Dr. Cara argues that perfectionism in leaders reduces team engagement and performance and that practicing "grace"—high standards paired with human understanding—creates psychological safety and capacity for learning. She cites research claiming perfectionist leadership increases disengagement by 23% while grace-based leadership correlates with 31% higher team performance, and references Google’s "Project Aerosol" as evidence that psychological safety drives high-performing teams. Practically, she offers the RPR pattern (Receive—look for whole effort; Probe—ask about intent/constraints; Respond—coach, not correct), the pre-feedback pause, a short phrase bank to use in feedback, and the "highlighter" technique to mark strengths before corrections. She closes with a challenge to practice grace and a teaser about handling grace under pressure.
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23% (per the spoken citation in the video).
31% (per the spoken citation in the video).
Created July 14, 2025; last edited November 21, 2025.
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If perfectionism burned calories, most leaders I know would have six packs. Instead they have burnout, exhausted team, and the haunting feeling that nothing is ever quite Good enough. I'm Dr. Cara, and if you're exhausted from rewriting, rethinking and redoing everything to make sure it's just right, this episode is your intervention. Perfectionism isn't a leadership flex, it's a silent performance killer. And grace is your escape route. So what is grace in leadership? Here's how I define it. Grace is the ability to hold people, including yourself, with high standards and human understanding at the same time. It's not softness, it's strength with compassion. It's what allows your team to try, fail and grow without fear. You've got 13 tabs open, three fires burning, and someone just turned in a deck that's 85% solid. But not how you would do it. So you stay up until midnight redoing it because it's faster than explaining, right? That, my friends, is the perfection loop. And it doesn't just rob your time, it slowly trains your team to stop trying because it teaches them that their thinking isn't good enough. The Academy of Management journal published research showing that perfectionist leadership doesn't just reduce and innovation, it actually increases disengagement by 23% because team members feel their contributions don't matter. Here's what's fascinating. The same study found that leaders who practice what they called grace based excellence saw 31% higher team performance. Here's the paradox. Grace doesn't lower standards, it creates capacity. When you lead with grace, you give your team psychological space to learn. You replace fear based perfection with curiosity driven improvement. You make excellence achievable instead of paralyzing. When I stopped editing my team's every document and started asking, what do you see working here? Their ownership skyrocketed and so did their performance. After studying hundreds of teams, Google's Project Aerosol found psychological safety, not intelligence or strategy, is the number one driver of high performing teams and grace and is the key to creating psychological safety without sacrificing standards. Many leaders struggle with recognizing when grace is needed. Your brain will tell you that your perfectionist impulses are just maintaining quality. I want to give you some specific examples that it is time to shift into grace mode. Grace is needed most when someone makes a mistake, when timelines slip, when pressure rises, when feedback is necessary. But trust is fragile. If your brain thinks it'd be faster just to do it myself, that is your red flag to pause and apply grace. Listen, I totally get the thought feels logical and sometimes it's even true in the short term. But every time you choose speed over development, you're making a withdrawal from your team's confidence account. Instead of this isn't what I asked for. Try walk me through your approach. I want to understand your thought process. You can use RPR to embody grace on the spot. Receive see the whole effort, not just the flaw. When someone brings you work that isn't quite what you envisioned, your first instinct is to probably zero in on what's missing or what's wrong. Grace based receiving means consciously looking for the whole effort first. For example, I can see how much thought went into this. You acknowledge the human effort behind the work before you address the work itself. It immediately shifts the conversation from judgment to to collaboration. Percy asked what were they trying to achieve? Where's the logic in their approach? What constraints or information might have influenced their decisions that I'm not seeing? I learned to reframe my perception from they didn't follow the process to they found a different path to the same destination. Sometimes their path was actually better than mine. I would have missed it if I had jumped straight to the corrections. Respond coach. Don't correct, invite. Don't impose your response. Here is where grace becomes tangible. Instead of leading with what's wrong, lead with what is working. This work is strong. I'm curious about one area and would like to explore together how we might strengthen the narrative to make this even more impactful. Notice the language. Want to explore together how we might strengthen to make this even more impactful. This positions you as a partner in improvement rather than a judge of inadequacy. Here's your challenge for this week. I want you to try this with the next piece of work someone brings you that isn't quite what you expected. The pre feedback pause. Before you get feedback, ask yourself this question. Am I improving this because it's genuinely wrong or because it's not? I will do it if it's the second. That's your cue to shift into grace mode. I'm going to share some specific phrases to support you in practicing grace. Practice these exact phrases this week. Tell me about your process. I want to understand your thinking. I see where you're going with this. Let's explore how we can elevate it together. This show's strong and give them a specific strength. I'm curious about one area where we might add even more impact. What challenges did you encounter that I should know about? Was there anything that got in your way. Grace often gets tested when deadlines loom, stakes are high, and when there's genuine pressure for excellence. This is when most leaders abandon grace and revert to control. But this is exactly where grace becomes most powerful. Trust me, I know. When I returned a draft with more red ink than white space, I thought I was helping. Instead, I was silencing the very people I had hired for their thinking. What fixed it wasn't a redo, it was an apology and a recommitment to Grace. The moment I dropped the red pen and picked up the highlighter, everything shifted. I started using the highlighter technique. Literally. Put down the red pen and pick up a highlighter for every correction you want to make. First, highlight something that is working. This goes beyond feedback. It helps train your brain to see the strengths before the gaps. On Wednesday, we will take this further because grace is easy in theory, but what about when there's pressure, conflict or failure? We'll cover how to practice Grace under fire what to say when you're frustrated but still want to lead well. Real world crisis examples where grace turned tension into trust Leadership isn't about flawless execution. It's about growth with integrity and grace is what makes that possible. If this resonated with you, subscribe and share this with a leader who needs permission to put the red pen down and tell me in the comments. What's one place that you're going to leave with Grace this week? I'll see you on Wednesday when we explore grace under pressure. Until then, connect to yourself so you can expand for those you lead. And trust me, your team will notice the difference.
