Perfection – when 80% is good enough

Image Credit: Shaylor

One of the things I love about my work as an external trainer is working in organisations who practice ‘traditional‘, front-led, death by Power Point style training. The look on the faces of learners who walk into my training room with music playing, decorated walls and desks piled with coloured pens, paper & craft materials, is a joy to see.

Given permission, they throw themselves into the opening activity that lays the foundation for the rest of the session.

One draw back is often timing; what is intended to be a quick 15 minute high energy opening ends up taking twice as long because they want it to be perfect before moving on.

Don’t get me wrong – some things have to be done with 100% accuracy. I don’t want Air Traffic Control working to 8 out of 10 and I when I have minor surgery in a couple of months, I need my anesthetist to be super cautious and treble check everything.

It is right and proper that critical issues aim for perfection or higher – even investing time and resources into redundant systems that are unlikely to be ever used but provide a safety net should the worst happen.

Is it this fear of ‘the worst that could happen‘ that drives many perfectionists?

How to Escape Perfectionism by Peter Bregman on HavardBusiness.org offers three suggestions. The first two could help our learners free their creativity and speed up their understanding:

• Don’t try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.
• Do what feels right to you, not to others.

Of these two, I think the 2nd one is where we can help our learners. In the article, Peter Bregman says:

So if you think you’re good at something, whether or not you are, you’ll do it. The converse is also true: if you think you aren’t good enough at something, you won’t do it.

If we can build self confidence in our learners and help them remove their over-critical goggles, we can release them to be fantastic. Too often people hold themselves back thorugh fear of critisism or failure when in fact the thing they have produced is great – they either don’r see it or don’t believe it could be that easy.

Instead of going with what they have produced, they continue to refine and redo  adding very little. The work completed in the first 10 minutes was great and every minute after that is rarely worth the effort. The endless tinkering to get it ‘just right‘ is often more about self confidence that tangible improvements.

The secret is positive feedback and encouragement. Help them see that they are good and what they have produced is great.

Paul and Ally are working on an exciting 6-part (online) course to help your learners fully engage with your training - sign up for the 'early bird' list for advanced notification and more info

If you liked this, you may also like these:

1. Learners smell your fear New Scientist magazine recently reported a study that concluded that: … anxiety prompts the release of...
2. Scent of fear puts brain in emergency mode If we are scared and nervous at the fron to the room, our learners will pick...
3. 6 Tips for training in a recession For many of us the economic downturn has brought added pressure at work and home. For me,...
4. Another lesson in learning from children Learning is a funny thing. We have formalised a sytem of classrooms, evaluation, experts and students...