Is your Pefectionist Boss Hiding a Problem?

Most businesses encourage high quality work that is accurate and creates an impact. If you are feeling the pressure from your boss to perform more, get more done, and do it perfectly there may be a problem your boss is hiding. This becomes even more apparent when the boss resorts to constant criticism of work without regard to its actual merits. The next time your boss is on a perfectionist, demanding, and criticism streak think about their psycho-social development. 

Good quality work should always be expected but there comes a point where perfectionism is maladaptive. In these cases the expectations become unrealistic and the demands start to damage the continuity and functionality of the workplace.  People who work with the manager become frustrated, their self-esteem gets damaged, and turn over rates start to climb.  Personality gets projected all over the workplace and results suffer without the awareness of the manager.

Overly demanding and perfectionist people often hold hidden personality disorders that are manifesting themselves throughout their lives. Such individuals are overly concerned with results, hypersensitive to criticism, have difficulties interacting with others, and generally have poor personal images (Dimaggio, et. al., 2015). The same persistent demanding traits that got them promoted also begin to break down when managing the subtleties of relationships.

 

 There is a difference between a boss who has high standards and those who have maladaptive personalities. High standard bosses will give constructive feedback and have reasonable expectations of performance. They accept that things don't always work out perfect and adjust their approaches as needed. Maladaptive personalities are pathological and have the same hypercritical and unrealistic approach to everything and everyone they work with. They are projecting their dislike of themselves onto others.

 

Such bosses are difficult to work with as they can't change or vary their personality in a way that is helpful to their employees or the workplace. Their personality disorder integrates into everything they do and they will be incapable of seeing another point of view. If they don't get the results they want they start to get even more aggressive and domineering. The best you can do is weather the changes and wait until the situation changes. If the problem is too persistent you can move onto another job.

Dimaggio, G., et. al. (2015). Perfectionism and personality disorders as predictors of symptoms and interpersonal problems. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 69 (3).