Strengthening strengths: 3 cases when this strategy fails
You have to strengthen your strengths to weaken the weaknesses! This strategy sounds obvious and so it has haunted all guides for more success in life and at work for decades. But it’s not that easy! Many fail in the implementation of the basic requirement: the awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses. What I don’t know, I can’t reinforce. However, even if you fully understand your strengths, this strategy can lead you in the wrong direction. Here are 3 cases when the strengths-strengths strategy fails and what you should pay attention to instead.
Case 1: You do not recognize your strengths
This case is the classic. The lack of awareness of one’s own strengths. “What can I do?” I hear this particularly often from experienced professionals who have forgotten what actually sets them apart in the course of their careers. There are many reasons for this: Dissatisfaction blocks a clear view of one’s own strengths. Job seekers, for example, who have their resignation on the table or who have already run through many unsuccessful applications, doubt themselves. They only see deficits, but not a single strength. You can only strengthen your strengths if you are aware of your strengths and value them as strengths.
Your backpack is also full of strengths!
I like the image of the rucksack that each of us carries on our backs for our whole life and that over time fills with strengths, skills, knowledge, experience, and developed talents. Perhaps something gets lost from the backpack now and then because we believe we no longer need something or simply forget it. But the bottom line is that our backpack becomes bulkier and bulkier with increasing life and work experience. Sometimes in a difficult situation, I imagine myself rummaging in my backpack for a strength that I could use but do not have at hand. In most cases, I will find what I am looking for and remember previous situations in which I have used this strength before. Take a look into your “backpack” and discover again what is hidden there.
The habit-trap: when strengths become routine
This is the other case of no longer recognizing your own strengths. The more you can use your strengths well, the more they lose their special status. A lot of people tell me “It’s normal, everyone can do it!” And at the same time I often think and say “Well, I can’t do that!” Just because you submit a suggestion for improvement every month and the company awards it every time, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s normal. It has become routine for you, but your colleagues or the boss will still ask themselves the question “How does she/he manage it?”
Remember your strengths again!
I came across my certificate from elementary school while looking for my vaccination record in my folder of documents last week. I already knew then that I would write an article about strengths here on the blog. And when I read through my second-grade report card, I became very different:
“Interest and open-mindedness for new things. Contributing to the collaboration and enriching. Persistent perseverance, independent way of working, quickly and very carefully. Quick comprehension and strong solution orientation. A clearly structured writing style, few mistakes. Language appropriate and skillful. Good understanding of numbers.”
For those who know me a little better: Isn’t that crazy ?! No, I don’t mean how great I am (that’s nothing special – laughs), but what strengths and characteristics today were so obvious to me as an 8-year-old. It is written here what so many applicants are desperately looking for: According to their personal strengths and abilities, which they define and which they can often no longer formulate for themselves as adults.
Perhaps you can still find your old certificates and have a goosebumps moment like I had last week. It can also be that your strengths have changed over time and the comparison is not as clear for you as it is for me. But even then you can think about whether and which of the strengths of the past can still be useful for you today and whether it is worthwhile or how you can reactivate them.
Strengthening strengths is a good strategy if you are aware of your strengths and can appreciate them.
Case 2: Your strengths conflict with your values
I would like to introduce Claudia to you: She is real writing talent. Your texts are well received. She has written two books so far – both bestsellers. A year ago she received an offer from a major daily newspaper for permanent employment. She accepted it. A contribution every day, that was her default. But the joy of writing that she used to have disappeared very quickly. She liked the texts less and less and her bosses were also dissatisfied. Claudia knows today that independence is one of her most important values. With the permanent position and the daily goal, this value was violated. That affected their strength. She needs the freedom to write good texts. Today Claudia works as a freelance journalist again and has found her way back to her old writing strength.
Strengths and values belong together. Strengthening strengths without looking at your own values can lead in the wrong direction. No matter how perfect you are at something, as long as this strength violates one of the values that are important to you, you will get into an inner conflict. If you bend in your personality to use strength in a certain context or if you move away from your real goals and values, then this will weaken you rather than strengthen you in the long run.
What strengthens you and what weakens you?
When I talk to applicants about their strengths and weaknesses – this often happens because they are afraid of this question in the interview, then I modify the question and we talk about what strengthens them and what also weakens them. This is a different perspective that goes beyond the simple strengths and weaknesses view. Because she questions the motives and causes as well as the effect of strengths and weaknesses: the exhausting colleague who steals your energy. The important presentation in front of a group that sucks the batteries empty in advance. The walk with the dog, which gives you new energy every day. The praise from the boss, which motivates and encourages. Often, further indications of strengths and weaknesses can be derived from this observation and they are related to the values in work and life, which I believe is so important.
Strengthening strengths is a good strategy if the strengths are in harmony with your values, goals, and your personality.
Case 3: Your strengths are unimportant for your environment
I had to think of this case when I read Svenja Hofert’s new book about the fish pond effect. She says: “People often develop better when their strengths are more pronounced than others. So it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small one in a big one. ”
Yes, strengths are always relative. Your strengths in the team are then relatively insignificant as long as there is a colleague who is better at it. Perhaps your particular strength is not even asked for: If you are great at using Excel and you really enjoy tables and formulas, but your task is to create colorful PowerPoint presentations, then your strength there is pretty worthless. It makes no sense here to get even better at Excel because strengthening this strength would not change anything in this environment.
Many bosses don’t delegate tasks because they think they can do them better or faster themselves. In this case, strengthening strengths can be a solution for an employee to move up to the top division again, but it doesn’t have to be. Because then he tries to be better than the colleague or the boss in an area and the race begins. Even if it can inspire a team in the short term, the expansion of this strength would be externally determined and does not have to correspond to one’s own motivation.
In this case, it would be smarter to either swim to a different corner of the fish pond or to specifically strengthen those “own” strengths that are needed in the small pond but are not yet available, making it easier for you to get a big one Can be fish.
Strengthening strengths is a good strategy if your strengths are valuable in the current living or working environment.