What advice would you give a coworker who is extremely self critical to the point that it affects their performance?

That’s probably not a thing that most people do. It indicates the possibility of psychological practices that are painful and possibly harmful. You can’t tell anyone stuff like this. They have to do it for themselves.

However, what you can do is tell the person how it affects you. I.e., “when you get so self-critical, you are useless for the rest of the day, and I have to do your work for you.” “As your boss, I would ask you to change this behavior. You are generally on top of your job, but this is a real problem. If you don’t fix it, you will not advance, and you may not be able to keep your job. Here’s the number of our employee assistance program.”

Or something of that ilk, depending on your relationship to the person, and on the availablility of employee assistance programs.

I think @daloon is right on the money. The level of sel-criticism that you describe is something likely to require professional help or a lot of rigorous personal work to fix.

Once approach you can take as his co-worker is to tell him how it affects you. “John, when you get so down on yourself for making a mistake, it hurts your productivity the rest of the day, and that affects everyone else’s work.”

About the only other thing you can try is this trick, which can help people with this problem: “One thing that helps me when I get upset with myself about an error is to imagine how I would feel if someone else did it. If someone else did, and I would think it was no big deal, then I make myself give myself the same grace.”

What does he actually do when this happens? Does he stop working? Does he demand attention and require being taken care of, so that other people’s work stops too? How often does this happen?

Of what magnitude are the mistakes? Five minutes late for a meeting? Gave wrong stats in a presentation? Lost a customer permanently?

And what is the boss’s reaction? Why is it up to you to do something about this person?

I can sort of understand how your co- worker feel because I am like him a lot.

I guess the best way to start is by complimenting the person ‘s work attitude. Point out the good attributes and appreciate what is he doing in terms of getting the work done nicely and perfectly. At the same time exert the need to control his behaviour as what daloon and marina has said. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes he might not know how to differentiate between making a small and serious mistake cause his mind is shut and wants to get things perfectly. Advise him. Tell him the mistakes cannot be undo but can be prevented in the future because he has seen it.

give him a hug
everyone needs a hug

or…a lightsaber
all boys like those don’t they?

Mellow out dude! Or hey, back off dude.

Your coworker could be what some social scientist call a maximizer.

From Wikipedia: a maximizer is like a perfectionist, someone who needs to be assured that their decision was the best that could be made. The way a maximizer knows for certain is to consider all the alternatives they can imagine. This creates a psychologically daunting task, which can become even more daunting as the number of options increases. The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less

Satisficing (a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice”) is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. A satisficing strategy may often be (near) optimal if the costs of the decision-making process itself, such as the cost of obtaining complete information, are considered in the outcome calculus. The word satisfice was coined by Herbert Simon.

Creating awareness about the problem can help maximizer turn into satisficers.

Gosh I am such a maximizer! who would have thought it!

@lynneblundell – Read Barry Schwartz’s book

http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005696

Actually, it was a Flutherite who recommended the book to me. It can help you to become a satisficer.