How Identity Has Influenced a Founder and CEO at Konnekted Coworking's Career
Nickolaus's tightly wound, high-achieving personality, while driving success, initially led to perfectionism and missed deadlines due to a relentless pursuit of "perfect," requiring a conscious effort to prioritize "getting things done well" over unattainable perfection. This self-awareness, coupled with understanding their outspoken nature, has been crucial for navigating professional relationships, learning to calibrate communication styles and avoid past mistakes like "going off on managers."
Perfectionism, Stress Management, Communication, Self-Awareness, Leadership
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Nickolaus Violin
Founder & CEO
Konnekted Coworking
Cal State Northridge, 2017
UCAL Anderson | MBA
Marketing
Hospitality, Restaurants & Events, Real Estate
Entrepreneurship and Business Owner
Honors Student, Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School
Video Highlights
1. Understanding your personality type is crucial for navigating your career and interacting with others effectively. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses allows you to adapt your communication style and approach to different situations.
2. Striving for perfection can be detrimental; learning to balance perfectionism with the need to meet deadlines and produce acceptable work is key to career success.
3. Self-awareness is a continuous process. Recognizing personal flaws, like being tightly wound or outspoken, and actively working to mitigate their negative impacts contributes significantly to professional growth.
Transcript
As someone who identifies as a tightly wound, high-achieving type, how has that impacted how you've navigated your career?
It's made me more mindful of my perfectionism. Getting things done well is more important than getting something perfect, because perfect doesn't really exist. I always had this vision that I had to make it perfect, and that's how I approached everything for school. It drove me crazy and made me anxious.
It's part of why I'm a tightly wound, Type A person because I want everything to be just how I envision it. I didn't understand that sometimes that's not possible. Training myself that it's just not possible has helped me accomplish more and work on that. Recognizing this has helped me get through difficulties, like not meeting a deadline because I was trying to make it perfect.
Getting it done, even acceptably, is more important than striving for perfection and not finishing. Of course, you want to get more than acceptable; you want good, at least good, great. It's helped me understand that I need to accept this is the type of person I am.
I'm also Type A, which means I'm outspoken. This goes back to knowing when to say the right thing at the right time. Understanding my personality type has been huge in navigating my career. It's gotten me in trouble more than once, not just at a professional level. I've gone off on managers when I worked in restaurants.
It doesn't make it okay, and I regretted it. Understanding my personality type and how I handle situations is very important when interacting with superiors or subordinates. You need to understand your personality type to address others. If you don't know what kind of person you are, you won't realize how you're talking to others.
You might use a tone that is too harsh or not harsh enough in a certain situation. Really understanding that I am that person, wound tight and uptight, is important. It's hard for me to relax because I just want to work and get things right. I want to finish, then I can relax, and that's what makes me wound so tight.
When I used to go camping as a kid, my dad would say, "You get everything set up, then you can enjoy the camping trip." That's how my whole life is. I cook dinner and clean as I cook. I don't do it very often, but I'll finish and start straightening everything up before I even eat the meal because it just gets me.
Having to address that has been very helpful. It's helped me realize, "Okay, chill out for a second." I'm still pretty tightly wound and very Type A, but it's made me more aware of it. Understanding and seeing the detriment it's caused me has definitely helped me dial it back a little.