Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self-doubt become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF that you didn't know you were missing until now.

If our most recent podcast episode about how perfectionism could be holding you back really resonated with you, then you will be pleased to hear that this week's episode is all about the six super practical strategies that you can use to stop perfectionism holding you back. And we're not even talking about radically dropping your standards you'll be pleased to hear. So I'm going to roll that for you in just a minute. A quick update in terms of what's been happening, we are on week two of the school summer holidays up here in Cumbria, it has rained pretty much every day. And I am doing the juggler. I think last time I recorded an intro my head was all over the place. And you could probably hear that bit Palmer this time. It's been interesting dealing with some unexpected things and work alongside lots of requests for playing and a lot of money. Why don't you play with me enough. And thankfully, grandparents are just down the road and are getting called upon very often but hopefully at some point, the sun will come out when we can be outside and just relax and chill a little bit more. We also finished off the final session of the current cohort of influence and impact. We had 17 amazing women on that from all different sectors. And it's been fantastic getting to know them and seeing the increase in their confidence and believing in themselves. Quite a few of them have been going for interview so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a couple of them as I record this.

It's such a privilege doing the work that I do. I love doing this podcast. I like the idea that hopefully it's giving a little bit of inspiration or even just one practical tip you can use when you listen to it. But it's so nice to work with people more closely and get to know them and go deep on all these topics including perfectionism impostor feelings, and that really vocal inner critic that many of us have. So, if you're interested in working with me more closely, I've got a couple of slots for one to one coaching available. There is also a September cohort of influence and impact and an October cohort of be bolder the confidence and assertiveness course, so I would love to see you in there. If you're interested head to my website, you can download PDFs which you can share with your line manager about the two programmes to hopefully get them on board and paying for you.

Right. For those of you that are not experiencing school so holidays, I hope you are having a nice relaxing summit and getting a break and solidarity to the rest of you who are experiencing school summer holidays with rainy weather right now.

On to the episode - last week's episode of the influence and impact podcast, we looked at why perfectionism and overworking and just working so hard to try and prove that you're good enough is actually not the secret to your success. In fact, it may well have been causing you some harm. And there's a quote I love from Julia Cameron, who is the author of the book The Artists Way, she says perfectionism is not a quest for the best, it is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough. And I love that quote. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode about why it's time to ditch perfectionism go back and listen to that one first then in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you some very practical strategies that you can use if you think you have got some perfectionist traits.

We'd like to choose to keep high standards, but be happier in the way that you work so I'm going to share those strategies with you now.

The first strategy is to consciously choose your effort level. So, at the moment, what you're probably doing is applying your full energy to absolutely everything. Do you take on, but actually not everything requires your full energy and effort? If you're working on a detailed budget forecast, for example, then absolutely, you want it to be completely accurate. You don't want any mistakes in that. But if you're sending an email to a colleague, then a typo isn't the end of the world so you probably don't need to reread it five times to check that it's okay, you can just give it a quick once over, and then off it goes.

It's about consciously choosing your effort level, there isn't enough time for you to be able to give 10 out of 10 in terms of effort level, to everything on your to do list. Attempting to do that just means that the things that you have to do pile up and up and up, and you won't meet your deadlines, you'll have to start saying no to some things that actually you want to say yes to. So, first of all, it's about accepting that and it might be that you've never really reflected on that it's just been your default, to give maximum energy to everything and then unsurprisingly, you're always feeling like you're running behind, and you're exhausted because it takes a lot out of you to constantly be operating like that. And we're going to talk about that a bit later.

If you accept that giving 10 out of 10 to everything means that some things that are important don't get done, then you have to accept that you're going to have to start identifying some tasks that don't require you to give 10 out of 10. Sometimes a task is an eight out of 10 or sometimes it's even a six out of 10, I probably wouldn't go much lower than a six out of 10. If you're only doing something five out of 10 in terms of effort and good enough, there's room for mistakes in there probably so I'd go for six upwards, but it's about consciously choosing, basically and that means you're not spending all of a day trying to do things that are 10 out of 10, because your brain will get exhausted, and it will be hard to keep the quality up so, instead, in any one day, you can have a mixture of effort level in terms of tasks.

