When personal development feels like damage control you’re working on the wrong things

24 Jul When personal development feels like damage control you’re working on the wrong things

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The question of how to help people get better at their work is front and centre when organisations think about culture, yet many concentrate on the wrong things. In his ground-breaking classic “Now Discover Your Strengths”, Marcus Buckingham calls out how “most organisations take their employees’ strengths for granted and focus on minimising weaknesses.” An approach he labels as more ‘damage control’ than development.

It’s hard to disagree when only 20% of employees feel their work allows them to do what they do best every day*. It’s soul destroying to sit in training for something you struggle with and know you always will. Do that too often grinds any enthusiasm for your work to dust.

In his book, Buckingham takes the survey data from two million interviews and proposes an alternative view where, “Each person’s talents are unique and enduring.” and “Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.“

He isn’t suggesting that talent alone becomes a strength. Pursuing knowledge and building skills have a role to play, and so does practice—doing it repeatedly. But pause on the idea for a minute and consider how often your company invests in you getting better at something you already excel at.

There’s a common aphorism coined by by Jim Collins in Good to Great, to ‘get the right people on the bus.’ But a second, and perhaps more important, part of that sentence is often left out—’and in the right seats’. In the right seat is where your talents come out to play. That stuff you were born good at and can do almost perfectly. Like Barbara.

Barb shows up prepared, is reliable and takes personal responsibility for her work and choices. She’s the right who in spades. Barb is also a virtuoso with numbers. She can make a spreadsheet sing and use data to reveal insights most people need a map and a flash light to find. In the finance seat, her maths encoding contributes to the organisation’s success in spades.

Until she gets promoted to team leader. Then Barb flounders. Because while she’s happy to let numbers do the talking, dealing with human foibles every day is just not her forte. So, she does leadership and management training, and while she improves a bit, her impact is blunted. Barb is still the right who. She’s just in the wrong seat. One that buries her strengths.

It’s a mistake to think because someone is talented at one thing they’ll be good at other things. After all, Buckingham’s research doesn’t show that each person’s strengths are transferrable and flexible!

I can hear you thinking, “Ok, but what about the stuff I suck at that I can’t avoid because it’s an expected part of my job or part of our culture?” Maybe written communication isn’t your strong suit, or the idea of sharing anything about yourself with the team makes you want to dig a hole and climb in.

Buckingham suggests five ways you can work on weaknesses while complimenting your talent. His strategies include getting good enough at that thing. You could devise a support system to prop up whatever it is. Find a partner who’s strong where you aren’t. Or, as a last resort, stop doing it—admittedly, that one is often hard.

Let’s look at getting good enough. Tiger Woods is one of the best to ever swing a golf club, and his drives are legendary. He’s also particularly handy on the putting green, but he was well below average at chipping out of a bunker. Recognising that weakness would add shots to his score and cost him championships, he worked on it and got better. Not great. But good enough to avoid negating his other advantages.

Ok, so you’ve sidelined your weaknesses. Now comes the fun part. Building your talents into strengths (plural because you likely have a few). Discover what they are, get to know yourself. Work around your weaknesses if you can. And if you can’t, copy Tiger and make them irrelevant.

Then next time you sit down for ‘feedback’, or think about how to improve your work, step into what you do well. Look for genuine development that builds on your rock star qualities. Because with a clear sense of your strengths, you can thrive in both big and unheroic moments.

Thanks for reading.