Sylvaster is one of the more confident, outspoken members of the school board. Known as “Vaster” to his friends, but “Mr Lee” to new and younger members of the Board, he has been a member of the board for only three years. Nonetheless he brings a wealth of experience from his paid service as a member of several corporate boards. The epitome of self-assurance, no-one would ever accuse Sylvaster of humility.
Sylvaster gladly labels himself as a “perfectionist”. He sets high standards for himself, and he expects nothing less from others in his professional and social circles – and even his own family. He justifies this craving for perfection by telling himself he is simply striving for excellence. After all, why would anyone NOT want things to be done to the highest standard possible?
The other members of Sylvaster’s school board have different perceptions of Sylvaster’s perfectionism. Some see his penchant for detail as valuable, offering comments like “every board needs a Sylvaster”. Others are deeply irritated by what they see as Sylvaster’s insipid fault-finding, prolonging meetings with tedious debates over the precise wording of motions, such as whether or not split infinitives should be permitted, or whether the upper limit for the CFO’s spending approval should be $24,000 rather than $25,000. For Sylvaster, delegating anything to others is fraught with risk, because no-one else on the board or in the senior management seems to understand anything as clearly as he does, hence his desire to check and verify everything that anyone else says or suggests.
Now that Sylvaster has been a member of the school board for three years, and has emerged to dominate most of the discussions during that time, several of his fellow members are becoming irritated. At first, they admired his hard work, his insistence on high standards and his precise thought processes. However, the more he has insisted on perfection, the more the other board members have become frustrated. Many are now hesitant to offer opinions because they fear they will be humiliated or criticised. Some have begun second-guessing Sylvaster’s opinions so they can fall quickly into line with his views. Endless point-picking, revisions to drafts, then further revisions of drafts, and then revisions of the re-drafts, are draining their energy because nothing ever seems to meet Sylvaster’s high expectations. The Chair feels powerless, and more than a little intimidated by Sylvaster, and this allows Sylvaster’s apparent authority to expand even further.
Unknown the other members of the board, Sylvaster is also feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. He feels he has to carry the weight of responsibility of the whole board because of others’ incompetence, and he can’t see a way out of the prison that has been constructed around his perfectionism.
How did Sylvaster come to be in this prison called perfectionism?
Many POIs (People of Influence) in society, like Sylvaster, function in workplaces where precision and high performance are essential. Industries such as engineering, biotechnology, aviation and medicine leave no room for error. Should schools also be places where mistakes are not tolerated? Perhaps they should be in some ways, and yet schools are places of learning, and the most powerful way to learn something new is through the mistakes that are made. Moreover, schools are dynamic and diverse “people places” where ignoring or suppressing the viewpoints and perspectives of others is almost never helpful, even when those opinions fall short of “perfection” in the eyes of some decision-makers in the school.
Many successful leaders became perfectionists because their attention to detail and commitment to high standards have been rewarded in their careers. The problem is that working on a school board requires a different type of leadership that demands working as a team with other people. The individual quest for perfection that serves people like Sylvaster well as a specialist in his own employment can actually hinder them on a school board where task-orientation must be balanced with a mature set of people-skills.
In many organisations, especially those in the corporate sector, failure is not seen as a learning opportunity; it is a career risk. Leaders who have been conditioned to believe that mistakes equal incompetence often struggle to let go of perfectionism and embrace excellence. The ‘perfection mindset’ demands avoiding mistakes at all cost, whereas an ‘excellence mindset’ focusses on learning and improving from mistakes.
For those people who are bound in the Prison of Perfection, it may seem that their perfectionism brings comfortable security. Of course, such comfort represents a false sense of security not unlike the Stockholm Syndrome. People like Sylvaster believe that if they check everything, review every decision, and ensure no mistakes slip through, they can be in control of the outcome. As Sylvaster’s fellow board members have come to realise, however, this mindset slows everything down, creates bottlenecks, suppresses a free exchange of ideas, and thus stifles innovation and creativity.
By the time Sylvaster realised there was a problem, he found himself in a vicious cycle. As he continued to push for perfection from his fellow board members and the Head of School, frustration grew and everyone he worked with became more and more reluctant to show initiative. As the other board members showed less and less initiative, Sylvaster increasingly felt he had to step in to fix things. The more he stepped in, the more dependent (and frustrated) everyone else became with him, and the less capable they seemed to be in Sylvaster’s view. It was becoming a major source of board disagreement and dysfunction.
