You know, I’ve been wrestling with this for a good while now. This feeling, like maybe, just maybe, I’m a bit much for people. It’s not something you like to admit, right? But it’s been there, bubbling under the surface, especially at work.
I used to think I was just being thorough. That was my go-to word. When I got my hands on a task, I’d dive deep. Real deep. I’d pick apart every single detail. I’d question everything. ‘Is this really the best way?’ I’d ask, probably for the tenth time that day. I’d rewrite chunks of code someone else wrote because, in my head, it wasn’t ‘up to scratch’. I genuinely believed I was pushing for excellence, raising the bar. My bar, mostly.
And for a while, it kinda worked. Or so I thought. Projects got done, and my bits were usually pretty solid. But then I started noticing things. Little things at first. Like folks on the team would get real quiet when I started talking in meetings. Or they’d go to someone else with questions, even if I was supposed to be the lead on that part. My emails, probably packed with ‘suggestions’, likely went straight to the ‘read later, maybe’ folder. I just chalked it up to them not being as ‘passionate’ or ‘committed’. Yeah, I know. Not my best look.
The Big Wallop
The real wake-up call, the moment I couldn’t ignore it anymore, came with the ‘Phoenix Project’. Man, I poured everything into that one. My baby. I was on everyone’s case, double-checking, triple-checking, demanding perfection at every turn. I thought I was steering the ship towards greatness. Turns out, I was mostly just grinding the gears and stressing everyone out, including myself. We missed a critical deadline, a big one. And the feedback afterwards wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t about the technical quality of my individual contributions; those were fine. It was about me, my approach, how I made the team feel, how I’d inadvertently become a bottleneck.
My manager, bless her for her patience, sat me down. She didn’t yell. She just laid it out. She said something like, ‘Your standards are sky-high, and that can be a strength. But when you impose them so relentlessly, without bringing people along, it crushes morale. People are afraid to make mistakes around you, afraid to even try new things.’ Ouch. That hit hard. Afraid. I didn’t want to be the guy people were afraid of.
Trying to Dial it Down (A Bit)
So, I had to do some serious thinking. It wasn’t about lowering my standards, not really. It was about how I applied them, how I communicated. I started trying a few things, real conscious effort, mind you:
- First off, I forced myself to shut up more in meetings. Seriously. Listen first. Count to ten before jumping in.
- I started asking questions differently. Instead of ‘Why didn’t you do X?’, I’d try, ‘What was the thinking behind doing Y? Help me understand.’ Big difference, apparently.
- I tried to pick my battles. Does this tiny thing really matter in the grand scheme, or am I just trying to be ‘right’? That was a tough one.
- And probably the hardest part: learning to trust my team more. Letting go. Accepting that ‘good enough’ is sometimes, actually, good enough, especially if it means the team is happier and more productive.
It’s still a work in progress, let me tell you. My gut reaction is still to dive in and ‘fix’ everything. Some days I slip up. I’ll catch myself being that intense guy again, and I have to consciously pull back. It’s like training a muscle, I guess. It doesn’t happen overnight.
So, am I still ‘too much’? Maybe. Probably a little. But I’m more aware of it now. And I’m trying to use that intensity for good, to energize and support, rather than overwhelm. It’s a tricky balance, this whole ‘being human at work’ thing, isn’t it? But hey, at least I’m not pretending it’s everyone else’s fault anymore. Most of the time, anyway.
