The corporate performance word has been designed for us to focus on your weakness rather than leveraging and propelling our strengths. Have you ever wondered why?
Does it even matter why? What would happen if you shifted your perspective from weaknesses to only looking at your strengths?
This week I ran a workshop with several leaders on leveraging their strengths rather than looking at their weaknesses. It was a very productive day. We were able to look at an entirely different perspective for the team.
Rather than looking at the team as something to be fixed, we began asking questions about how do we evolve and make a bigger impact with what we do well already.
The appeal of weaknesses
Looking at weaknesses gives a false sense of why you are not reaching peak performance. Someone you respect gives you some feedback, “hey! you need to work on that.” After hearing a comment to work on your weakness there is a need to “fix” what has been broken. As humans, we like fixing things.
It’s easier for us to look at what has gone wrong rather than celebrate and innovate what is going right.
The difficulty with strengths
There are no limits with strengths – only milestones. If you are an expert at writing press releases and quarterly reports, what would be your next step? Would you leverage that strengths to grow and make a bigger impact? I ask these type of questions when I have a client take the strengthsfinder assessment.
It’s not easy to abstract from where you currently are and aim for a next level that you can’t even imagine yet.
How to start focusing on your strength
- If you don’t have the budget to take a strengthsfinder assessment then make your own.
- Make a list of things you feel enable you to do your best at what you do.
- Then ask some trusted colleagues what they feel are your best strengths. Make this a separate list.
- Combine the lists together and look at all the strengths that you have.
- Take a moment to acknowledge yourself and appreciate where you are.
- Select 1-2 of those strengths and consider where you could use them in a different context. For example, if you are awesome at writing press releases you might be able to expand that strength into particular industry style of press release. You could possibly build on the strength of writing and decide to take on a project that requires writing a feature article. Build and Stack.
Your turn
Do you focus on your strengths?
Or are you still working on improving your weaknesses?