Fighting Perfectionism

As a barbershopper and encourager of vocal musicians everywhere, I’m trying to bring people into the world of singing, into our organizations. I face a major challenge because people are just not gathering in groups these days. I hear a number of explanations as to why it’s hard to get people to do this. It’s easy to blame television, blame sporting events, or blame popular entertainment in general. I’ve fallen prey to this blame-game as well, but I now have a different answer. I don’t blame television. I blame perfectionism.

Let’s define perfectionism as the belief that entities and humans should always be perfect, and only take action if they can be perfect, and that only perfection is worth our time. To illustrate my point by showing the opposite of perfectionism, take the reality TV scene. You know what it’s doing? It’s exploiting what I believe is an innate human desire to be human. People can listen to a CD if they want music to sound perfect, they can watch rom-coms if they want to see people who look perfect, but humans feel more connected to people who are like them, that is, flawed and passionate.

There’s a darker, more sinister side to perfectionism, but, before I get there, let me be clear on something. I don’t have a problem with the notion of perfection itself. After all, perfection is a beautiful idea, and we could have another discussion about what perfection is. For now, let’s proceed with the idea that perfection means effective and flawless. Anyway, when it comes to perfection, I find that we humans are often afraid to pursue it simply because we think that there’s something wrong with us because we aren’t perfect. We should understand that there’s nothing wrong with not being perfect.

So, on that note, we go back to what it’s like to be a recruiter.

In recruiting others to join societies and clubs, I hear expressions like “you don’t want to hear me sing” and “I only sing in the shower.” I’ll save my thoughts on singing in the shower for another post, but let’s look at the underlying hesitance. Are people saying that they don’t want to sing? Or are they saying that they’re afraid of their own imperfection? It’s hard to know because everyone is different, but what we do know is that there is a hesitance. Some try to recruit to artistic activities like singing, dancing, and speaking in public by treating them as pillars to achieve: “Strive for this, for it is great and worthy of your time!” I don’t like the pillar mentality. I believe in people, and I’ve met my share, and I feel that I can see behind people’s eyes to read people saying, “I feel that I have greatness in me, deep down… If only someone would give me a chance." Many of these people never achieve greatness because they don’t “make opportunities for themselves”. I pity this mentality, and I believe that it is the fault of us leaders that so many people don’t achieve.

We in leadership positions fail when we don’t look for ways to put people in positions to succeed. If we wait for people to tell us that they want something, how much of their time and ours are we wasting when they could have already been succeeding? As a leader, I am fighting perfection by looking for imperfect people and trying to give them chances to pursue perfection. I do this because I find growth more exciting than elitism.