Seeking Excellence, Not Perfection - Why This Title?

As a part of my job I have the opportunity to interview dozens of candidates for employment each year.  This past March I was in one such interview and a candidate, whose name I cannot remember (see note below), spoke very eloquently about how managers in our line of work need to seek excellence, not perfection from ourselves and the staff who work for us.  This really grabbed me at the time and has been a concept I have been trying to promote since for myself and others.  I would like to seek excellence as a student, parent, professional, friend, son, partner, neighbor, and citizen, but I am not perfect and will make mistakes in all of those areas.  I think it is important to be aspirational and that is why I like the word choice of excellence, but I also think true happiness involves showing yourself and others a great deal of grace for the mistakes that are certain to be made.  As for need to be perfect, Brene Brown notes in The Gifts of Imperfection:

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

By striving to be at our best by seeking excellence while being realistic about our likely failures and mistakes I believe we have the greatest opportunity to be both happy and successful.  So, that is where the title of this Blog comes from.

Note Below - It is very important to me that I give credit to other's ideas, words, and work when I can.  I have had weak moments in my younger years where I have used someone's material as my own in order to show off (usually the stealing of a good joke), but I believe I am mostly beyond that now.  Unfortunately, my memory is awful.  So, I often forget who said what or who actually came up with the remarkable ideas around me.  As a result, I often credit teams over individuals because I simply cannot remember who fostered the key ideas.  In this case, the idea to seek excellence, not perfection belongs to a candidate for employment that I cannot remember.  I hope she will accept this post as part of the credit she deserves and for all I know she passed it on during the interview after hearing it from someone else who did not receive the credit they deserved.  Such is life.