I don’t know if I’m a very good boss.  I’m a bit of a control freak, admittedly, and while I don’t really think others are incapable of handling something, I do often feel it’s easier to do it myself than to spend time explaining something that may not be done “right” the first time.  And when I do take the time to explain something that needs to be done, if it’s not done right the first time, I get a little bent — because I could have done it myself and not had to repeat myself.  This is not to say I’m not open to questions and dialog and suggestions, I totally am.  Input is totally great, but in general, I’m on a schedule and I need stuff done at the same quality level as if I were doing it myself.   Period.

Doesn’t that sound like every boss you’ve ever hated?  When I remove myself from it and look at it as an observer, I feel like now, if I were in a traditional office, I’d be that boss that no one invites to anything.  Except… I’m usually the girl that people do invite to things, that coworkers and colleagues want to have around. It occured to me the other night that, now that I’m my own boss and I hire people to do things for me,  I’m totally Chandler when he gets his promotion in Friends.

“Perfectionist” ranks up there with “she’s got a great personality” in terms of desirability, and it makes people think you’re an overbearing pain in the ass, but without perfectionists in this world, the Earth would be (and sometimes is) one giant orb of mediocrity. It drives me crazy when the opportunity for greatness presents itself and it’s met with “good enough”.  Why be good enough when it can be great?

Of course, we’re only human and sometimes things won’t be perfect. And I know I am imperfect, despite my many creative efforts to blind you all with my glorious gloriousness.  (*clap clap*  Look over here!  Awesomeness!  Shiny!)  I don’t think that means I should stop trying to excel, to go beyond and to achieve something greater than was there before.

But it can be… well, a little exhausting.

Along with accepting responsibility for own my quirks and shortcomings, I blame my detail-oriented, perfection-seeking, boss-man-type tendencies on the former Boss Men in my own life.

While I loved my dad very much, I wouldn’t exactly call him a mentor per se… but he’s the one who may have started the perfectionist movement in my life, at least when it comes to my brain.  (Body image is an entirely different can of worms.)  I was not permitted to get anything less than a B on my report card in school and even then, those were to be sparing.  All A’s is the goal of every parent, but when I didn’t excel (like in math, for instance), I got a lecture about what “C” stands for (it’s “cruddy” and/or “crappy” in case you didn’t get the memo).  When I would argue that “C” stood for ‘average’, my dad would say “What does ‘A’ stand for?” and I’d sigh and say, “Superior.” and he would reply without missing a beat, “So, is my daughter average or is she superior?”

You can’t exactly tell your father, “Dude, when it comes to math, I’m average. Embrace the reality.”

I’ve had two ‘official’ mentors in my life, aside from the obvious, though short-lived apprenticeships with my mom and my grandmother — my high school choir director and my former creative director. And while I may not have known it at the time — perhaps even resented them at the time — I value and am thankful for just about every anal retentive tendency they instilled in me.

My high school choir director was (still is, I’m sure) a really great man.   Some other kids didn’t like him or thought he was too hard on us… but overall, I really liked him, even though it was sometimes uncool to admit. He recognized talent in me, he nurtured my abilities and he gave me positive affirmations about my music where I had little to none at home. He provided me opportunities to grow as a singer, to recognize that I have a gift and sometimes, he made me cry and want to throw sheet music at him because he pushed me so hard.  At the time, I thought he had it out for me, but by graduation, I realized that he saw something in me that made him want to make me a better singer, a better performer and perhaps by simple consequence, a better person.

A little less than a decade later I was fortunate enough to meet my former creative director at the haircare company I used to work for. I was churning out Powerpoint presentations for the salon division and basically doing administrative work, which while I was really good at it and loved my job, I longed to be doing something more creative. I’d been dabbling in web design, building my own sites and I started bringing that creative panache to my Powerpoint work.  I think I can safely say that I had some pretty rockin’ Powerpoints… full graphics, lots of color, they didn’t really resemble anything remotely Powerpoint at that time and the creative director of the graphics department noticed.  We became friends and when he left the company we kept in touch.

When I was laid off less than a year later, I contacted him and he worked really hard to get me a job as a freelancer in his new department and kind of threw me into the deep end. I had little to no experience in Photoshop, had a gentle handle on basic HTML and couldn’t use a bezier tool to save my life.  But he kept throwing work at me and giving me more responsibility and even though I wanted to take that one pixel he wanted moved and shove it up his ass sometimes, his need for perfection rubbed off.  Within 2 years, I left the company and here I am, doing what I do.

He told me once that when he met me, he knew I had ‘star power’ (I think that was the term he used).  He said he knew I would be something amazing, do incredible things and otherwise make something wonderful of myself.  He knew, even when I didn’t.

Both of these men… well, Dad included, all of these men, knew that I was capable of so much more than just ‘good enough’. And their standards were very high, so they made mine high.  And now… now I admit, I kind of expect that level greatness from other people, especially when they work for me.  It’s not always fair to do that, I realize, not everyone can handle that kind of stress — even I can’t.

And while I’m grateful for the lessons my mentors have instilled in me, sometimes I feel like it makes me not very likable in the boss department, especially as a woman. A man can demand perfection and that makes them “tough” and “ballsy” and “ambitious”.  As a woman, it can make me a “bitch” and “difficult” and “high maintenance”.  I like to be likable, I really do — I like it so much it conflicts with my need to be perfect and then?  Then I need a cocktail. Or three.

I was told something so brilliant the other night that it made me rethink a lot of things. A friend told me it’s ok to piss people off once in a while.  I can’t control how someone else feels, I can only control how I react to it.  I knew this, but something about the way she said it or the timing at which she said it, but suddenly, it clicked.  I worked really hard to get where I am in my life — not just professionally, but emotionally and even physically.  And I didn’t get here by always being liked, though did try.  And I was far from perfect.  So, so far. Sometimes I make  mistakes and sometimes I make bad choices and my decision to learn from those mistakes and choices is where I grow  and not only accept my imperfections, but allow myself to shine in ways I didn’t know I could.  And there’s perfection in that, I think.

I didn’t have to like my mentors, I just had to listen to them, to learn from them.  And while I didn’t always like them at the time, I did always respect them.  So, that’s one more thing they’ve taught me about being a boss — you don’t have to like me, but if you work for me you have to respect me. And if you don’t, that’s ok because I respect me and you can be replaced.

So sayeth Boss Man Bing.