We do this thing at work called strengths finder, based on Now, Discover Your Strengths. The basic premise is people perform better by working on their strengths than their weaknesses.
I actually have subscribed to this idea for a very long time, notwithstanding that I have been told for years (hi mom) that I should be working on my weaknesses and anyone can improve their spelling (hi everyone else on the planet)
You see this in sport a lot. Many great players play fantastically well in one position and somewhere between "dog shit" and "ok" out of position. Good coaches find the best position for the player and play them their. In other words you can but Steven Gerrard in goal, but you'll get the best out of him in central midfield, because that's where his strengths lie.
My strengths came out as
- communication
- People strong in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.
- So whilst I don't think I am that good a presenter (Everyone has enjoyed my presentations however) I am a good conversationalist, which is another way of saying I talk a lot and never shut up. My mom can attest to this being the case from day 1. Well from the day I started talking. My mom thought I should have been a court lawyer.
- strategic
- People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
- I'm also quite good at spotting irrelevant patterns and issues. Note how it says "any given scenario", which means I have an opinion on everything. As anyone who knows me knows.
- command
- People strong in the Command theme have presence. They can take control of a situation and make decisions.
- So in other words I am a driver and an organiser (which is noted as I'm continually organising parties, movies, holidays, everything). Also can be seen as "being bossy".
- activator
- People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.
- Impatient ... not much more needs to be said there. When I focus I can talk thoughts into action quickly. When I don't focus I try turn to many thoughts into too many actions and really land up with a lot of half action nothingness.
- significance
- People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.
- Want to be recognized ... well that is pretty spot on. I'm a total media whore and I crave attention. I suffer when alone and need people to think I'm awesome. Obviously this runs into big issues with my super power being self-deprecation where i don't believe I am important in the eyes of others. Immovable force / unstoppable force
The full list of strengths (all 34 of them) is here if you want to see what I missed or which might apply to your good selves. I doubt you care though.
1. The B
huh? The if? Was there a web reference supposed to be in there somewhere? Don’t tantalise me with a personality quiz and then give me nowhere to go! (what does this say about me? Totally self obsessed theme?)
2. Adrian
Link fixed.
Although you can’t do the test without buying the book. This isn’t a free thing.
Sorry. I’m not sure that helps your self obsession.
3. matthew
All things being fair, and due to the immovable/unstoppable/irresistable force that is human nature, I’d be way more interested in a list of your weaknesses, even if that may not be the point.
4. Adrian
I would be interested in a list of my weaknesses too, although that me be a bigger list of less impact (i.e. ten weaknesses at 1/10 isn’t the same as one strength at 10/10).
The whole point of this is to go work on your strengths and not get overly bothered by your weaknesses.
5. Gordon
Not free? Pah. Bored now.
But yes, these things CAN be useful but I find they generally ‘reveal’ only what you want to reveal, presuming that both you and the test work on a subconscious level… etc etc…
I’m an INTJ, according to one of those other test things.
6. matthew
I agree that these kind of things are good in the way they re-affirm the fact that you are strong in the areas in which you are… strong, but by ignoring your weaknesses, and not getting ‘overly bothered’ by them, they will not go away. By working on your weaknesses you become a more rounded person, instead of being molded into what someone wants you to be.
I would fundamentally disagree with your reasoning that “ten weaknesses at 1/10 isn’t the same as one strength at 10/10”, by the simple fact that it is absolute bullshit, and it’s avoiding the issue. It’s like saying that a Fiat 500 is actually crap because it’s not equal to 10 Ferraris.
Whether it’s a bigger list or not (this mythical list of weaknesses, I mean), I would still be far more interested in you saying “here’s a list of all the things that I suck ass at doing, how do you think I can improve myself in these areas?” than you saying “I’m brilliant at all these things, so I don’t need any help”. I know it’s not quite like that, and the point of this post is that working on your strengths may improve your abilities in your chosen profession, but had you begun this post with “I’ve been reading this book called…” instead of “we have this thing at work…”, I would be more inclined to agree with you, because it would have been a conclusion you had come to yourself in an effort at honest self-improvement, instead of something your employers had suggested to you, so you would make them more money.
