You're Not a Perfectionist, Rigid, or Too Negative
Unpacking misconceptions that follow high achievers. Here's what they mean and how to channel those behaviors productively.
Welcome to Reframed by Ashley Rudolph. One idea, every week, that changes how you see your career.
Last week my friend Sammy, Senior Director of Accounting Operations, shared advice on how to effectively work with the C-suite. We basically peeled back the layers on becoming the person that c-level leaders want to meet with every week.
PS - There’s a special Reframed update at the end of this newsletter :)
One conversation made me stop apologizing for getting frustrated at work. Here’s what changed and why it’s effective.
I was frustrated yesterday, so I found myself about to click “cancel” on my morning yoga class. But instead of giving in, I went. My Sunday instructor is the perfect kind of crazy, insisting that she has to kill us so that we can earn our corpse pose (Shavasana).
I’m glad she did.
Somewhere in Shavasana, I thought about one of the best pieces of advice I ever received at work.
Early in my leadership journey, I was thrust into a tense situation with an unhappy executive. Every instinct told me to fight for my life. I went into full on defense mode — over-explaining, getting snippy, digging in. After I came up for air, I was embarrassed. My 1:1 was the next day and I walked in ready to get lectured.
That’s not what happened.
I started the meeting by apologizing before my manager could say a word. I almost fell out of my chair when I realized he wasn’t angry about my little shenanigans the day before. He told me my reaction was a sign that I cared and that caring was a good thing.
He was right.
And I don’t think he realized how much those words meant, because I finally felt seen. “Defensive,” “combative,” and “emotional” were all labels that could’ve easily been lobbed at me. It’s not lost on me that they often are, especially at women that look like me.
But he didn’t go there.
Btw - women are roughly 11 times more likely than men to be labeled “abrasive,” seven times more likely to be called “opinionated,” and twice as likely to be described as “unlikeable”.
He saw what was underneath: a desire to do great work. He then challenged me to channel that energy differently in the future, to have a conversation instead of firing off emails. Not because that was the “right” way, but because he trusted me to care as much about the solution as I did about the problem.
I’ve repeated that advice more times than I can count throughout my career (and I still do) because it’s so relevant for high achievers. Hearing those words that day made me understand myself, it helped me give myself grace, and it helped me stop being ashamed when I felt frustrated about work.
He changed everything for me, in just two sentences.
THE RESEARCH
What Personality Research Reveals About High Achievers
Frustration at work gets misread all the time. Perfectionism. Rigidity. Being high-strung. If you’ve been called any of those things, you probably treat them like a character flaw — something to fix, to manage, to hide.
But in my experience, the more accurate label for high achievers is simpler: you care.
You care about the work, about quality, about the people around you. And when you think about it that way, the challenge becomes learning what to do with your intensity.
Most workplaces solve for the wrong problem, leaders wait for bad behavior to surface before addressing it. By then, you’re already under stress, already running hot, already getting told to “stay positive.” Toxic positivity fills the gap that honest conversations and candid feedback should occupy. It doesn’t help anyone.
I recently started using a personality diagnostic called Deeper Signals with my clients. It’s built on the Five Factor Model (the most scientifically validated framework for understanding personality at work) and was developed using data from over 150,000 working adults across 180 countries. The assessment identifies your core drivers and, more importantly, your risks: what happens to those drivers when you’re under pressure.
Unsurprisingly, most of my clients share the following core drivers: Disciplined, Driven, Passionate. These are the kinds of traits that build great careers. But what I love the most about Deeper Signals is that the assessment also names the blind spots associated with those strengths. When under pressure, someone with the Disciplined core driver has a high risk of seeming Rigid. And someone with a Passionate core driver under pressure? They run the risk of seeming Intense.
When high achievers are under pressure, their strengths show up as non-productive workplace behaviors.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of organizational psychology at Columbia and UCL and one of the tool's founders, describes personality as "a set of default settings rather than an immutable operating system." I agree. The times you’re uncharacteristically too emotional, too rigid, too intense? They’re really just expressions of your core drivers under stress. The way to solve that isn’t pretending to be zen all the time or by aiming to never get upset or frustrated at work, it’s knowing how to channel those feelings differently.
That's exactly what my manager was telling me in that 1:1 all those years ago. And it's what made the difference for me.
