Page 84 - Free Yourself From

Embracing Good Enough 67

Know What Is Good Enough

Elizabeth Lewis, a partner at Cooley Godward, recalls giving up on
perfection and finding balance instead when she was a young attor-
ney juggling a demanding litigation practice with a family and a high-
powered social life.
She and her husband belonged to a dinner club where each cou-
ple took a turn hosting a dinner party. “Everyone kept upping the
ante and there was pressure to fix the best meal yet,” she says. When
her turn came, she found herself after a long day of work, standing
in her kitchen figuring out how to make Oysters Rockefeller with
her toddler children pulling on her skirt, trying to get her attention.
“I realized I didn’t like this sense of conflict I felt inside me. I
wanted to give my kids the attention they were asking for. I didn’t like
being a gourmet cook and didn’t want to do it,” she says. “It dawned
on me that I could just make lasagna and a salad and dinner would
be fine.”
She continues, “It was a really shaping and memorable moment
because it was the point when I gave myself permission to not excel
in everything.”
Everyone has situations where the work needs to be examined
down to the finest level of detail and checked “one more time” for
accuracy. These are the situations where you can’t afford to have a
mistake. However, as you rise up the ladder of leadership, you have
to be able to very quickly determine whether a situation requires per-
fection, or whether good enough will do because it’s all that the situ-
ation warrants and other things are more important.
When I listen to women talk about their frustrations of getting
passed over for a promotion to the higher levels of leadership, I often
have to tell them that they might be stalled because of this need to
be perfect. It can be hard for them to understand and accept because,