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66 It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor

Sarah’s explanation: “Even a draft represents me and I need to be
sure it is right.” This made a lot of sense to Sarah but Bob went away
wondering if she would ever give up dealing with the details and
micromanaging her people. Worse, he also wondered how, if she
couldn’t do a simple draft report for the executive committee, he
could ever consider her for a position on that committee. “She would
drive herself—and everyone else—crazy,” he decided.

The Perfectionism Syndrome—When a Virtue
Becomes an Obstacle

Perfectionism can be a virtue—an Olympic athlete can’t settle for
anything short of it—but in the workplace it can be a big sticky
floor. If it becomes a manager’s dominant trait it can push aside other
priorities and values and actually keep talented women out of the
executive suite. In Sarah’s case, she was so engrossed in her self-
imposed need to be perfect that she lost sight of other important
things, like meeting deadlines, acknowledging and responding to her
boss’s sense of urgency, and trusting the work of the people she del-
egated to. This example better defines perfectionism, which is the
propensity for setting extremely high standards and being displeased
with anything less.
Perfectionists function in a mode where nothing is ever good
enough. But their self-imposed standards are far higher than what
others expect or even need. This trait becomes apparent to others
when a manager rewrites every report multiple times, redoes her
team’s work every time, and needs to respond to everything person-
ally because everything is important. The question for Sarah and
other perfectionists is: When is good, good enough? And when is
getting the right work done, in the right way, through the right peo-
ple more important than being personally flawless?