Maximize Your Strengths, Minimize Your Weaknesses 040

Welcome to episode 40 of Your Encore Life.  Today we will be expanding on the introduction to strengths that I began in our last episode. We will define what strengths are, talk about the five characteristics of strengths, and talk about an article by Brent O’ Bannon about managing your weaknesses.

I am pulling some of this information from the book “Soar With Your Strengths” by the father of the Cliftonstrengths assessment and author of several strengths based books Donald O. Clifton, and Paula Nelson. The book states that the definition of strengths is based on two different levels. “On a rudimentary level, strengths are the things you do well.”  Things such as goaltending in soccer, marketing, selling, developing others, speaking…you get the idea.  A more sophisticated definition is on another level and includes things like “patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that produce high degree of satisfaction and pride; generates both psychic and/or financial reward; and presents measurable progress toward excellence.”  In other words, physical forms of strength, and the second type that have more to do with “ego, persistence, dedication, courage, pride, perfection, and competition.” 

The book lists five characteristics of a strength and how best to develop them.  Here we go:

1. Listen for Yearnings:  What have you seen or heard that makes you think “I want to do that”?  What makes your heart flutter or sing?  This cannot be confused with what they term as “misyearnings”, which can be driven by a desire for power, glamour, and excitement and can derail us from our true strengths path.
2. Watch for Satisfactions:  “Satisfactions are those experiences where the emotional and psychic rewards are great”.  You really enjoy doing them.
3. Watch for Rapid Learning:  If you are learning something best by jumping in and you feel like you have always known how to do something. Slow and laborious learning is a sign that this may not be an area of strength.
4. Glimpses of Excellence:  Often evident in a finite activity or performance, which isn’t necessarily impressive but a trained eye or you sense a moment where you shine brightly.
5. Total Performance of Excellence: Total performance excellence is defined in the book as not being “a glimpse, but the complete extension of an activity.  It doesn’t happen occasionally, but each time the activity is performed.  It is not subject to circumstances but transcends them.

 

To become exceptional:

1. Pick a strength and pursue it.
2. Claim it out of fantasy and into action.
3. Do more of it
4. Enjoy it

Let’s talk briefly about minimizing our weaknesses.  I have referenced an article by Gallup Coach Brent O’Bannon titled “To Manage Your Weaknesses, Plug Your Leaks”.   He states that “a major weakness is when you are not good at an activity, don’t feel passion for that activity, though it’s important to your career success”.  A “minor weakness is sometimes called a learned behavior that we are average to good at, while not enjoying or feeling passion for this activity, which is not a major part of our job or career success”.  This article uses the acronym LEAK to identify your weaknesses and PLUG to minimize the weakness, hence the name of the article “Plug the Leak”.  Here are the acronym meanings:

L: Loath - What activity do you absolutely hate to do?

E: Escape - What activity do you avoid at all costs?

A: Average - What activity is a weakness that no matter how much you try, you are only average at it?

K: Kink - What activity no matter how much you improve leaves a kink in your stomach when doing it?

P: Plan - consciously use one or more of your strengths to boost your weakness.

L: Leave - Decrease or eliminate if possible the need to perform that activity.

U: Unite - Find someone to perform that activity that is a weakness in your place.

G: Grow - If you have to continue this activity, find a way to improve such as training in the basics, then let it go.

Again I have included links to the articles and book mentioned in this episode as well as a link to access the CliftonStrengths assessment.

We will continue our discussion about strengths and more about the CliftonStrengths assessment on our next episode.  In the mean time, remember David writes in Psalm 139:14

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

You were given your strengths for a reason. Focus on them and be grateful for them.  Don’t beat you head against a wall focusing on your weaknesses, but rather learn to manage and minimize them.

• Soar With Your Strengths, Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson
• To Manage Your Weaknesses, Plug The Leaks, Brent O’ Bannon
• Gallup Clifton Strengths Assessment 
• Contact Craig