THE FRAMEWORK
How To Handle 3 Scenarios Where You Might Be Tempted to Be Rigid, Frustrated, or Intense
The advice my manager gave me that day didn't come with a manual. He gave me the reframe (your frustration is a sign you care) and trusted me to figure out the rest. What I've learned since then, through years of coaching high achievers through their own versions of that moment, is that developing self awareness and breaking your old patterns is the hard part. So I wanted to share three situations where frustration tends to show up at work and the productive and nonproductive ways to handle each.
Scenario 1: Your manager gives you zero feedback
If you’re in a situation where your manager doesn’t give you feedback, it can leave you wondering whether you’re on the right track or completely off it.
The nonproductive response: This situation makes it tempting to fill the silence with stories you've made up. You assume no news is bad news. You tell yourself they're too busy, too passive, or that they don't support you. Before you know it, you're not focused on solving anything. You're just focused on your needs not getting met. The stories feed your anxiety slowly and eat away at your confidence over time. Your manager becomes the problem that you fixate on.
The productive response: Channel that frustration into solving the actual problem, which is: how do I get feedback? You want to make the ask small enough so that your manager can actually answer it. Stay away from broad questions like "how do you think I'm doing?". Questions like that are too open ended, too loaded, too easy to deflect with "you're doing great." Instead try the “2 and 2 approach”. Say something like: “I’ve been here two months and I feel good about the work I’m doing. I’d love to get your perspective on two things I’m doing well and two areas I should stay focused on.”
Two and two. That’s it. Specific enough to get real answers. The use of “focus on” is purposeful, particularly if you have a manager that shies away from giving direct feedback. “Focus” is approachable enough that even the most passive manager can respond.
Remember: you don’t need a performance review to get feedback, nor should you wait an entire year to know how you’re doing! You just need to ask for it in a way that makes it easy to give.
Scenario 2: You’re handed an ambiguous project with no clear direction
There will likely be times when your manager drops something on your desk unexpectedly, a big presentation, a market entry strategy, a new initiative and the instructions are essentially: figure it out. There’s no framework. No guardrails. Just the assignment and the expectation that you’ll deliver.
The nonproductive response: The problem you're actually trying to solve is the ambiguity itself. Your instinct is to get clear, so you ask for more direction. It feels responsible. Conscientious even. But I need to be honest with you, sometimes ambiguity isn’t an accident. At your level, the ability to exercise judgment in unclear situations IS your job. Asking for a detailed roadmap can backfire against you and signal you’re not quite operating at a senior leadership level yet.
The productive response: Accept the ambiguity and solve the real problem — delivering on the ask. Use your judgment, put together a first draft, and give yourself time to gather feedback. Then share it: “I put the market entry plan together. I’d love to walk you through my thinking and get feedback before presenting to the leadership team.”
Scenario 3: You’re frustrated with how a leader operates
Maybe they’re scattered. Maybe they’re exacting to the point of being utterly exhausting. Maybe they make decisions in ways that feel arbitrary, slow, or political. Whatever the flavor, you’ve decided they’re doing it wrong and you’re spending your energy being frustrated about it.
The nonproductive response: The problem you're trying to solve is their leadership style, as if getting them to operate differently is the goal. Oop! Been there, it’s tempting. The problem here is that you assume your way is right because it works for you. So you keep running your process, communicating your way, operating on your timeline, and waiting for them to come around. They won't. And the friction you're creating is hurting you more than them.
The productive response: The real problem to solve is building a productive working relationship. Get curious about what they actually need instead of what you think they should want. What does this leader care most about? What makes them trust someone? What do they need from you to feel confident in the work? The answers become your roadmap. Not for becoming someone you're not, but for building enough relationship capital to actually influence how things get done.
The leaders who navigate difficult personalities best prioritize relationships over being right and then use that relationship to move things in the right direction.
Looking back, that manager gave me more than grace that day; he handed me a playbook.
He didn’t just help me understand myself, he was also signaling something else: that he expected me to solve problems, not just defend myself. To have an impact, not just opinions and criticism. It seems small but it’s the difference between being seen as reactive and someone who’s seen as a leader.
He gave me control over my reputation and how I showed up with my peers and execs.
If you care that something went wrong or that you were misunderstood, I’d bet money that you’re also equally as invested in caring about the solution too. Channel your care productively.
Good luck!
Ashley
P.S.
What’s a label you’ve been given at work that you’re ready to change?
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