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

Let's look at what causes us to sometimes set unrealistic goals at work.

Self-demanding is something fundamental in any field. It is necessary to be a little demanding with oneself if you want to grow as a person, both at work and in any important area of our lives.

However, there is a limit to everything. It is one thing to be self-demanding in the sense of being responsible, constant and striving to achieve what you set out to do, and quite another to be obsessively perfectionist, to ask more of yourself than you can and to make our work performance something that determines our satisfaction and self-esteem.

Maladaptive perfectionism, whether at work or anywhere else, is detrimental to our health, as well as being unproductive.. Let's see what are the causes of dysfunctional self-demand at work and its consequences.

The main causes of the dysfunctional self-demanding in the labor scope.

In the labor world a culture has been implanted in which it is very often had the idea that to look for the perfection is an admirable trait. From the highest levels of management to the most subordinate employees, more than a few workers set ever-higher standards for themselves in an attempt to achieve success. Many associate being a perfectionist and more scrupulous with performing better. However, to what extent does the pursuit of perfection in the workplace do more harm than good?

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

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

While doing everything possible to improve in the workplace is not inherently a bad thing, scientific research suggests that perfectionism could have a dark side and would be detrimental to the individual who exhibits 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 overly perfectionistic in the workplace brings problems and, moreover, results in poorer performanceIf we are too perfectionist in the workplace, it means that our self-demand is clearly dysfunctional. An individual presents high self-demanding when:

• Disregards his own limits, working more than he can.
• Imposes very high or unattainable goals.
• He/she turns his/her challenges into obligations.
• His work behavior is governed by a rigid self-discipline.
• Excessive foresight and planning and feels very guilty if he/she does not follow through.
• Goes to great lengths to achieve his goal despite suffering.
• Inability to delegate tasks.
• Fear of failure.
• Needs recognition.
• His self-esteem depends on the result obtained.
• Excessive focus on the result and not the process.
• Negativity bias with himself: he worries more about his failures than his achievements.
• High self-criticism
• Dichotomous thinking: things either go right or go wrong, there is no middle ground.
• Low frustration tolerance.
• Has a feeling of constant dissatisfaction.

This negative perfectionism makes the person raise the bar higher and higher, wanting to do his work or tasks well.wanting to do his work or tasks as close to perfection as possible, but having no control over it. Because of this, dysfunctional self-demand can be a great detriment to the mental and physical health of the subject, in addition to the fact that it also results in poorer job performance.

The origins of dysfunctional self-demand at work.

Being a multidimensional characteristic of our personality, self-demandingness can have different origins depending on its degree and particular experiences in our personal life.

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

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

Relationships have been established between having been subjected to a strict and harsh parental style and reach adulthood with excessive perfectionistic tendencies. It is common for people who have grown up in such strict environments to reach adulthood fearing that if they do not do things perfectly something bad will happen, as well as feeling feelings of shame and guilt.

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

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

The consequences of excessive self-demanding at work

As we were saying, dysfunctional self-demand at work can affect the physical and mental health of the person. Having almost obsessive thoughts and behaviors about how tasks should be done is detrimental to the time, energy and health of the person who presents 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 related to high levels of anxiety, stress and burnout in all types of professions. Stress also causes various physical and physiological symptoms, such as insomnia, Gastrointestinal problems, chronic fatigue and muscle tension.

As if that were not enough, dysfunctional perfectionism in the workplace not only harms mental and physical health, but also leads to poorer job performance. In some cases, this is a direct consequence of anxiety, depression and burnout syndrome. The inverse relationship also occurs, with symptoms of depression and anxiety arising because one feels that one is not good enough for one's job by not accomplishing all that one has set out to do.

In addition, the high anxiety caused by excessive self-demanding can lead to inaction. Because we set unattainable goals or goals that require a lot of time and effort to achieve, we end up paralyzed, unable to act because of the fear that causes us the possibility of failure. In the end, this will cause us to miss opportunities or fail to make efficient use of our time, feeding our self-critical voice that tells us that we are worthless and that we are constantly failing.

It also happens that dysfunctional self-demand is "contagious.". Having a worker with excessive perfectionism has repercussions in the work environment, creating a neurotic atmosphere in the workplace that will not only affect the performance and functionality of the neurotic worker him/herself, but will also harm others.

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