I know this might feel like a crazy idea. But you can choose how much effort you put into something. And equally, this refers to your working week or your working day as well.

You don't have to be in fifth gear all the time. And in fact, if you do that, if you are constantly driving in fifth gear, you're just going to break your car, I don't actually know enough about cars to know if it's the clutch or the engine or the gearbox that you would break but something in your car is going to break. If you constantly drive in fifth gear, it's not appropriate to constantly drive in fifth gear.

I used to metaphorically try and drive in fifth gear all the time, in terms of how I approach work, until I realised that actually, there are some things where I can be in second gear so I could have a really intense morning then I could have a complete break at lunch and then maybe do something that's a bit slower in the afternoon, for example. So just bear in mind, this idea that you don't have to be in fifth gear all the time and it's not always helpful to choose the appropriate gear for the activity that you're doing.

I have clients that have had a lot of success with this and found it a really practical strategy and they've actually used it with their team, as well. So, they've looked at all the things they've had to do and said, well, if we try and give maximum effort to all of these, it's not going to be possible so which are the tasks that are most important, which are the ones that require the most effort or the most attention to detail, and which are the ones that actually we can do to a good enough standard. That's what we're going to talk about next, evaluating reevaluating or recalibrating your standards.

If you're highly driven, then your version of good might well be someone else's version of excellence. You might be constantly going above and beyond at all times when you don't need to go above and beyond and in fact those standards that you're holding yourself and other people to could be holding the team back because people feel like they can't meet them so it's worth having conversations with people as well about what does excellence look like in terms of the delivery of this project, and letting them speak first, rather than going straight in with the best thing that you can absolutely think of is going to kill you to deliver. That's in the context of somebody passing a project to you and not promised they over promising over delivering isn't a great default to have, I think you can be realistic about what can be delivered, then you can exceed expectations that always feels good.

It doesn't feel good when you have promised the world to everyone and you just can't deliver equally, it doesn't feel good when you say yes to everything, when actually, you know, you can't actually do it, often perfectionist will over promise and then kill themselves trying to deliver what they've promised and we're working so hard to try and live up to that when people didn't need all of that extra stuff that we're offering so, this is another version of not being in fifth gear all the time and trying to reevaluate and recalibrate your standards.

For next is done is better than perfect. Or another way of looking at that is good enough focus on good enough. This is a mantra that's great if you procrastinate because you want something to be perfect. Or if you overthink because you want to come to the right decision Done is better than perfect. If I wanted to get each of these podcast episodes absolutely perfect, they would take me forever to plan and write scripts for and they take me a pretty long time as it is just for this rough and ready version. But if I waited for that, you wouldn't get a weekly episode from me and if I'd waited to create this podcast until I was good at podcasting, then you wouldn't get any podcasts from me because my podcasts are not perfect.

So, perfection holds you back. It's a place of fear. And a place where we don't want to let something to go out in the wild if it's not perfect, because it means something about us. But as I talked about on the last episode, actually, the quality of your work doesn't mean very much about you as a person at all and as I want to cover in the next point, it's much more powerful to take action, and then iterate and improve from there. Because when you're overthinking or when you're procrastinating because you want it to be perfect. You're basically just on a hamster wheel, you're running and running, and your mind, or at least your mind is running and you're not going anywhere, you're not making any progress.

So if you take action, you put something out there, you get more information, more feedback, more input, and then you can then take that information and create something better or make a better decision from there. And that's why software companies, for example, don't create the finished product and put it out there. They create what they call the minimum viable product, which is something that works. And then they get feedback. And they find out from their customers what they actually need, and which of those amazing ideas they wanted to add or things that the customer actually wants so I'd encourage you when you're stuck in that cycle of overthinking to try and take some action, even a small step forward and commit to iterating. And growing and learning from there, rather than having everything be perfect first time around or at the beginning. Another strategy is when you are setting your goals and your targets, set them more realistically.

