What are the causes of dysfunctional self-demand at work?

Self-demand is essential in any field. It is necessary to be a bit demanding with oneself if one wants to grow as a person, both at work and in any other important area of ​​our lives.

However, everything has a limit. It is one thing to be self-demanding in the sense of being responsible, constant and striving to achieve what one sets out to do, and another, very different thing, is to be obsessively perfectionist, asking for more than is possible and making our work performance something that determines our satisfaction and self esteem.

Maladaptive perfectionism, whether at work or elsewhere, is detrimental to our health, as well as unproductive. We are going to see what are the causes of dysfunctional self-demand at work and its consequences.

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The main causes of dysfunctional self-demand in the workplace

In the world of work, a culture has been implanted in which there is very often the idea that seeking perfection is an admirable trait. From the highest positions to the most subordinate employees, there are more than a few workers who set themselves higher and higher standards in an attempt to achieve success. Many associate being a perfectionist and more conscientious with having better results. Nevertheless,

To what extent does the search for perfection in the workplace do more harm than good?

Self-demand and perfectionism are well regarded in our meritocratic society, especially at work. When we speak of a demanding worker, we imagine an individual who is constant, willful, persistent in his goals and often successful.

This self-demand is adaptive and functional when it responds to our abilities, knowledge and adjusts to the context. Making an effort at work to be more efficient and productive, as long as it does not cause us discomfort and gives good results, is desirable.

While doing everything you can to improve yourself in the workplace is not an inherently bad thing, research scientific point out that perfectionism could have a dark side and that it would harm the individual who presents it. This excess of perfectionism would negatively affect the worker's job performance. This trait has been called “negative perfectionism”, “maladaptive perfectionism” or even “neurotic perfectionism”. Here we will call it “dysfunctional self-demand”.

If being too perfectionist in the workplace causes problems and, in addition, results in poorer performance, means that our self-demand is clearly dysfunctional. An individual presents high self-demand when:

• You don't know your own limits, working more than you can.
• Sets very high or unattainable goals
• Turn your challenges into obligations.
• His work behavior is governed by a rigid self-discipline.
• Excessive foresight and planning and feel very guilty if you do not follow through.
• He works hard to achieve his goal despite suffering.
• Inability to delegate tasks.
• Fear to fail.
• He needs recognition.
• Your self-esteem depends on the result obtained.
• Excessive attention on the result and not the process.
• Self-negativity bias: You care more about your failures than your achievements.
• High self-criticism
• Dichotomous thinking: things either go well or go wrong, there is no middle ground.
• He has a low tolerance for frustration.
• You have a feeling of constant dissatisfaction.

This negative perfectionism makes the person raise the bar more and more., wanting to do their job or tasks as close to perfection as possible, but having no control over it. Due to this, dysfunctional self-demand can be a great detriment to the subject's mental and physical health, in addition to also resulting in poorer work performance.

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The origins of dysfunctional self-demand at work

As it is a multidimensional characteristic of our personality, self-demand can have different origins depending on its degree and particular experiences in our personal lives.

An important influencing factor on the degree of labor self-demand shown in adulthood is the environment in which we grew up. Perfectionism can be learned, having origins both in the cultural norms within a society and in the parental styles that we have been subjected to in our childhood.

One of the possible causes, very recurrent, is that of having had a childhood marked by the high standards of parents towards different aspects, mainly academic performance. For example, if our parents overvalued our academic grades or were too strict about how we managed our time of study and leisure, that will have conditioned to have in adulthood an obsessive desire to meet work goals and perform as much as possible.

Relationships have been established between having been the object of a strict and harsh parenting style and reaching adulthood with excessive perfectionistic tendencies. It is common for people who have been raised in such strict environments to reach adulthood fearing that if they don't do things perfectly something bad will happen, in addition to feelings of shame and guilt.

Dysfunctional self-demand also may be a product of our personal experience with the work. It may be linked to the fact that, at some point when we feel that we could have done better, we become obsessed with not doing things as "badly" as we thought we did in the past. Because of this experience, lived in an almost traumatic, one tries harder and harder, setting the bar higher and higher and perceiving their own poor job performance as synonymous with failure, laziness and lack of effort.

And there is also the influence that others have on us. If we know someone who does everything well, who has a very high job performance and sees himself as a successful person, it is likely that we will want to imitate him. This will make us compare ourselves with that person and feel that we must demand more of ourselves to reach their level and, thus, be socially validated like them.

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The consequences of excessive self-demand at work

As we said, dysfunctional self-demand at work can affect a person's physical and mental health. Having almost obsessive thoughts and behaviors about how tasks should be done is detrimental to the time, energy and health of the person presenting them.

Scientific research confirms this. Maladaptive perfectionism has been associated with higher rates of depressive and anxious symptomatology. This may be because perfectionism is often associated with high levels of neuroticism, which is It is related to high levels of anxiety, stress and "burnout" or burnt worker syndrome, in all types of Professions. Stress also causes various physical and physiological symptoms, such as insomnia, gastrointestinal problems, chronic fatigue and muscle tension.

But as if that were not enough, dysfunctional perfectionism in the workplace not only harms mental and physical health, but also implies worse job performance. In some cases, this is a direct consequence of anxiety, depression, and burnout. The reverse relationship also occurs, that symptoms of depression and anxiety arise because one feels that he is not good enough for his job by not fulfilling everything that has been proposed.

In addition, the high anxiety caused by excessive self-demand can lead us to inaction. Because one sets goals that are unattainable or that require a lot of time and effort to fulfill them, we end up paralyzed, unable to act because of the fear that the possibility of fail. This will mean that, in the end, we lose opportunities or do not take advantage of time efficiently, feeding our self-critical voice that tells us that we are not worth it and that we constantly fail.

It also happens that dysfunctional self-demand is "contagious". The fact that there is a worker with excessive perfectionism has repercussions in the work environment, creating a neurotic atmosphere in the place that will not only affect the performance and functionality of the neurotic worker itself, but will also impair the the rest.

In other words, while it's okay to want to excel and perform as close to perfect as possible, it's also worth noting that if this perfectionism becomes dysfunctional will bring consequences for the mental and physical health of the individual, in addition to poorer performance, which is just the opposite what is desired