Page 88 - Free Yourself From

Embracing Good Enough 71

SHAMBAUGH designed a series of learning forums and targeted
coaching sessions that took place over four months. During one of
the early sessions, I was listening to the women talk about the chal-
lenges of having work-life balance and of meeting all the demands
placed on them. Over and over again they said that they felt they
could not afford to make any mistakes in their work, that they fre-
quently doubted themselves, and that they felt they had to be better
than everyone else to get ahead.
In response to that, we asked them to identify their day-to-day
activities and the key objectives they were working on. We also asked
them to identify the top three goals for which their managers were
holding them accountable. Finally, we asked them to identify the level
of performance (perfect, excellent, or it didn’t matter) that they
believed each activity required. Overall, the women felt that 80 per-
cent of their work needed to be done perfectly and the remaining 20
percent needed to be excellent. And overwhelmingly, they felt that
every task and activity was very important.
My initial reaction: No wonder these women feel burnt out!
We asked the women why they felt they had to work at such a
high level all the time. They said they just assumed it needed to be
perfect and it came out that no one had ever told them so. This was
eye-opening for the women.
The lesson here is that actual evidence is as important as per-
ceptions. We coached the women toward letting go of the pressure
to be perfect and recalibrating their work standards. They acknowl-
edged that for some work activities “good enough” would be okay.
We followed up eight months after the program and the women
said that shifting their expectations had freed up time for them to be
more strategic and to have better work-life balance. They also had
less anxiety and stress. As a result, many of them were seeking out
promotions they’d been reluctant to pursue previously and were
advancing to the next levels of leadership.