Building On Your Strengths

by Robin Wheeler, March 2007

We tend to focus most on negativity. We take our own and other people’s strengths for granted and fixate on perceived “weaknesses”. This has a negative effect on productivity and well being.

We give disproportionate attention to the negative and we tend to remember it more clearly and enduringly. Someone can say nine nice things and one nasty thing, and we give ninety percent of our energy to the nasty one.

That is why people dread performance appraisals: They spend the process attending to their “development areas”. They then go back to work, and go home, feeling defined by deficit, instead of prospering through their strengths.

Corporations and small businesses can easily slip into a negative culture, where people are constantly attacking and trying to undermine one another. The result is an adversarial, counterproductive and unpleasant environment.

Start with yourself

The place to start is with yourself. Brainstorm your strengths, and ask a handful of people close to you what they have found to be your talents and unique abilities. Ask co-workers, previous colleagues and family members for examples.

Gather the information and sketch it into a picture of your strengths. You may be amazed! You will certainly be encouraged and inspired. You will also feel more confident through knowing yourself better.

Then emphasise these strengths in your current job or business, and design your emerging job and business around them. Life is too short to try to be what you are not. Be yourself and add your unique value for a living.

Validate others

Just by doing that you will have a positive effect. You will open the way for others to live and work better. Make a point of focusing on their strengths, too. Authentically appreciate people when you see them shining or feel them affecting you positively.

We need to re-educate ourselves in this way. We have been conditioned to dismiss our individuality in favour of conformity. School dresses children the same and teaches them one curriculum prescribed as right for all. Business relationships emphasise compliance.

Nature does not work this way, it makes us all unique. If we tried to teach dogs to climb tress and monkeys to swim and fish to run on dry land, we would force them into constant failure experiences and destroy their natural talents, at best. Yet we do this to ourselves!

Entrepreneurs

As a knowledge worker, you cannot perform and thrive if you are on the back foot. Structure your job and deliverables around your strengths and then grow them towards your unrealised potential.

Leaders

If you are in a leadership position, you will be challenged with stimulating and guiding creativity and innovation. The root of success is in bringing out people’s strengths and getting them to work in areas that capitalise on them.

A Positive Business