Do You Know Your Strengths?

"You are braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think"  --- Christopher Robin in "Pooh's Grand Adventure:  The Search for Christopher Robin."

Not sure if you have ever read any of Marcus Buckingham's books (First, Break All the Rules; Then, Discover Your Strengths; Now, Put Your Strengths to Work), but I've read the most recent one Now, Put Your Strengths to Work and saw him speak at a local Society of Human Resources Management lunch meeting.  He's a dynamic, powerful speaker.   See my notes below and if anyone is interested in the material, I'll gladly share.   

Personally, I do agree with his theory on "strengths" -- which is that we need a paradigm shift to start focusing on our strengths so that we can go from good to great, rather than focusing on our weaknesses/development opportunities where we would go from very bad to just bad.  Marcus was on an Oprah show last Friday, April 18.  The Oprah Show contacted Marcus last April.  He and his crew came to Chicago, filmed a three hour Workshop and then coached the participants - talented women from all walks of life - over the following five months.  The workshop participants shared their stories of how they've been able to significantly increase their performance, at work and in life.

I've also learned his company helped publish a new book for parents on how to discover the strengths of your children:  Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them by Jenifer Fox.  I think this is an incredible way to view yourself and your children/loved ones.  This was further validated while I watched "Dancing with the Stars" last night.  Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic Gold Medalist, revealed that she was born with club feet!!!  I was astounded, when the hostess asked her how she overcame her disability, she politely said "Well, I had a lot of corrective surgeries as a child.  I had some obstacles to overcome, but I just focused on my strengths".  Cool.  Likely she had parents that helped her focus on her strengths too!

Here's my notes from that presentation: 

Psychologist, physicians, etc. all study what's wrong (depression, disease, etc.).  Marcus believes that thinking is flawed, its like “study what’s bad and then invert it to make it good”.   He noted Martin Seligman (former APA President) who said something like 500,000 articles on depression and only 400 or so on happiness.

Premise of the talk (and the book, and the training DVDs, that he’s selling) is that we all as individuals, need to capitalize on our strengths instead of trying to develop our weaknesses.  Here’s the tangibles I got out of it:

• Copy of book GO Put Your Strengths to Work
• “Access” online to his new “Strength Engagement Track” (taking a test)  and free electronic download of 2 videos that are in a series of 6 altogether.
• Benchmarking study on the Strength Engagement Track and high performing teams
• Nice reprint of his HBR article “What Great Managers Do”
• Information on an all girls school that is teaching “Strengths Based” curriculum (very cool)
• A copy of his powerpoint, including more data on the “high performing teams” he studied.

For my personal development, I will be reading the book and taking the Strength Engagement Track, as well as looking at the other materials.  He has very interesting, innovative ideas.  He is calling this the “Strengths Movement”.  A PBS special is coming soon.  (Made it more credible to me.)

He gave a very dynamic lecture, urging participants to be leaders in the “Strengths Movement, but also noted that the airlines are right - “put your own mask on before assisting others”.  He talked about this not only as leveraging your strengths at work, but a paradigm shift that includes using your strengths, finding and nurturing your children’s strengths, etc.   

Other things I paid attention to were how interesting this book is and how it applies to individuals and companies. 

Rebecca Drzewiecki
Aon Consulting
Human Capital - Talent Solutions
Southfield, MI  48075

Comments

[Craig]

You don't believe in Buckingham's strength theory?

Where would great sports figures like Tiger Woods be without utilizing his strengths?

How about Warren Buffett? He will be the first to tell you (and has in fact said) that he is successful because the talents he uses are natural to him.

Research shows that the most effective leaders perform a great deal of work in their strength zone. Most of those leaders say that their job doesn't feel like work.

I could go on for a long time with examples.

Certainly, everyone must work with weaknesses, or other tasks that they're not strong in, every day at work but those that can spend a majority of time on their strengths are the top performers in the world.

[Jenny]

I also think the all-girls strengths-based education sounds cool. I attended an all girls boarding school, women's college and graduate school (not purposefully, it just kind of worked out that way), and feel very strongly about the single-sex approach to educating - especially for girls/women. If my teachers had read YOUR CHILD'S STRENGTHS, the quality of my education would have been even more ideal. Having read the book myself, I feel it is helping me deal with my own teenage daughters (who happen to balk at the idea of a non-coed high school experience). Whatever the educational situation, the concept of nuturing and encouraging one's strengths, as opposed to dwelling on your shortcomings is so simple and obvious that it causes that 'I could have had a V8' moment'.

[Corbette Doyle]

I love the story Rebecca. My Talent Development team has taken Buckingham's "Strengths Finder" assessment and we post our top 5 talents (great conversation starters!) So we're big fans of the "strengths movement." We've had good feedback from leadership development participants we've taken through this assessment as well.