I could be MILES off with all this (and apologise if I am), but that’s just the way it seems to read.
(err… I also read in that link that these aren’t, in fact, your top five “strengths”, but in fact your top five “themes”, whatever that means)
(retreats to bunker to withstand the barrage)
7. Adrian
Matt, you’re miles off.
Firstly I haven’t read the book yet because I’m too busy at the moment. Work didn’t force me to do anything, but they encourage us to do the Strengths Finder because they have found it a good method of discovering your strengths and that it works well for people. It utterly amazes me that every positive thing my company does, everyone has a pop at for one reason or another. Just because an idea or way of doing something originates from work doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.
For fucks sake, if your company is doing things to help encourage you to do better that is a good thing. Yes, this is a work thing, and yes the aim is that by helping staff develop, they both work better and are happy. It’s not fucking rocket science, it’s basic people management. Companies over a certain size don’t work by magic you know.
Secondly the whole point of the Strengths Finder thing is based on a study(s) by Gallop that found highly successfully people working for highly successful companies have very solid strengths and play to those strengths, rather than the ideology at the time that one’s strengths are fine and one should focus on ones weaknesses.
No where does this say anything about not being rounded, but what happens is that people ignore their strengths because they focus on their weaknesses and it has been found that this method is less successful.
We all have 100 weaknesses. Do you want to spend time rounding off each of those? Or work on the few strengths. What I was trying to say with the 1 strength is better than 10 weaknesses is that we have very few strengths but lots of weakness. It’s a long tail thing, and in this case work on the short head.
I return to my sporting analogy. I’m sure Steven Gerrard would be an ok goalie. But he would never be more than ok. At best. However he will be a great midfielder. Because that is where he is playing to his strengths.
I’m saying in training, Gerrard should spend 90% of his time working on being a great midfielder and he will be a great midfielder. By what you wrote above it appears you are saying Gerrard is a good midfielder and so should spend time as every other position so that he is more well rounded.
Under your management Gerrard would be a good player. Under mine, a great player.
8. Destructor
I think Matt has a point (particularly about your bizarre 1/10 doesn’t equal a 10/10 example, which is clearly nonsense). The thing about your strengths is that you can (and do) equally express them as weaknesses:
Communication - won’t shut up Strategic - opinion on everything and won’t back down even when wrong Command - bossy Activator - impatient Significance - egomaniac
Likewise with weaknesses you can euphemistically express them as strengths. My ‘energetic’ is your ‘whirlwind who smashes up the place’.
My point being…whoever starts a sentence: “People strong in the Activator theme…” probably would benefit from a punch in the crotch.
9. Adrian
My 1:10 example was just trying to say that we all are weak in many more things than we are strong at.
I was jovially trying to list my strengths in an amusing way. What the study shows is that contrary to poplar belief that the path to sucusses is by concentrating on your weaknesses, one should really concentrate on improve and honing ones strengths.
In fact by looking at where we can improve our strengths and manage them better (so being more directed instead of bossy for command) we do a better job than by trying to improve my skill in say woo where I am naturally weak and always going to be rubbish at.
You all act like the people who wrote the book and did the study sucked this out of the air on a day they were bored, as opposed to be the result of detailed study and analysis.
You may say this doesn’t work for you, and that’s perfectly valid. However since it seems to be the way the top 20% of people in the top 20% of firms (based on their financials) work, then their is value is exposing people (and in a work context, your staff) to the idea, and allowing them to see if it works for them.
10. matthew
Dan put it so much more eloquently than me, but that’s basically what I meant.
I still think by not bothering with your weaknesses you can become a very one-dimensional person.
It’s true what you say about Gerrard, but that’s football. Football, great as it is, is not life, and great though some analogies are, they aren’t always analogous to real life. Steven Gerrard may focus almost exclusively on his abilities as a midfielder in training, but when he’s not playing football, he stays as far away from anything to do with the game as he can, because otherwise all he would know would be football, and he would become a very one-dimensional character as well.
