Proximity to Perfection Does Not Lead to Success
Here’s a question I’ve been toying with recently: What does it mean to be perfect, and what’s the relationship between perfection and success?
I suspect many of us were conditioned early on to associate degrees of perfection to degrees of success. Why not, when most of our education created a through line between scores on tests with grades for a class with grade point averages, class rank and ultimately admission to variously competitive universities?
Recently I watched this video of Roger Federer speaking at the Dartmouth graduation in 2024. One of the tennis greats who experienced massive success over his career, Federer shares the stunning statistic that of all the points scored in competitive matches he won barely half of them (or lost almost half). He went on to win over 80% of these matches against other world-class tennis players. He states that during each point, he gave it his all, but moved on quickly to the next one rather than dwell on points that he lost.
Certainly, Federer could have played only against competitors (like me!) where he could win every point and every match. That would be perfection of a sort, but that wouldn’t lead him to Grand Slam success.
Operating under a belief that the proximity to perfection leads to success can lead to many very limiting places:
❌ We often take fewer risks because we fear falling short of perfection
❌ We limit ourselves to situations where we can “keep score” objectively and always “hit the mark” and avoid “messy” situations where perfect isn’t easily defined
❌ We stress being “right the first time” and miss opportunities to collaborate toward better answers
❌ We could spend tremendous energy trying to meet some ineffable standard and relentlessly seek confirmation of our performance
❌ We can lose sight of what we have done well, focus on negatives, and fail to develop
❌ We might become defensive and brittle to feedback that might suggest we could get better
❌ We can seek to blame others for less than perfect outcomes because anything less than perfection means we have failed, and thus we are a failure
As an executive leadership coach who had my own growth toward capable leadership in the corporate world, I find myself experiencing familiar challenges such as perfectionism through the unique filter of my clients’ experiences. It’s not enough to say “perfection isn’t possible” or otherwise rationalize it away. Instead we work together to understand how perfectionism does and does not serve each individual client, envision the benefits of letting those old behaviors and mindsets go, and most importantly replace them with better options.
That’s an approach that correlates positively with success.
If you’d like to explore these concepts more, connect with me here or at john@aconnectedcoach.com