Meet the two personality types at most risk of burnout in your team, Ms Perfect & Mr Imposter
In the research I have recently undertaken around the occupational phenomenon that is workplace burnout, I dove into some academic research that has been remarkably insightful around which personality types are most at risk of falling foul to the condition.
Interestingly, they are some of the hardest working and most valuable members of any team, but silently, they are often fighting an inner battle of self-worth.
Meet Ms. Perfect & Mr. Imposter.
Ms Perfect has incredibly high standards of performance, for herself and for others. She is conscientious, organised, meticulous, rule-following and reliable. She always puts in effort above and beyond. While these traits seem desirable from a manager's point of view, Ms Perfect is actually maladaptive in her perfectionism. She has a tendency to procrastinate, over plan, overcheck, she tends to micro-manage if she can even delegate at all, there has been feedback she is incredibly hard on others, as they fail to meet her unrealistic high standards.
Behind the scenes, Ms Perfect is struggling. No matter how much she is pushing at work, she never feels like it is good enough, her personal relationships are in a bad way because of her workaholism. She feels inferior to others, anxious and lonely. The high amount of stress she is putting on herself is having a negative effect on her health. This is causing her to feel even less productive and fatigued at work, putting herself under even more pressure that she must perform better.
‘Perfectionists experience a sense of conditional self-worth. Their self worth is conditional on feeling worthy of admiration, respect, acceptance and appreciation. (Flett, Besser, Davis & Hewitt, 2003) This means that any negative feedback or perceived failure is more detrimental psychologically to perfectionists than non-perfectionists because it has implications for their sense of self-worth’. (Stoddart & Clance, 2017).
Ms Perfect is highly driven in her role, however, when we drill down, her internal motivations are driven more from fear than seeking future successes.
Mr Imposter, despite all his hard work and experience in his field, still goes through his days in constant fear that it will be found out that he can’t actually do his job at all and he is a fraud. To anyone else on his team, that idea is quite frankly ridiculous, he is seen as one of the most knowledgeable and confident guy in his area, but Mr Impostor goes home every day with a sigh of relief that he was once again lucky, able to tap dance his way through the challenges that could have easily exposed him.
It makes work a highly stressful place to be for him and every night he finds himself reaching for a beer to take the edge off. He has wondered about whether he should change directions and discover something new he is actually good at? But he feels like anything else he starts now he would be even further behind in, so it makes sense to keep chipping away at this area and using most of his free time to study trends and industry news to help keep him sounding knowledgeable.
“Like perfectionists impostors also fear failure because any performance that does not meet an impostor’s exceptionally high personal standards is interpreted as indications of his or her perceived incompetence, resulting in feelings of shame and humiliation. Failure, mistakes and less than perfect performance is perceived to have the potential to expose them as a fraud.” (Clance, 1985).
Being motivated from a place of fear shows up in various ways, some of the most common are over-preparing for a task (perhaps working late unnecessarily), or procrastination which often leads to a burst of overwork at the very last minute before a task is due. (Which then often leads to more internal shaming of themselves for not being able to put in that work until the last moment).
Managing Perfectionism & Imposterism
The key shared trait that puts these personality types at a greater risk of burnout is the fact that this type of individual is very often motivated in their accompaniments by fear. Fear of failure, fear of being found out, of not being good enough. Pushing harder and harder to prove their self-worth.
I can identify strongly with this sensation as several years ago in my own career the company I was working for had several rounds of redundancies hit us after losing a big client. I remember living in massive fear I was going to lose my job (and therefore my Australian work visa) and so pushing harder and harder, working longer and longer. I did achieve a lot but really took a hit to my physical and mental wellbeing, when my job was never actually anywhere close to being at risk.
Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. It's a shield.
Dr Brene Brown
There is a clue in Dr. Brene Brown’s quote above on how leaders and managers can help these valuable members of our teams. To break through their shield of overwork and micro-managing control to bust through the ‘stories in their head’, to build a safe space where they can put their real fears out into the open so that these can be managed healthily. Often the reality is a much more positive place than Ms Perfect or Mr Impostor’s mind and the issues are easily dealt with once they are known.
If you suspect you may have a Ms Perfect or Mr Imposter in your team, here are some behaviours that may help in your management of them..
1.Make sure you have a strong awareness of your team's individual strengths and their areas to work on.
Understanding there may be some perfectionist or imposter traits will give you a great foundation to work with them as you collectively do the work to avoid their natural trait pushing them into the burnout zone. Resilience and psychometric tests can be very helpful here.
2. Promote a culture of open problem-solving.
Not everyone is naturally good when a problem or pressure hits, however, this is a skill which can be learned. If we can promote a culture that it is OK to share an issue with the team then problem-solving skills can be developed rather than feared or avoided.
“Take the time to clarify the problem, then work with the perfectionist to come up with possible strategies to deal with the stress” (Stoddart & Clance, 2017)
Similarly for Imposters, having open conversations about ways to overcome self-doubt and imposter beliefs that may be holding them back or slowing them down can be extremely beneficial.
Use these opportunities to demonstrate that, even as a leader, you are not perfect and often need to figure things out or problem solve as you go. Showing you are OK with being vulnerable sets a strong example for them.
3. Be clear with feedback
Both perfectionists and imposters can respond quite negatively to perceived failure. That doesn’t mean they should never receive any constructive feedback! In fact, we are helping them more so by being clear and honest with our team, but it serves well to remember to be sensitive to their overly critical tendencies.
“Dancing around the truth is unkind. When we avoid stating the truth—when we are vague or ambiguous under the guise of being kind—it is often because we are trying to lessen the discomfort for ourselves, not for the other person.” (Brene Brown, 2018)
4. Create a sense of control for them
This can potentially look like giving them more say in how they organise their work, or to give them more transparency about what is going on in the company (reducing the need for them to create fake stories) and to be clear about the expectations around their role so they don’t push too hard because they feel they are letting you down, when actually those areas are above and beyond their role .
5. Be proactive to support when failure does hit
Failure is inevitable in life, but this personality type will always be hit harder by it than others, so they will need greater support, as a manager, we help them reframe the perceived failure into a learning experience
6. Provide Frequent Positive Feedback
Even if it’s a small amount every day, it will go a long way to feeding their need for external validation. Validation will also alleviate some of their inner stresses or self-doubt stories to free them up to keep moving forward with tasks and avoid procrastination.
7. Provide education and support for positive mental health practices
This does not mean forcing all of your team into a yoga class once a week, it is simply about giving them a base level education around managing mental health at work. Many of us have little awareness that overwork and our incessant stressing about perfection are actually having an impact on our health, especially in the early stages of our career. By giving people an understanding of stress and the risks of burnout, it may be enough for them to seek support or quietly adjust their working practices. It also shows that it is something that is valued and respected (and practiced) at all levels within the organisation.
Helping leaders work with their teams to build positive personal resilience is something I am deeply passionate about. It is something I believe is vital in today’s workplace, which holds more change and uncertainty than ever before. We need to work together with our people to help reduce burnout rates, to reduce the impact on the individual and the cost for businesses.