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Strengths and Mistakes
We all make mistakes, but we can learn from those mistakes or simply try to improve on our strengths. Athletes perform better when they focus on winning rather than losing. Do you spend your time focusing on building your strengths or managing your weaknesses?
Recent research has explored two approaches to business success. One approach is “Appreciative Inquiry”, which focuses on the positive aspects of a company and its employees. The other approach, called “Positive Organizational Change”, does not focus on mistakes or failures but instead looks at what works in an organization and builds upon that. Both approaches share the same fundamental principle: managing mistakes will not contribute to great success, but studying what works in your organization and building upon it can help you expand your “positive deviance”, which refers to things that are out of the norm but work well for your company.
The best feeling you can have at work is when you’ve used your full potential to do a great job. How often do you feel that way? For most people, it’s about once a week. You should reverse that and feel great four or five days a week. What if you could contribute more to your company by using your strengths?
The author suggests that you can engage your strengths more fully by following six steps. First, bust the myths about what’s holding you back from doing so. Second, get clear on your strengths and assess them. Third, free your strengths and use them to their full potential. Fourth, stop weaknesses by learning how to eliminate them completely. Fifth, speak up with a solid team of people who can help support you in this new approach; sixth is build strong habits for sustaining this approach long-term.
Myths about Personal Growth
Burnout is when you spend more and more time trying to solve problems. You should not ignore a glaring mistake, but rather focus on the strengths that are helping you succeed in life. If you’re spending too much time cleaning up after yourself, then you won’t have the energy to improve your weaknesses or strengthen your strengths.
The first myth is that as you grow, your personality changes. People love stories of transformation where a person changes through force of will or because of an extreme experience. The truth is that growth comes from discovering and building on who you are already. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the mean old man was actually a distortion. He wasn’t always like that; he had become so later in life by being miserly with his money and treating people poorly.
The second myth is that you have the most room for growth in areas where you are already weak, so it pays to seek growth there. However, although it’s important to pay attention to weaknesses that can endanger your well-being, you will find that you have more ability to grow where you are strong. Using your strengths will help create a positive feedback loop and help motivate and inspire others around us.
A common myth is that you should always try to help your team, because others have helped you in the past. However, helping others does not mean doing something even if it doesn’t come naturally to you or taking on responsibilities that aren’t yours or don’t have anything to do with what makes you most effective. The truth is that by succeeding at what matters most for the project, and/or improving how this helps each individual person’s job performance, everyone wins.
Ask yourself what it’s like to believe in these myths. How do they aid you? What would you lose if you stopped believing in them? Instead, what would be the benefit of believing the truth instead of a myth?
