I think I mentioned this previously but one of the books I have been slowly reading is about understanding your strengths and working to enhance them. The book has a different viewpoint than many self-help books in that it isn’t trying to push you to patch up your weaknesses, but instead focus and become a “rock star” because of your strengths. They claim that focusing on and trying to lessen your weaknesses and ignoring your strengths will only prevent failure. IMO, that is like playing chess looking to get a stalemate, not to win. This is your life, you shouldn’t play it in a way so that don’t lose but instead try to win. Working on perfecting your strengths is playing to win.
In my mind, this seems like the right approach. If you look at someone like Bill Gates, he didn’t get to where he is by trying to be better at say sports or dating hot women or what not, he knew what he was good at and worked in that area and got better and better at it. I have noticed that any time I stick to what I perceive to be my strengths I do quite well and find I am overall happiest with what I am doing. Contrariwise I am most unhappy when I am forcing myself to better myself by doing something in my perceived weak areas.
The book is called “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and is written by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. When you get the book, you also get a special code that lets you go to a Strengths Finder web site to take a test to identify your strengths. The test is interesting in that it takes about 40 minutes but has you answering many many questions very quickly to get your “gut reactions” versus letting you sit and think about the answers. They claim that this allows the “inner” you that is seemingly your “instinct” or the part of you that makes the “off the cuff” decisions when you don’t have time to consider the angles, etc come to the surface. This is what they called your hardwired thinking and it relies on your most basic neural wiring that remains after most of your neural interconnections are destroyed when you are in your very early childhood .
The website is https://www.strengthsfinder.com/
When I took the test it listed my five main strengths as
- Strategic
- Deliberative
- Relator
- Achiever
- Competition
When I look through the 32 or so categories they have those would probably be the five I would have picked for myself if I was trying to guess. The one that seems the least like me would be the relator but only because half of the description is quite accurate and half really isn’t. I intend to wait awhile and take the test again to see if the results are the same.
The other day I hit an interesting passage in the book in a section explaining why people shy away from developing their strengths. The usual suspects like fear of failure, etc are in there but they also mentioned that some people won’t work on their strengths because they feel it is egotistical and this is what they have to say on that:
“Is it egotistical to spend your life building on your strengths? Everything we know from our research says that it isn’t. Building on your strengths and egotism are not the same thing. Egotism is when you make claims to excellence, but your claims aren’t tied to anything substantive. This blustering, ‘big hat, big cattle’ approach to life is ripe for ridicule.
…
From this point of view, to avoid your strengths and to focus on your weaknesses isn’t a sign of diligent humility. It is almost irresponsible. By contrast the most responsible, the most challenging, and, in the sense of being true to yourself, the most honorable thing to do is face up to the strength potential inherent in your talents and then find ways to realize it.”
joe
Joe,
I was a sales manager for Best Buy and that entire companys management is using the strength finder book/test to improve how we do things. I was deliberative, focus, relator, signifigance and command. At first I was like yeah right, but when you actually read the descriptions and then the part of how to manage someone with that talent you then see that you know it does fit me. It is not needed to be a 100% yes thats me that would be very cookie cutter and everyone is different. As far as taking the test again your strengths CAN change. The rule of thumb is that your top 10 will not change but that they may move in and out of your top 5. This is for a number of reasons ie what kind of career your in currently.
I first heard about this concept last year. It makes perfect sense. Trying to improve those things I’m not good at – like math – is an effort in futility. I find it’s much more fun and relevant to improve my writing and communication skills. I’m more effective on my job. I hired someone to do those things I’m not good at – like computer tech. We’re both happy!
I think Americans might be less stressed – less road rage, alcoholism, etc. if we’d all applaud our talents and abilities and quit beating our heads against walls trying to be what we’re not.