If you know you always push yourself really far, when you're setting yourself a deadline, or a KPI of some kind or a target of some kind, then think about actually reducing it by I don't know 20% or if that feels really uncomfortable, start with five, think about reducing it by 20% as a default. So, if you were normally setting yourself a target, let's say you're a salesperson, you're normally setting yourself an unrealistic target of the number of calls that you can make and then that creates dread and you don't want to make them and you're relieved when someone doesn't answer. Well, instead, what you could do is set it for 20% lower and just focus on doing those ones. Well, this speaks to the over promising and over delivering, but it's also about what you set for yourself as well and this applies to the rest of life as well.

One of the things that we talked about influence and impact when it comes to impostor syndrome. Is there a certain type of person that wants to be superwoman? And it's all about how many things you can juggle at any one time and be successful at all of them and that version of perfectionism, which is linked to impostor syndrome, impostor feelings, really, also leads to issues and so being able to your goals might not necessarily be about how much you do something it might be how many different things you're doing.

Perhaps you're someone who likes to have a million different projects on the go all at one time and you wonder why you get burnt out when at the same time you want to do brilliantly at them all that's a superwoman profile, then perhaps do less things and enjoy some spaciousness somewhere in your life. I'm trying to embrace the idea of spaciousness. I love the sound of it. Creating it takes discipline and breaking habits of the ways you've done things. And then finally, perfectionists are terrified of failure. So if you want to work on your perfectionist rates, then it's time to practice embracing failure, terrifying idea, I know but you can do it in quite a fun way.

One of the ways I stopped being such a perfectionist is I started doing some things that I knew I wasn't very good at, and embraced that beginner's mindset embrace, not having to be control of everything so at the time, I learned to play well, I joined a netball team, it was so nice not to be captain not to be in charge of anything and that, you know, I was okay, I wasn't brilliant at netball. But I didn't need to be brilliant. I just needed to enjoy it. Equally, I did rock climbing, there are all sorts of things like right now, if I wanted to practice something I wasn't good at I would do something arty or creative and really embrace, let go, I have no natural ability, when it comes to art and creative things. And they really embrace that idea. And what that does is it just expands your comfort zone with not being super successful at everything. It helps you to rethink what failure actually means. And there's this idea of mastery that I really like as well and it's something I think people used to focus on years ago, in even previous centuries, when they had apprenticeships, where you would pick your trade and you would over time, you do the same thing for many, many years. And over time, you will, you would develop mastery in that trade. And I think that's linked to the growth mindset idea as well, this idea of having 10,000 hours of something to be expert at it.

Instead of trying to get straight to the point where you're brilliant at something, you committed to mastery, you pick something that was important to you. And you said right over the next five years, so I've tried to do this a tennis, I haven't made much progress of late what with a child and all the tennis clubs shutting, but I'm not very good at it, but I really like it. And so instead of getting stressed out that I wasn't winning matches, or indeed initially confident enough to play any matches. What I did was say right, in five years time, I want to be playing at club level a couple of times a week, I'm really enjoying it and working towards gradual mastery of that and enjoying the process enjoying the journey, which as we talked about on the last episode is something high achievers do that perfectionists don't do as well.

I hope that these strategies will be helpful for you, as I talked about in the last episode, and I want to reiterate here, actually, if you want to change this, the place that you really need to start is the beliefs that you have about yourself about work about what work means about you and that's what we do within my group coaching programme Influence and Impact. It's also what you can do within my leaf and within self-guided course, you can identify your beliefs, and there are lots of different techniques, and I share quite a few of them, because different ones work for different people to help you to reframe those beliefs because your beliefs drive your thoughts and your feelings and the action you take and therefore drive the results that you get as well.

