Strengths Work
I have been doing some work with Marcus Buckingham’s strengths philosophy and while I was very skeptical at first, it is making more sense to me the more I learn about it. It does seem logical that you will grow most in the areas where you have talent. Buckingham does not say not to work on your weaknesses, but to do so only to the point where they are not hindering your progress. I saw him at a seminar recently and asked him how the strenghts philosophy meshed with the need of many companies to do cross training for flexibility and continuous improvement. He said that Toyota does a lot of cross training and lean manufacturing but they do it judiciously considering the people in the roles and the needs of the work. All of the data he has shown backs up that if you put more effort into the things you do well, that you will excel faster and enjoy your job more. He said that too many people put off their passion to get a job they don’t care about thinking they will go back to it someday. Unfortunately, by the time they get around to it, the spark is no longer there and they have wasted a talent that could have been amazing.
Marcus Buckingham was on Oprah last Friday talking about his strengths-based work and the coaching he had done with several women. All gained insight to more enjoyment in their work and their lives. Some decided to change jobs or careers and some decided to make more of the job they had. Oprah has put together more information with Buckingham and they are making a free seminar available to anyone who is interested. You can go to www.Oprah.com for more information. If you have not been exposed to this approach to your work, check it out.
Vicki,
I agree with the concept of focusing on your strengths and only working on your weaknesses to avoid having them stop you from achieving your goals. In my consulting practice helping small manufacturing companies with strategic planning, I teach the same idea. Most strategic planning efforts go through some kind of SWOTS analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and most people think it is to find out what their weaknesses are and how to improve them. I teach that we need to make our weaknesses not a factor in our strategic direction and if we can’t do that then we need to improve them enough to avoid dooming our business. People are much more excited and interested in working on their strengths and the companies are well served by focusing on leveraging their strengths in the market place and trying to make their weaknesses not a factor in success.
Thanks for your work and keep pushing us along.
1