When you think back to your last performance appraisal, did your manager spend much time speaking about your strengths and achievements?
For most of us, the focus during such appraisals is often on our weaknesses and “areas of improvement”.
This focus starts early in life with the end of term school report card. I remember my parents glossing over the As & Bs and a zeroing in on that ever present area of weakness, which for me was English and my inability to spell.
So for years my daily routine when I arrived home from school was to suffer through an afternoon of spelling practice. I hated it and it never seemed to get any easier. Clearly it didn’t do me any good either — to this day, I still struggle to spell!
We are all pre-programmed with tasks and activities that we are great at, as well as others which sap our energy and time and will never excel at. Meanwhile, our strengths often lie dormant or neglected while we attempt to repair our flaws
Imagine what we could achieve if we were to focus our time, energy and efforts on improving and strengthening those areas that we are innately talented in?
As a leader your success relies on being a great manager of people, able to develop and implement a successful strategy and to be highly skilled in your area of expertise.
Ignoring your development in any one of these areas will have you falling short as a leader. But focusing solely on your weaknesses will hold you back.
Identifying your strengths
There are many tools and assessments that can help with this. The one that I use and love is the Extended Disc Behavioural Profiling tool. This simple resource provides an easy to understand guideline on behaviours and activities that come easily to you and those that take more energy to master.
Knowing and understanding your strengths is an important step in your leadership development. By far the simplest method for understanding your strengths is understanding YOU. You are your best judge of your own strengths.
Defining your strengths
Strengths can be summed up as those activities that makes you feel strong. If we pay attention to how a task or activity makes us feel — before, during and after the event — our emotions will give us all the information we need. Some activities we actively look forward to. While we are doing it we get into the “zone”, where time speeds by and afterwards we feel invigorated and energised.
Defining your weaknesses.
A weakness on the other hand is any activity that leaves us feeling weaker. They are activities and tasks that we tend to avoid and get no joy from. After we complete the task we feel depleted and drained of energy.
Generally we will enjoy being engaged in those tasks that call on our strengths, and enjoy less tasks that require us to venture into areas we’re weak in.
But do not be fooled. It is possible to be highly skilled and capable in tasks that we have no appetite for. Just because we are good at something does not automatically mean that we will love it and the danger here is that you will be funnelled into a role that has more and more of these tasks just because you are good them. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself in a job that brings you no joy.
These three steps will help see you play to your strengths
- Identify your strengths. Notice what activities leave you energised and do what you can to build more of these into your day to day work and your career. If you are not sure, the Extended Disc Behavioural Profile will be helpful.
- Clarify your weaknesses. Notice what activities drag you down and leave you feeling uninspired and bored. Delegate as many of these as possible. There must be others in your team who are better at these tasks than you!
- Look for opportunities to capitalise on your strengths. Leverage your strengths and build your skills even more in this area. The pay off of doing this will be more job satisfaction and better results for you and your team.