I have been a strengths coach since 2014 and have heard my fair share of criticism about “focusing on your strengths” as personal development advice.
Generally how people understand this, is to identify “areas” of strength in your life and focus on doing it more as compared to doing things that are not within those “areas” of strength.
And, yes, generally, it is correct, it might even be inspiring. Imagine doing things you “love” every single day. The problem is, that advice does NOT paint a clear and actionable plan for the rest of us. Let me explain.
I think one important thought process every time we have these kinds of personal development advice is to know the source. If it came from a book, who is the author? What research went into it? In this case, the concept of strengths-based development was popularized by Donald Clifton, a business leader, psychologist, and researcher back in the 1950s to early 70s. Although some work has been placed into the strengths subject by other positive psychology authors, Clifton’s work is arguably one of the most extensive- spanning around 5 decades of research! Later on, Clifton’s company acquired Gallup, and we began to see publications around strengths.
This is why we need to define this concept of “strengths” in alignment with Gallup’s research and publications if we are to completely understand what the advice “focus on your strengths” really means.
Strengths came from the concept of “talents”. Talents are a person’s natural patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can be productively applied. I won’t get into the biopsychological details of this concept, but generally, our brain has patterns on how we deal with certain situations. Patterns of how we think, feel, or behave given those situations. These patterns have been built over time and, for better or for worse, it is our brain’s default way of approaching certain situations.
These “talent patterns”, if you apply them productively into specific activities — activities that have tangible performance measures and/or clear outcomes. If you get consistent good results from these activities — you can now claim them as your strength. A strength, according to Gallup, is a person’s ability to consistently get near-perfect performance in a specific activity.
For simplicity’s sake, I’d say that if your talents are productively applied in an activity that in turn give you consistent great results — then it is an area of strength.
Following so far? Here’s when it gets tricky:
Your talents (or themes if you refer to your CliftonStrengths results) are neutral. What does this mean? Remember that your talents are your patterns. Patterns can bring about positive results for sure; but our patterns can be unproductive at times. For example, my CliftonStrength theme # 2 is Communication. This means that I have certain talents for expressing my ideas. However, in my role as a coach, it’s not just me expressing, but most of the time, I need to be listening. Thus, my Communication talents need to take a back seat when I need to just shut up and listen to my clients. And, as you may have guessed, it isn’t always that way. There are times in my career as a coach when I’ve talked more than I ought to listen.
In this case, my “talent” became my weakness.
Yes, our greatest talents can be our greatest weaknesses.
Often times, when we blurt out the advice “focus on your strengths” we mean focusing in on our patterns — our talents. While that is partly true, these patterns can often be misapplied and can be a weakness if we are not mindful. What we really ought to do is to heighten our self-awareness about our patterns. Because it also develops our awareness on the situation when these patterns and talents are playing out — and ultimately, whether it brings good results or not.
Heightening our awareness about our patterns and situations where these patterns can be helpful or not requires your willingness to answer questions that will allow you to dig deep and reflect on the real issue.
I had a coaching session earlier with a leader having challenges delegating. Whenever she delegates, there are instances where she takes the delegated task back for her to finish it. In return, those *supposed to be delegated tasks eat up her time to do what she really ought to do — in her case, it was business development and direct client engagement. The reason she takes back delegated tasks is because when she is in her “intense busy mode” she tends to be impatient with timelines — and, when her staff can’t meet her standard timelines, she takes the task back and ends up doing it.
I asked her a series of questions that made her realize that: “something has to change, and I cannot just rely on my staff to remind me when I am being unrealistic with the timelines of the delegated task. I need to be mindful of when my patterns (Restorative is a top theme in her CliftonStrengths) are hindering me to delegate and be realistic with task timelines. Someone needs to change — that’s me.
And we went along discussing her action points after that.
But the point is, understanding that you have these great talents and patterns is half the battle. Heightening your self-awareness and situational awareness through coaching conversations are equally important. Knowing your talents is a starting point, not a conclusion about your strengths.
Gallup, introduced this “equation” that, our talents when multiplied with investments on skills and knowledge can result in a strength. In the case of my client I mentioned above, a skill could be mindfulness practices of her being aware when she is in “autopilot” mode at work and thus demand unrealistic timelines from her staff; an investment in knowledge might look like the creation and implementation of a clear step-by-step process of their work with timelines to match; and lastly, identifying patterns that would then help her execute these things. If done and processed well, it could make this challenging situation of delegation which is now a weakness, into a strength.
“Focus on your strengths” as a piece of advice entails understanding that your Top 5 CliftonStrengths talent themes can also be a gateway to your weaknesses. Without intentional effort on your self and situational awareness, knowing your personality patterns will remain as “nice-to-know” and won’t have transformational impact to you and the people around you.