Overpreparing holds back your career, ladies: Author Ellen Connelly Taaffe guest posts

In this insightful guest post, Ellen Connelly Taaffe explores a phenomenon she terms the “mirrored door”—a moment when women hesitate to seize opportunities due to an internalized sense of unreadiness or unworthiness. Taaffe is a seasoned leader and author of The Mirrored Door: Break Through the Hidden Barrier that Locks Successful Women in Place. Below, Ellen identifies and unpacks a strategy for success she calls “preparing to perfection” and offers practical advice on embracing growth rather than overpreparing to be unattainably perfect.

Overpreparing is never going to help you grow, and here’s why (Guest post)

It starts early. Many girls adapt well to school, with its clear-cut rules, their ability to get the gold star from the teacher if they prepare—and the knowledge of what will be on the test. The measures of success are clearly defined. Girls frequently excel in school, as can be seen by young women’s academic achievements. But what happens when we try to excel without a rubric of what will be on the test, and all that preparation time gets limited? We learn too late that what gets rewarded changes between school and the workplace.

Frequently, we face what I call the mirrored door, that moment when we see an opportunity and reflect inward, thinking we aren’t ready or worthy to move forward.  We find ourselves hesitating due to a distorted view instead of moving into action where all the growth can be found.

In my book, The Mirrored Door: Break Through the Hidden Barrier that Locks Successful Women in Place, I identified five strategies that can drive success yet unintentionally become perilous to our careers, including preparing to perfection.

What is ‘preparing to perfection,’ and how can it hurt your career?

When we are preparing to perfection, we strive for the right answers, 100 percent certainty, and always being the best. We deliver excellence repeatedly through our investment in hours of preparation to make it happen. It fuels our reputation and engagement in the work. It provides validation from others. We compare ourselves to others, and when healthy, this leads to continuous improvement.

When it becomes habitual or the only way we know how to act, we may struggle to take risks and find it challenging to operate with incomplete information from less prep time and/or to know when something is good enough. When we are preparing to perfection, we fool ourselves into thinking that we can win a never-ending battle. But the fight isn’t sustainable; more importantly, it’s exhausting and prevents us from moving forward with uncertainty and learning from mistakes, which is key to our growth as leaders.

Those who like to prepare relish the opportunity because it is squarely in their control. When we are well prepared, we’ve got the answers. Clients, colleagues, and senior leaders begin to count on us for them, knowing we’ve done the work. It’s a major success factor, especially early in our careers, when getting things done well and assessing all the drivers, derailers, and details of a work product matter. We are acknowledged, appreciated, and asked again and again to participate in others’ workstreams. We soon learn to identify as the person who knows their stuff. We continue to take on more. We are respected as a doer, expert, project leader. We become successful within a team or organization.

When we always depend on hours of preparation, we don’t learn how to move forward with partial information and the success or failure that results. The well-intentioned, over-prepared woman can easily get tagged as great to have on the team but not to lead it. Worse yet, our high standards may make us overly critical of those we are leading and developing. Instead of coaching others to excel, we may fall prey to micromanagement, another perilous reputation.

You are not alone in overpreparing, and you can open the mirrored door

If you see yourself in any part of the preparing to perfection strategy, you are not alone. Many successful women leaders have or continue to face this and find the courage to open the mirrored door. Years of preparing to perfection can build into a feeling that enough is enough. When you reflect on your quest for perfection and your purpose and goals, you will likely see that something’s got to give. Let’s be sure that isn’t your career, your well-being, or the major contribution you make to your work and family.

Being prepared to perfection is more likely to become perilous when our roles expand and grow. We may take on more responsibility in our company or at home and approach it with the same level of effort that has worked before. So frequently, more is added, and nothing is taken away. This calls us to operate more efficiently or take things off the list. This is a difficult part of the role transition we are experiencing. As we advance in our careers, we have to let go of some of the preparation that secured perfection for us in the past. We need to reframe our roles and the standards to which we deliver, balancing our own values and needs with what is most critically important in each role.

From school to thriving career

I recommend that you talk to your boss about your deliverables. Work with them to identify the high-stakes work and where you can deliver more efficiently or delegate. I tell my clients and students: identify the As, Bs, and Cs. Negotiate how many As you can realistically handle with the excellence required, along with the level of completion of the Bs and Cs. This kind of conversation can help you create shared expectations of the work needed.

You are no longer in school striving for a 4.0. It’s time to focus the effort where it is most needed and match the remaining projects to the appropriate level of rigor. You may be thinking, Everything is treated like an A in my workplace. If so, that calls for a different conversation. As when you matched your course load to difficult content or how hard a semester would be, it’s critical to set yourself up for success through courageous conversations that make for a sustainable work life.

About author Ellen Connelly Taaffe

Ellen Connelly Taaffe is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Kellogg School of Management, where she teaches Personal Leadership Insights and is the Director of Women’s Leadership Program. She spent more than two decades as a Fortune 500 executive and today runs a leadership advisory consulting, speaking, and coaching business. Her new book, The Mirrored Door: Break Through the Hidden Barrier that Locks Successful Women in Place won the 2023 NYC Big Book Award for Women’s Issues and was named an Editor’s Pick by Publishers Weekly.

As you reflect on your own journey, do you find yourself leaning towards being overprepared? Share your thoughts and experiences below, and let’s open a conversation about breaking through the mirrored door to success.