Perfectionism in leadership creates a paradox. School leaders such as board members and the senior executive sincerely believe they are ensuring quality, but they may actually be eroding trust, collaboration, and efficiency. The longer they retain this mindset, the harder it will be to break.
Once a board member or a school leader realises they are trapped in the Prison of Perfection, breaking free can seem to demand a huge effort, not least because perfection has become an established facet of that person’s public identity. So how can an escape from the prison of perfection be achieved?
Initiating this process of release often requires external assistance, such as a quiet conversation over a cup of coffee, or perhaps a “walk in the yard” with the Board Chair. Certainly, the regular process of Board Performance Reviews should be a powerful and persuasive tool to identify dysfunction with a board’s dynamics or the disruption caused by an aberrant board member such as Sylvaster.
The ideal ‘prison escape strategy’ would be for Sylvaster to understand why progress is preferable to perfection for a school and its board. Fortunately, as is often the case, there is someone who understands this trade-off. The school’s Principal, Josepha, does understand the need to balance progress with perfection and has the skills to balance the important priorities of getting tasks done while also caring for people. Of course, no Principal can (or should) ever initiate the process of reforming a board member’s behaviour; that is strictly a task for the Board Chair or (preferably) a neutral, independent consultant. Nonetheless, a high functioning Principal can serve as an appropriate role model, leading by example.
Like most school principals, Josepha understands the pressures of having to please multiple constituencies – students, parents, teachers, alumni, the Board, government authorities, and many more – and she has learned that mistakes have consequences. Josepha also understands that her job is not to create perfect outcomes herself – it is to build a team that is capable of delivering excellent work without her constant oversight.
Early in her headship of the school, Josepha decided that rather than reviewing every piece of work herself, she would set clear ‘big picture’ expectations in advance, delegate, and then trust her team to meet them. She encouraged her executive team to take responsibility for their work, and when mistakes happened, she treated them as learning moments, not failures.
Over time, Josepha’s team grew in confidence, took more initiatives, and consistently began to deliver high-quality work without her constant involvement. The executive team was not just working for Josepha; they were working with her as members of a coherent partnership.
Following the most recent board performance review, the Board Chair approached Josepha and asked whether she would be prepared to allow Sylvaster to shadow her for a few days, emphasising this request was not for Sylvaster to interfere but simply to observe. Understandably, Josepha was nervous about the suggestion because it ran the risk of blurring the line between governance and management, but she unselfishly agreed in the hope of streamlining the board’s work by diluting Sylvaster’s frustrating perfectionism.
Shadowing Josepha proved to be a transformative experience for Sylvaster – a true revelation. He learned how different the culture of schools is compared with the corporate sector, and how insights from his work in the corporate sector need to be tempered if they are to have relevance in the context of a school.
Sylvaster came to realise that effective school leadership is unconcerned with achieving the perfection of flawlessness; it is about delivering high-impact results that help achieve the school’s mission as efficiently and humanely as possible. Sylvaster learned that a quest for perfection can actually be a barrier to achieving effective progress. He learned that perfectionism often arises from an unjustified lack of trust in others, and that it is more valuable for a project to be delivered today at 95% than too late at 100%.
Sylvaster learned that mistakes are inevitable, and they should be embraced as opportunities to learn and improve, not seen as failures to be punished. After significant personal reflection, Sylvaster even came to realise the paradox that perfectionism is usually either a reflection of an inflated ego or a deep level of personal insecurity – the reality is that excessive perfectionism cannot arise from a balanced, mature personality, nor does it enhance servant leadership.
This story has a happy ending. Sylvaster escaped from the Prison of Perfectionism and continues serving on the school board, making a far more effective, productive contribution while also halving his input of time and effort. Board meetings now always finish punctually having successfully completing the agenda, and Sylvaster’s relations with fellow board members have flourished. Sylvaster’s respect and support for Josepha has especially blossomed, and he has invited Josepha to address a meeting of his own corporate board to share her insights into balanced leadership.
Do you have a Sylvaster on your board whose well-intentioned but misguided perfectionism is imprisoning your board’s effectiveness? If you do, how do you think your board should address the situation and escape from the prison? Hint: ignoring the problem is not an option!
- Dr Stephen Codrington
Original images of cards and characters from the game of Monopoly are © Hasbro Inc., 1936, 1996.
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