Working with Perfectionists and Extremely Hardworking People in the Office
Now we understand that those people who overly love to keep things in a neat and orderly manner in their surrounding area are mostly due to their parents and teachers were extremely strict to them during their childhood. They had a sense of inferiority in the bottom of their heart and it resulted them to become a perfectionist unintentionally so as to keep up with the adults’ high expectation from them as a child. Hence, they had to get a 100% mark in whatever things that they do in order not to get scolded.
.
Have you ever come across people who share similar perfectionist characteristics in your working area? For example, those managers who love cleanliness and cannot stand a single stain of dirts appearing in their office or those superiors who cannot forgive the staff for making even a minor mistake in the report? If you have encountered such people before, I guess these people might have given you a hard time to work with them and made you feel as if you don’t have any breathing space at all. Think about it. It might have something to do with the upbringing of their childhood. Their behaviours are vividly expressing the side effect of their suppressive childhood. Although they are a grown-up now and their parents do not have the control over them, their suppressive characteristics are forcing them to become a perfectionist without them knowing it.
.
Similarly, the psychological effect does apply to those workers who are overly indulging in their work. This type of workers is usually afraid of making the same kind of mistakes for being sloven and lazy which had happened during their childhood. Thus, they work extremely hard to get the best result so as to hide their inferiority and anxiety complex. However, the fact is that these hardworking workers do not really care much about or interested in their work. They work hard just because they are afraid to be reprimanded for not doing his job well and at the same time wanted to get the recognition from their bosses.
.
One way to judge whether these extremely hardworking workers really love their work or not is to see whether they do look down on those lazy, irresponsible and slouchingly co-workers. If their seriousness towards work is just to get rid of their anxiety and inferiority, the phenomenon of being lazy would surface once their mind is in a state of relaxation, thus exposing their true laziness in character.
.
All in all, how we bring up a child is very important because it shapes the character of a person in the future. The psychological thinking would affect the behaviour and it is going to follow the person throughout his/her lifetime. What is started wrong in the beginning might not end up right in the end.
October 21st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Hi Leo, interesting post. It’s obvious not all perfectionists are lazy and there might be additional reasons / causes to this sort of illness.
Also in our modern world, keeping up with the details in large complicated projects (e.g. building a new passenger airplane) can sometime become almost inhuman so it might just require some inhuman people or we can just skip the idea of having new planes.
What I mean is that it might be that some inferiority complexes are results of people being lazy and unable to deal with the results of their laziness.
January 28th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Isn’t that quiet an ‘off the mark’ generalisation? I am sorry but your post seems very presumptuous.
I know loads of people with zilch amount if inferiority complex (if at all, they have a superiority complex) who are perfectionist because they know thats the way to success. God is in the details, hard work shows, etc etc kind of approach to work. They are peeved and pissed in general at people who don’t take work seriously because they don’t seem appreciate the importance of it all.
There might be individuals who are perfectionist due to their odd upbringing, but I don’t think that remains when you are an adult. You have made your choices by then, and if you haven’t then you are yet to grow up.
I totally agree to your conclusion though. And I appreciate the fact that you are trying to push an extremely important and sensitive point.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Well, that is certainly a way of looking at it. If thinking in this way allows people to accept the existence I perfectionism and hard wok I suppose it has some use.
In my private life I am a very chaotic person, but at work I like everything to be done right. It isn’t that I want things perfect, it is my investing a huge amount of energy into a thing and expecting those around me to do the same.
I am a certain sort of person, and if I did not work hard I would not be that sort of person. But it is exhausting, especially when you pick up every loose end. Sometimes we perfectionists get exhausted and fed up.
For my part I decided a happy work place was more important then a perfect one, which meant taking more on myself and letting the others do as they would. It isn’t always an option.
And I’m only 19, think how much further I have to go…
June 20th, 2009 at 11:49 am
this is one of the great articles ive seen about the topic, keep it up