Leadership Research Summary:
- Despite the growing interest in perfectionism and its many facets, there is a lack of research on this phenomenon in the context of leadership. Attending to this deficit, the present study is the first to investigate the relationship between the three facets of perfectionism (self-oriented, socially prescribed, and other-oriented perfectionism) and three types of self-rated leadership behavior.
- In Study 1 (N= 182), leaders’ perfectionism and its association to their organizational, goal-oriented leadership behavior—self-rated as transactional (management by exception) and transformational leadership—is explored. In Study 2 (N = 185), the relationship of leaders’ perfectionism to their servant leadership as a people-centered leadership behavior is investigated.
- In line with the perfectionism social disconnection model (PSDM), we assume other-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism to be positively related to management by exception (i.e., monitoring behavior) and negatively related to transformational and servant leadership, whereas the opposite pattern is primarily predicted for self-oriented perfectionism.
- The findings in Study 1 reveal a negative relationship between leaders’ self-oriented perfectionism as well as positive relationships to their other-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism in management by exception, while no substantial correlations with transformational leadership have emerged.
- In Study 2, a negative association between other-oriented perfectionism and the forgiveness dimension of servant leadership is revealed, indicating a possible barrier to building interpersonal relationships of acceptance and trust. Additionally, self-oriented perfectionism has been proven to be a rather favorable trait in servant leadership
Leadership Research Findings:
- The research underscores that perfectionism in leaders is a topic worthy of further exploration. From the view of practitioners, it is of seemingly high relevance, as coaching strategies have been discussed to enable perfectionistic leaders to overcome avoidance of leadership responsibilities (Ellam-Dyson and Palmer, 2010). However, evidence-based workplace interventions are still missing. To date, the only approaches that exist are outside of the work domain. Meta-analytic evidence in clinical samples indicates that, in particular, self-oriented perfectionism can be substantially reduced in interventions, while only a medium-sized effect has been found for change in socially prescribed perfectionism (Lloyd et al., 2015). Additionally, some effects for the non-clinical population have been presented (Kearns et al., 2007).
- Yet, as underscored in our research, there are positive consequences of self-oriented leaders’ perfectionism on people-centered leadership that would be highly valued in organizations; thus, calling simply for a reduction of perfectionism may fall short. Notably, a recent study has found that if employees could choose a colleague to work with, then the selected person would not be a perfectionist at all because of the potentially negative consequences on team climate (Kleszewski and Otto, 2020).
- Whether subordinates would also prefer non-perfectionistic leaders due to unrealistically high expectations is only speculation. Recent research at least linked leader perfectionism with leaders’ abusive behavior (Guo et al., 2020). Accordingly, Ocampo et al. (2020) demand that scholars should start undertaking empirical tests of workplace interventions to enhance the adaptive consequences of perfectionism or mitigate its maladaptive consequences.
- Linking the stated findings on perfectionism to leadership exposes the importance of acquiring a deeper insight into how perfectionistic leaders shape the work environment of their subordinates and how they treat said subordinates. Based on our findings, if leaders are other-oriented or socially prescribed perfectionists, then they seem to act in a more controlling and less forgiving manner.
- However, the question remains: do such leaders eventually make their departments more productive and increase their organization’s success, or are they only likely to overwork their subordinates or themselves? Researchers have provided the first evidence that various facets of perfectionism in leaders are associated with various types of leadership behavior, with aims that these findings stimulate more research in this fruitful domain.