let go of this belief? It's so much part of who I am, I don't know any better." I said, "Knowing yourself begins with knowing your Mindset Operating System." He asked, "Where do I start?"

I asked, "What's the advantage of believing that you must be perfect to earn the love of your parents?" He said, "None." I continued, "When you were little, you had no choice but to believe that what your parents said was true. But as an adult, you can change the narrative. You can edit your beliefs like you can edit the automatic thoughts that tell you that you MUST be perfect. That's "MUSTerbation," a funny description I learned from interviewing Dr. Albert Ellis, the founder of RET (Rational Emotive Therapy). My friend started to laugh, saying, "I needed this knock on my head to wake me up to the reality that I can upgrade my mindset operating system."

Brené Brown said it best, "Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgement, and blame."

I believe that peak performers create a mindset that's free from perfectionism. How do you break free? By understanding your implanted mindset. Awareness of your inner life can help you discover how certain early life experiences generated repetitive patterns (self-limiting beliefs) that prevent you from reaching consistent peak performance. Knowing how and why these patterns were created will convince you that they are no longer useful and motivate you to replace these patterns with more successful ones. This approach will lead to a more effective mindset so you can enjoy greater professional and personal success. 

#MindsetScience, #Perfectionism, #PeakPerformance, #WinningInSales