I want to continue the conversation we began yesterday about learning to put our strengths to work and move beyond knowing them to utilising them. Our guide for this conversation is Marcus Buckingham’s new book Go Put Your Strengths To Work. Yesterday we started to process the first of six steps that Buckingham suggests we need to take to put our strengths to work, and we began by looking at the first of three myths we need to overcome which may be stopping us living from our strengths. Today we will look at the second myth:

MYTH: You will grow the most in your areas of greatest weakness.

61% of us actually believe this to be true. We think that the way we will really start to see growth and improvement in our lives is to focus on the areas of our lives where we are the weakest. This approach to life is clearly embedded in us from childhood. Surveys show that over 70% of us who are parents would focus the most on the F grade our child may come back with from school rather than on the A’s or B’s. Clearly we’re not meant to ignore something like an F, but the reality is that we will actually grow the least in our areas of weakness, and any growth and improvement will take a lot more work. Something is wrong when an area of strength is left undeveloped and all our energy is spent on weaknesses. So here’s the truth that we need to replace this myth with:

TRUTH: You will grow the most in your areas of greatest strength.

Here’s what Buckingham says about this: “You may not be creative in all aspects of your life, but whatever your general level of creativity may be, you will be at the peak of your creative powers in your areas of strength. You may not be a naturally inquisitive person, but you will be at your most inquisitive in your areas of strength. You will be most optimistic, most courageous, and most ambitious when playing to an area of strength.”

For some reason we are constantly tempted to focus on our weaknesses. And whilst we mustn’t ignore them, neither must we end up wasting away our lives focussing on areas where we will never be that great. By focussing on a weakness, we may move it from terrible to just bad, but by focussing on a strength, we have the potential to move from good to great.

As I did yesterday, I want to finish by encouraging us all to reflect on three questions:

1) How does it serve you to believe that you will grow the most in your areas of greatest weakness?

2) What would it cost you to stop believing this?

3) How would it benefit you to believe that you will grow the most in your areas of greatest strength?

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Strengths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.