April 20, 2007

• So… on The Today Show this morning, Tiki Barber introduced this guy, Marcus Buckingham, who’s started a Strengths Revolution – getting people to stop focusing on their weaknesses, and play to their strengths. Here’s more from a web site I found about one of the books Buckingham has co-written.

  “The premise is that businesses (and people) are built on two faulty assumptions:
  1. Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything.
  2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in his or her areas of greatest weakness.
  The authors offer alternative assumptions that sure make sense to me:
  1. Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.
  2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of the person’s greatest strengths.
  Not only does it make sense, they back it up with years of research, hundreds of thousands of surveys (they are from the Gallup Organization, after all) and neuroscience to prove their assumptions.
  People progress more rapidly in their areas of greatest talent than in their areas of weakness. Yet too many training and development approaches focus on making improvements in areas of weakness. How many performance reviews have you been through where the main topic of conversation was the areas in which you performed poorly and how you can get better in those areas?
  [...] Rather than spending time and energy on boosting sub-par performance areas to an acceptable level (and ignoring areas of excellence). We do better by spending a majority of time enhancing the areas in which we are already strong.
  This is not to say that weaknesses are ignored, but rather that we try to find ways to work around them. For example, we may be able to overcome our weaknesses by using our strengths (a common theme in a business SWOT analysis). Or we may be able to overcome weaknesses by partnering with someone who is strong in those areas. Or, we may be able to just stop doing those things we’re not good at.
  A very valid example offered in the book is that of Tiger Woods. Unknown to me, it seems that, although Tiger may be one of the best golfers to ever play, he’s one of the worst at hitting a ball out of a sand trap. A true weakness for a golfer. But do you think that Tiger spent all of his time with his coach learning to better hit the ball out of a sand trap? No, he spent most of his time bettering his drive so as not to hit the ball into the sand trap in the first place. Using his strength to overcome his weakness.
  Picture what would have happened if Tiger spent most of his time working on that sand trap. He’d probably get better at it. Maybe even good at it. But never great at it. And while he’s spending so much time and energy on something he’s not great at, he’s not spending time on something that he can be great at. Thus, he becomes a mediocre golfer. Good at many things but great at nothing.
  [...] Not only do we not excel, we loose interest, we loose passion – because we’re spending so much of our energy on things we’re not good at and, most likely, don’t like doing.
  [...] Employee enthusiasm, commitment, personal responsibility, and accountability are crucial elements to the success of any business. Engaged employees are builders. They perform at consistently high levels. They want to use their talents and strengths at work every day. They work with passion, they have an instinctive bond with their company, and they drive innovation and move their organization forward.”

  It makes a lot of sense to me. I hate organizing unlike my sister who could organize a junk drawer all day and be a happy little bunny about it. So, instead of focusing on being organized in my office, for instance, I have started focusing on the fact that I love to create. I don’t worry about my office being all organized and neat; I focus on creating fun handouts for my students and creating interesting assignments that challenge them. I mean, really, what’s more important – that I am a neat officemate or an innovative teacher?

  • 2:11 pm
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