These mental strategies, these practical strategies will be really helpful. But if you want to fundamentally change how you feel about yourself then it is the beliefs that you need to work on. So if that's something you want to look at, then drop me a message on LinkedIn. And we can talk about Influence and Impact and when that next opens, or you can just go to my website and look at the lead from within programme there, which hopefully is priced at a nice cost effective price point for you.

That is the end of our conversation on perfectionism is going to come up again at some point, particularly if we talk about impostor feelings impostor syndrome, because it's really closely aligned to that and as I said, last time, don't beat yourself up.

If you do feel like you're a perfectionist just try some of these strategies and don't try all of them at once. Just pick one that you're going to do something on this week that will help you to just not push yourself quite so hot.

Okay, well good luck with that. Let me know how you get on if you enjoy this podcast.

Lots of you have been really wonderful and drop me a note on LinkedIn or on my Instagram which is this is Carla Miller. But I love to hear how this podcast is helping people. It helps me when I'm sat here trying to think of things to talk to you about and creating the time to create these for you. It makes me feel so much better when I know that they are making a difference to people and enjoy the rest of your day.

So if you've been listening to this and thinking, I think perfectionism might be a bit of an issue for me and it's something I'd like to feel less alone in, I'd like to normalise and stop beating myself up for and if you'd like to do that alongside other people, so that you feel much more normal in your perfectionism, and so that you're not judging yourself and beating yourself up, then do look at our Be Bolder confidence and assertiveness course, that is coming up in October. It's for women at any level, and 94% of people who take it come out feeling more confident, with a more positive mindset, more willing to and able to have challenging and courageous conversations, and more willing to speak up in meetings. So love that course would love to see you on it.

If you are a manager or leader then check out Influence and Impact which starts in September. That's our three month limit women's leadership development programme, where we go deep on all of this stuff in terms of confidence, self-doubt, impostor feeling, we also look at your personal leadership brand, how you can increase your impact and obviously, we look alike influencing as well and how to get others to value and respect your opinion. That's a small group up to 20 of you working really closely with me. And I would love to have you on that if that resonates with you. Most of the people who've been on it are podcast listeners so I think you've got a great sense of how it's gonna feel being on that course.

On my website, you can download a PDF to share with your manager for either Influence and Impact, or Be Bolder, that helps make the business case for why it is worth investing in you and sending you on those courses. Hope to see you on one of those at the end of the summer.

Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not already subscribing, please do so, so that you don't miss any future episodes and if you want to go deeper on the topics that we talk about here on the podcast on confidence, self-doubt, impostor feelings, increasing your influence being better at leading, then there are a few avenues that you can take. The simplest is to get yourself a copy of my book, Closing the Influence Gap. If you love this podcast, it is crazy if you don't already own that book, because it's got so much of the content from the podcast in a really accessible way and so many practical tools and strategies. It's basically a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard in the workplace, you can grab a copy in any bookstore. Now we also run a couple of open programmes. We run them once or twice a year each. There is Be Bolder, our four week confidence and assertiveness course, which is suitable for women at any level. And then there's also Influence and Impact, which is our Women's Leadership Development Programme. That's a three month small group cohort working closely with me and then my team and I also work in house in organisations, sometimes that's working with women leaders, whether that's running a whole Women's Leadership Programme, or running one of our really popular master classes for women leaders. Sometimes it's working with early to mid-career women, where we're often sharing our be bolder confidence and assertiveness programme.

We also offer gender neutral versions of that which are becoming increasingly popular because women aren't the only people experiencing confidence challenges. And then finally, we do work with Allyship and supporting men to help bring about gender equity in the workplace as well. So, if you are heading up a team, or a department or within your organisation, you're responsible for the people function or L&D. And we'd like to have a chat about how we can work together. I would absolutely love that.

You can go to my website and book a call. Or if it's simpler, head on over to LinkedIn. Let's connect and let's chat there. I would love to take working with you to the next level and help you to become an organisation that retains and develops and supports the talented women that work for you.