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There seems to be a renewed focus, in some circles, on strengths and “the strengths revolution”. Mostly caused by Marcus Buckingham’s new book “Go Put Your Strengths To Work” and his promotional tour.

I had the opportunity to attend one of his early seminars in this tour and was quite impressed with his passion and his presentation.

One of the more depressing facts that he brought out was that since he and Donald Clifton started this so-called strengths revolution, the numbers have gone down.

For example, in 2000, when asked, “which do you think will help you be most successful?”  Only 41% of the respondents answered “building on your strengths” while 59% answered “fixing weaknesses”.

In 2006, the numbers were 37% and 63% respectively.

A 2005 survey showed that only 17% of people spend most of their day playing to their strengths.

In 2006, the number was 14%.

And here’s the one that really kicked me... When asked “When you talk with your manager about your performance what do you spend most time talking about?” - this is what we see:

Only 24% even talk about their strengths.

It’s surprising, yet it’s not. What I’ve seen is that, when being honest, people can readily tell you what their weaknesses are, what they don’t do well. But ask them what their strengths are, and they really have to think about it to come up with an answer.

Our obsession with weaknesses is so ingrained in us that we can’t break away. It started in childhood - whenever there was something that you weren’t good at in school, it became the focus of your (and your parent’s and your teacher’s) attention. Which gets more attention, the A or the F?

(Here’s a thought for parents... find out what strengths were used to produce that A and then figure out how to use those strengths to help pull up the F – don’t ask “why the F?”, ask “why the A?”).

I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking with people about strengths. Particularly, strengths at work. During my conversations, most people seem to understand the power and benefits of focusing on strengths yet nothing gets done. It’s not today’s priority. It’s not a hot item to work on. Yet it’s been shown time and time that focusing on strengths can increase productivity, increase profitability, increase customer satisfaction, decrease employee turnover, and decrease safety incidents – dramatically!

So we just don’t get it. Or maybe we get it, we just don’t know what to do with it. Many of you may have heard my criticism in the past that all of the books from Gallup and Buckingham that focus on strengths always tell us what we need to do – but they don’t tell us how to do it. I think that’s where we get stuck. It makes sense, but how do we implement a strengths based performance program? What does it mean to “discover your strengths”? How can I focus on my strengths when I have to get this (whatever “this” may be) done today?

I think that maybe the best way I can help answer some of these questions is to share my own strengths and my own observations (positive and negative).

I’ll go through my 5 top strengths – according to the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment – and share some of the experiences I’ve had in regard to those strengths...

      ...next month.

In the mean time, let me share a few more statistics from Buckingham’s presentation...

It seems that conventional wisdom tells us that building on strengths at work may be an appealing theory but it won’t actually work. Too many people would be running to their manager or to Human Resources and complain that they’re hindered from sculpting their job in a manner that best suites their strengths, or that they’re simply in the wrong position and that they should be transferred (say, to CEO, or something more suitable).

However, when a national sample of the workforce were asked what their ideal job is, 60% answered “what I’m doing now with increased responsibility” or “a specialized subset of what I’m doing now”. Only 31% indicated a different job.

Asked why they took their current job and most answer “a greater opportunity to do more of what I like to do.”

Asked how often they feel an emotional high, and 51% say “about once a week.”

Ask them whether they have had the chance to modify their role to fit their strengths and 50% agree that they do.

What this says is that we’re really not that far off. Sure many of us are grossly miscast. But most of us have at least some control over our own activities and most of us are in suitable roles for our strengths.

What the numbers show is that organizations don’t need to re-align jobs and individuals don’t need to hold out for the perfect or “dream” job. Instead, the challenge is: 

“How can we gradually but deliberately increase how often each person plays to his strengths?
How can we get people from ‘once a week’ to ‘most of the time’?

 

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