How Do You Manage Someone Like You, Alice?

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Alice says she has a secure attachment style, and everyone else has either an avoidant attachment style or a preoccupied attachment style. If you can give them a little bit of breathing space to process the feedback on their own, ah, they can and overcome that defensiveness. People with more avoidant styles need their autonomy and independence emphasized. Some people might prefer getting feedback in an an email form where they can actually digest it and have alittle bit of time to see it more clearly.

If you’ve worked your way up in a competitive field — or are anxious by nature — you may have perfectionist tendencies. Maybe you’re a hard-driving, obsessive worker who thinks a task is never quite done. Or maybe you’re avoidant, struggling to start a project because you want it to be done just right.

We all know society holds women to a higher standard than men and rewards us for not making mistakes. But internalizing other people’s expectations — or what we think they expect — will only burn us out. To keep rising in our careers, we need to get in tune with our own standards for what’s a good, or good enough, job.

It is possible to keep our perfectionist tendencies under control. We talk through tactics with Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist turned writer and author.

Our HBR reading list:

“How Perfectionists Can Get Out of Their Own Way,” by Alice Boyes

“How to Focus on What’s Important, Not Just What’s Urgent,” by Alice Boyes

“How to Collaborate with a Perfectionist,” by Alice Boyes

“Perfectionism Is Increasing, and That’s Not Good News,” by Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill

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Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.