Perfectionists: stop justifying yourself

This advice works for perfectionists mostly. It is feedback I received a few years ago and a piece of feedback I have given as well to analysts I have worked with later in my career.

Here’s the deal. We all make mistakes. Doing things involves making mistakes, those are the rules of the game. Perfectionists do not like mistakes and we often try to justify or explain why we made those mistakes in the first place. That was me.

I never wanted to appear as not smart enough or careless to my managers so I would justify or explain mistakes by putting words on why something went wrong. For instance, I once missed one number in one slide because I copied it from a previous one (the slide was full of numbers so it was hard to see). When the manager caught it, instead of saying sorry I tried to explain why that happened. Back then I was told: “César, you work fantastically well, you should not try to explain or justify your mistakes. Everybody makes them. Just say sorry and take note so that it does not happen again”. I think he was damn right. Of course, it is important to do checks so that you make the least mistakes possible, but once you have done a mistake it is better to just apologize and say you will try it doesn’t happen again. Period.

My experience tells me that a mature and responsible individual should take accountability for the mistakes. Of course, if you make mistakes all the time, this strategy means nothing and you will be out of the game sooner or later, right? But this works very well when you are a perfectionist and don’t like making mistakes but, very occasionally, you make one. Don’t explain. Don’t justify. Say “sorry” and take full responsibility. So eat your pride, take note, think of how to solve it and move on. You will come across as someone accountable for its mistakes and solution-oriented.