Have you ever read a job listing that describes a search for a
perfectionist? The hiring company must surely have the best intentions: It wants someone who will work hard to get the job done right.
For a
perfectionist teen, a failure can strike at the core of their sense of self-worth.
Using a quantitative rate can help shift mindsets and allow our
perfectionists to begin identifying and focusing their energies on the most important work, rather than attempting to give everything equal attention."
And yet,
perfectionists tend to base their worth on external accolades.
Working with
perfectionist kids is different: I have to earn their trust.
Once you can spot your
perfectionist tendencies, the next step is to challenge them.
Behind every
Perfectionist is a secret, a lie and a needed alibi."
Definitions seem to emphasize the possession of excessively high standards (e.g., Rice, Bair, Castro, Cohen, & Hood, 2003), a perspective that seems consistent with the tendency of early researchers and writers to emphasize the personal standards of
perfectionists and to use terms like "excessive" or "extreme" in describing them (e.g., Burns, 1980; Pacht, 1984).
In terms of achievement motivation,
perfectionists and nonperfectionists were similar in many areas of inquiry (e.g., believing in the need to work hard in order to succeed and feeling frustrated when unable to complete a task).
Summary: A
perfectionist on your team is both a blessing and a curse.
Based on clinical observations and anecdotal evidence, Hamachek proposed that while normal and neurotic
perfectionists are both associated with the setting of high personal standards, the two groups differ in their respective abilities to accept circumstances under which their lofty standards are not realized (Gilman & Ashby, 2003).
Mankind's debts to the uncompromising
perfectionists, zealots of a kind - the stuff that the
