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“What is your biggest weakness?” is a frequently used interview question. “Well, I am a bit of a perfectionist!” can be perceived as dodging the question. Still, research on perfectionism by Dr Babar Dharani considers it to be a valid answer - provided it's appropriately supported. Here are some tips to make it convincing.
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Aspirations for perfection may be perceived as universal; however, many cultures not only regard imperfection as acceptable but embrace it as a necessity for uniqueness and beauty. In Japan, for example, broken pottery is traditionally mended with strong resin obtained from bamboo and decorated with gold. This art, known as Kintsugi, is deemed to enhance its strength and add to its beauty.
Despite Western culture’s preference for unbroken pottery, there is an acknowledgment of some shortcomings of perfectionism; hence, interview questions regarding personal flaws leverage perfectionism as an acceptable or even a desirable flaw. Interviewees consider it a double-edged sword that answers the interview question with minimal risk of losing out on receiving a potential offer letter.
However, such a response bears the risk of being viewed as a cop-out by some interviewees. More knowledgeable interviewers may be aware of perfectionism’s psychological roots, which are seeded in high parental expectations or criticisms in your formative years, to more severe experiences of parental affection less control. Alternatively, perfectionism can stem from experiences during adolescence of social isolation, feelings of defectiveness, or shame. Even neuroticism can contribute to perfectionism.
As such, it is important to thoroughly support such an answer.
Know if you actually are a perfectionist
To cast aside any doubts that your claim to perfectionism is a learned response, firstly, it is important to convey that you are aware of what perfectionism is. It is a personality disposition, defined through typical behaviours observed in perfectionists.
These include:
- Unattainable personal standards. Perfectionists strive for superhuman standards, aiming at flawlessness. At work, this translates into setting unachievably high standards of performance.
- Excessive concern over mistakes. Perfectionists are overly critical in their self-evaluations and overindulgent in assessments of their actions, retrospectively nit-picking all possibilities of improvement.
- Doubts regarding one’s actions. Targeting the impossible while being marred with self-critique, perfectionists can be debilitated by self-doubt, with overly acute levels of concern over decision-making, delegating, or finalising any task.
Perfectionists do have a higher quality of work, more diligent decision-making, and self-assessment that does not require management input, but since multiple areas of a perfectionist’s life are contaminated with these, it places unimaginable burdens that can sabotage their performance.
Present your shortcomings as a perfectionist with an example
It is important to support your confession of being a perfectionist with shortcomings that emanate from it. Listing further shortcomings may not work in your favour; as such, sharing an example of when such tendencies have affected your work may be more suitable. Storytelling heightens the human experience associated with it, and since perfectionism is embedded in super-human aspirations, examples that present you as a flawed human emphasise acknowledgement of your limitations as a check that supports your balance.
Instead of choosing examples where your perfectionism had dire consequences, examples such as marginally missing a deadline as you were kept busy in perfecting a report, failing to delegate as you aspired for it to be perfect, giving negative feedback as you had set unattainable standards when delegating that risked lowering morale for the team, or spending too long on reflecting on completed tasks are some more palatable examples that can be shared with an interviewer.
Convince the interviewer of your perfectionism management skills
Effectively conveying how you manage your perfectionism is essential. Simple techniques, such as assigning strict timeframes to complete tasks, time allocation for reflecting on tasks completed, or journaling improvement techniques so that they do not occupy your mind at work, and positively starting and ending feedback to others who have completed tasks can ease some fears associated with your flaw of being a perfectionist.
Since perfectionists are proven to have higher levels of motivation and conscientiousness than non-perfectionists, while demanding lower burdens of manager’s time. The key for perfectionists lies in managing it so that it yields high-class performance.
Share your hopes of leveraging perfectionism for excellence
Perfectionism and excellence differ, where the earlier is seeded in a psychological push from unresolved formative experiences with parents or peers, while the latter stems from authentic interest and passion for the task being completed. Therefore, a step further than convincing the interviewer of your effective perfectionism management techniques is to convey that the work is genuinely within your interest, values, or passion. This significantly lowers the risks of perfectionism hampering your mental health, as you can be expected to benefit from joy as a reward from day-to-day work, not only upon completing a task but throughout the journey of working on them.
As with perfectionism, our biggest assets are inherently our biggest weaknesses as well. Phrasing it topsy-turvy, our flaws represent our greatest potential. Therefore, rather than hiding flaws and parading your assets in interviews, sharing how you have learned to prevent your flaws to have negative repercussions, and instead how these weaknesses can be leveraged to yield benefits is a more appealing interview conversation. However, for such a conversation, you would need to present yourself as broken pottery, which is stronger for being broken due to the learnings from the experiences of healing, and more beautiful for being unique for having decorated your breakages with gold.
Dr Babar Dharani, Senior Lecturer of the Allan Gray Centre (AGC) for Values-Based Leadership at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB). News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