You don’t need to work on every one of your weaknesses to become a more rounded person. You need to find which weaknesses you really need to strengthen, as in the list Dan has made above.
But I’d say one of your biggest weaknesses is your reliance on analogies. :-)
11. Adrian
Actually football is a great example (not analogy) because it gives an easy visual representation of what I am trying to say, one which is not as easy to see (visually) with regular jobs.
In professional sport, (which is a job) playing a player out of position normally results in demotivation and poor performances.
I have many times in my previous job felt that I was being played out of position. Instead of putting me in roles that played to my strengths I was put in roles where I was weak and told to become more rounded and stop complaining. What I became was better at being shit in areas I was shit. Sure I became marginally more rounded, and I did learn new skills and improve my weaknesses a bit. But these are still the same areas I have been weak in since the age of 6. No matter how much I focus on these areas, I’ll still be shit in them.
Meanwhile colleagues who were put in areas of their strengths are now 4 years senior to me, even when I started work a year or two before them.
I have seen this time and time again with both myself and other people in a corporate work climate. The more you try to make people “more rounded” the more you have disillusion and unhappy people who don’t perform well.
The more and more you put people in the areas they are strongest the happier they are and the better they perform. A good manager puts people in areas they are strongest and pairs them with people who compliment their skill sets.
Football and sport is not an analogy in this case, but a really good example, as you can see with in 90mins a player playing shit or a player playing well, based on where you stick him in the field. In a corporate work context this is harder to see and takes longer for it to become apparent.
My spelling sucks, my maths rocks. I have friends whose skills run the other way. You can try round my spelling off as much as possible and improve that weakness, but it will always be weak. You’d not want me in a role where spelling is essential because that’s playing me out of position, and instead of rounding me off, will do me in.
12. Destructor
Are you saying you can be a only ever be a second rate banana because you are a first rate apple?
13. Adrian
Yeah, that’s not a bad way of looking at it.
I think.
14. Jack
My point being…whoever starts a sentence: “People strong in the Activator theme…” probably would benefit from a punch in the crotch.
Ahahahahahahahahasplutterspluttercough
15. The B
You should start double bluffing everyone. Next time your work run any kind of motivational or personality based scheme, put it on here and mock the shit out of it. Then watch, rub your hands together with glee, etc, as everyone rushes to the support of the thing that you actually secretly thought was great to start with…
I think the temptation to argue with anyone who seems (and note I do say seems as that may be only how it appears) to be 100% unquestioningly into ANYTHING, whether rightly or wrongly, is just too great for most normal people, let alone bloggers…
16. Mrs. X
Just one question: If there’s value in tailoring your professional life to your strengths rather than your weaknesses, what have you and/or your manager done differently since having identified your top strengths?
17. Adrian
Valid point.
Not much.
One could muse that their is just value in just knowing ones strengths.
18. Destructor
That would depend on your definition of value. I think knowing ones strengths and weaknesses (again, they’re different expression of the same thing) is good on a personal level, but in the professional context we’re discussing, if that knowledge does not lead to some kind of postive action that causes appreciable benefit, it’s practically valueless- the time you spent gaining that unused knowledge would have been better spent working, from the company’s point of view.
19. Mrs. X
If you’re not using the info in some constructive way, it’s not just a pointless exercise; it’s actually demotivating because you know exactly what you should be taking advantage of and aren’t.
My manager and I have deliberately crafted at least one or two of my top five StrengthsFinder themes into every quarter’s goals. I must say it helps with staying motivated. One one hand, I recognise that I have an exceptionally good manager. On the other hand, everyone’s manager should be this good.
(Must. Stop. Agreeing. With. Destructor.)
But of course the single most rewarding thing about the StrengthsFinder exercise is the confirmation that I am, in fact, nothing like Adrian.
20. Destructor
Jeez, you meet someone one time and they instinctively feel that agreeing with you is a bad thing.