Using Our Strengths in Balance

In our work, we increasingly hear organisations talking about helping their employees use their strengths more often to achieve a motivated, high performing workforce. This is encouraging and suggests a significant shift in mindset from a deficit or weakness based one to a more strengths-based one. However, the prescription is incomplete. Simply applying strengths more often may result in higher levels of discretionary effort and performance, but it may also backfire in many instances. This is because of the dualistic, yin-yang nature of human strengths. Like jet engines, strengths harbour tremendous power to create positive energy and propel us forward towards our goals. But they can result in negative energy and lead to unintended consequences or even complete failure if used in the wrong way.

For example, when productively applied, my “courage” strength (which has been largely instrumental in my career success to date) means I take on challenges and risks and am prepared to challenge the status quo in support of positive change. However, earlier in my career, I was far too eager to take on risky positions and challenges that had a high probability of failure and challenged established views and assumptions head on. This behaviour was perceived as reckless, obsessive and overpowering by others. One of my greatest strengths had gone into overdrive and become a potential derailer. Through understanding that my courage strength has an associated “darkside”, I have been able to apply it more skillfully based on a careful assessment of the situation. 

There are numerous benefits to introducing this concept into the way we manage, motivate and develop people. Several of those we see in our work include:

1. People feel empowered and motivated to act if they start seeing dysfunctional habits or behaviours as stemming from strengths in overdrive rather than pointing to fundamental character flaws or weaknesses. This means that they are far more likely to bring about lasting changes to their behaviour and attitude, building positive habits and routines to prevent their strengths going into overdrive.  
2. People are more open to constructive and critical feedback when it is framed in strengths in overdrive language. Feedback about weaknesses tends to elicit a whole range of defensive responses, especially from perfectionists and highly intelligent people with strong egos. I am not suggesting that conversations should be dishonest or should never deal with weaker areas. However, the reality is that many examples or poor performance or inadequate performance result from strengths in overdrive, rather than any significant competency shortfalls.
3. A focus on strengths and strengths in overdrive encourages a more appreciative and tolerant team and organisational culture based on individual uniqueness and difference. It helps people recognise that all people have a tendency to use their strengths in overdrive on occasion. They aren’t weak or don’t intend to engage in unhelpful habits and behaviours; it is simply part of human nature to be vulnerable to overdrive in certain situations.  For example, rather than seeing a person who is strong on attention to detail as “anal”, they will have a better understanding that this is simply the less desirable expression of the strength in overdrive.

 At Titan Talent and Strengths Partnership, we have found that exceptional performance is a function of a person’s strengths, the skills they have to fully leverage this strength and the agility they develop to flex their strengths and skills to the needs of the situation. This can be expressed as:

 Performance = f(strengths x skills x agility)

 We encourage people to assess their strengths and potential strengths in overdrive using a profiling tool such as ©Strengthscope which is designed specifically for this purpose. Once people have a good understanding of their strengths and the unproductive behaviours which could arise when these go into overdrive, they can become more intentional or conscious about managing the overdrive behaviour. We then work with people to put in place specific strategies and techniques to assess situations against their strengths more objectively and robustly, as well as replacing toxic or unproductive habits with more positive ones. To ensure ongoing learning and reinforcement, we encourage people to invite regular feedback from key performance stakeholders across different situations to determine the perceived value and benefit of the strength in that particular situation. This ensures that the necessary adjustments can be made in the same way that a pilot needs constant feedback on environmental factors such as wind speed, weather conditions, air traffic, etc. in order to make safe and effective decisions about how best to adjust the engines and fly their plane.