On Syracuse University Week: Being perfect under pressure is a difficult task.
Rachael Dailey Goodwin, assistant professor of management and Lender Center Research Affiliate, examines this through the lens of ballet.
Rachael Dailey Goodwin is an Assistant Professor of Management at Syracuse University. She completed a Ph.D. at the University of Utah and a research fellowship with the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University. She investigates issues of workplace injustice via power, morality, cognitive heuristics, and dehumanization while exploring attitudes towards perpetrators and victims of unethical behaviors. Much of her research aims to strengthen our understanding of the obstacles and conflicts women may encounter while striving towards leadership, including: moral biases related to sexual harassment; leader descriptions and questions that may be linked to female CEO dismissal; expectations of women to handle the detail-oriented work or the tough talk; the invisible mental and emotional load mothers carry at work. She also explores solutions to women’s workplace obstacles. For example, she has studied rehumanizing strategies to help navigate the pressure to be perfect; accounts that can attenuate power imbalances; how boards can avoid diminishing women’s sense of power (particularly in male-majority domains); and how to help female entrepreneurs navigate decisions to sell or scale. Her work has been shared in several media outlets and published in top research journal outlets including the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Organization Science.
Under Pressure to Be Perfect
Performance pressure is not inherently harmful. But when paired with dehumanizing environmental cues, our work shows it can become destructive. This study, coauthored by Lyndon Garett & Ali Block, focuses on the experience of perfectionism in professional ballet.
Dancers described shifting between maladaptive and healthier, adaptive perfectionism depending on workplace cues. For instance, some ballet dancers with harmful tendencies recounted how their companies discouraged questions and reminded them they were replaceable. Others spoke of experimenting with dangerous extremes—dancing through injuries, starving, or isolating themselves—in pursuit of an unattainable ideal.
Yet some described striving for perfection with self-compassion, embracing mistakes while maintaining high standards. These healthier mindsets were supported by work environments that encouraged agency, celebrated individuality, and embraced emotions and fallibility. In such contexts, dancers reported striving for excellence without self-destruction.
In short, all dancers felt pressure to perform, but those in companies that avoided four key dehumanizing cues—denial of agency, subjectivity, individuality, and fallibility—experienced more adaptive perfectionism and fewer breakdowns. The key takeaway: high performance does not require self-destruction. Pressure can coexist with self-care, and the healthiest performers might even outperform their maladaptively perfectionistic peers.
For anyone working in high-pressure fields—from investment banking, healthcare, academia, consulting, to elite sports—one takeaway is this: strive for excellence, but surround yourself with people who affirm your humanity.
Read More:
[Syracuse] – Under Pressure to Be Perfect: How Dehumanizing and Rehumanizing Social Cues Lead to Maladaptive and Adaptive Perfectionism in Professional Ballet
