Presentation Science

Why Perfectionism Is Bad For Your Business Presentations

By: Leslie Belknap

A few weeks ago, I met with a friend to brainstorm marketing strategies for her recently started business. When we starting reviewing her website I could see the disappointment and stress in her eyes as she confessed that she was embarrassed by the site. I listened as she listed all of the elements her website lacked. Once she had shared all of her disappointment over the website, I congratulated her by saying, great job on launching your site before it was perfect. Your ability to proceed without perfection is probably one of the main reasons your business exists today, instead of remaining a dream. At that point I shared with her a quote from Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, that has had a big impact on my life: If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.

I continued by explaining my philosophy on business and perfectionism: perfectionism, the need to be perfect, or appear perfect, can paralyze business. Striving for excellence is different. I applaud my friend’s desire to have an excellent website, however it is her ability to proceed without perfection that got her where she is today.

I hope that you take some inspiration from my friend and strive for excellence without succumbing to the pressure to be perfect. Perfectionism can lead to debilitating anxiety, depression, and a list of other health maladies. In addition, perfectionism can get in the way of your success.

If you challenge the notion that perfectionism can decrease your chances of success, consider the passage below from the article The Alarming New Research on Perfectionism:

Wouldn’t it be good if your surgeon, or your lawyer or financial advisor, is a perfectionist?” said Thomas S. Greenspon, a psychologist and author of a recent paper on an “antidote to perfectionism,” published in Psychology in the Schools. “Actually, no. Research confirms that the most successful people in any given field are less likely to be perfectionistic, because the anxiety about making mistakes gets in your way,” he continued. “Waiting for the surgeon to be absolutely sure the correct decision is being made could allow me to bleed to death.”

Let’s take a closer look at how perfectionism can kill your business presentations.

Why Perfectionism Is Bad For Your Business Presentations

Confidence

As I mentioned earlier, striving for excellence should be applauded, and is not the same as perfectionism.

According to PsychologyToday, excellence involves enjoying what you’re doing, feeling good about what you’ve learned, and developing confidence. Perfection involves feeling bad about a 98 and always finding mistakes no matter how well you’re doing.

If your obsession with perfection leads you to feel bad about yourself no matter how well you perform, your perfectionism will likely diminish your confidence over time. If you are not genuinely confident during your presentation because you are too consumed by your past failures or missteps, the audience will pick up on your concern and potentially question your credibility.

Presentation Tip: Learn to live, learn, and let go when it comes to your past failures so your confidence can blossom.

Risks

Perfectionists like to be in control of projects to ensure that everything goes according to plan and the results are without flaw.

Presentations however are inherently risky and many aspects of presentations are out of your control. For example, you cannot control how the audience will behave during your presentation. Audience members might be exhausted from a late night networking event the night before, or perhaps audience members are unprofessional and ask questions throughout your presentation instead of waiting for the Q&A at the end of your talk.

You can take steps to minimize the risk that your presentation will take an unexpected turn, but you are never fully in control of what happens when you present. For example, you can create a compelling presentation that will keep most people awake and engaged, however if audience members are exhausted there might be nothing you can do to keep them captivated. In addition, you can ask audience members to hold their questions until the end of your presentation, but there is no way to know that your request will be honored.

Presentation Tip: Embrace the possibility that things might not go according to plan. Celebrate curveballs as an opportunity to display your sense of humor because a sense of humor is one of the top two traits of successful leaders. If problems arise during your presentation, laugh with the audience while you get your presentation back on track.

Stories

Perfectionism and workaholism go hand-in-hand. Most perfectionists work longer hours than their peers because they obsess over every single detail which results in a workload that consumes nights and weekends. Not only can this approach to work lead to burnout and exhaustion, but it can also steal your opportunity to interact with other people and live an interesting life.

If your life has no spice and you only interact with other people via email exchanges and business meetings, you will likely have no stories to share during your presentation. This might not seem noteworthy in the big scheme of things, but lacking stories is indeed a big problem for presenters.

In the book, Talk Like TED, TED speaker Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor explains that her success at Harvard was directly related to her ability to tell great stories, not her exceptional science research:

“When I was at Harvard, I was the one winning the awards,” Dr. Jill told me. “I wasn’t winning the awards because my science was better than anyone else’s. I was winning the awards because I could tell a story that was interesting and fascinating and it was mine, down to the detail.”

Presentation Tip: To connect with your audience and captivate their attention, live a life worthy of conversation, and share your experiences during your presentation.

Audience

The foundation of perfectionism is a concern for appearing perfect. Perfectionism is inherently selfish even if the obsession with perfection stems from a desire for approval from others.

When perfectionists present, they are often so concerned with remembering every word, displaying the proper body language, and not missing a beat that they are unaware of the audience. Their obsession with perfection blinds them to the people right in front of them.

Being blind to the audience and performing like a robot can be disastrous for presenters. The purpose of presentations is to connect with people, otherwise the information would be communicated in an email or a book instead of being communicated by a speaker.

Presentation Tip: Stop worrying about how you are doing and instead focus on what you are doing. Be aware of your surroundings and the people to whom you are speaking. If you are only paying attention to your level of perfection, you will miss the opportunity to build a relationship with the people in the audience.

Teamwork

If a presentation needs to be a team effort, one perfectionist can hold up the entire team. While the perfectionist is busy editing, re-editing, and then rewriting their portion of the presentation, the rest of the team is in a holding pattern.

Once the perfectionist finally shares their contribution with the team, group collaboration will likely be a challenge because perfectionists have a tendency to view criticism as failure – even if the criticism is constructive. Perfectionism reduces creativity and innovation because perfectionists fear risk but also because perfectionists fear feedback if the feedback seems to communicate any hint of failure.

Presentation Tip: Check your work for errors, then let it go. Don’t check your work until your eyes cross and you pass out from exhaustion. Your presentation will benefit more from feedback than it will benefit from your compulsive need to quadruple check every detail.

Conclusion

Be passionate about your presentation but don’t be a perfectionist. Because presentations are riddled with risk, no presentation is ever truly perfect and that is a good thing. Mistakes can give you an opportunity to show your sense of humor. In addition, it is more important to connect to your audience than it is to present a flawless presentation. If you’re currently developing a presentation now, remember to take breaks, live a full life, and welcome feedback. If you abandon your desire for perfection, success will come to you more easily.