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| Developing Your Strengths or Fixing Your Weaknesses |
| Overcoming the Lure of the Wrong Choice |
John Zenger, CEO |
| ZENGER FOLKMAN
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One of the basic questions facing everyone creating a personal development plan is the fundamental question of whether to focus attention on correcting faults and failings or whether to focus on building strengths.
Like many questions that appear simple, there are some interesting complexities. The answer to the question depends on the competencies of the person involved. And the answer for any one person can vary over time.
Leaders fall into three categories
The first issue to be considered is whether or not the person in question possesses one or more “fatal flaws.” After analyzing over 6,000 leaders in our data base on the dimension of possessing strengths or weaknesses, we observed that they are arrayed into three, roughly equal categories.
The following chart summarizes those three groups and how they are perceived by the people who work with them.
- The first group consists of those who have one or more weaknesses.
We’ve defined that serious weakness as a “fatal flaw.” It describes some
behavior at the 1st to the 10th percentile. Note that as a group that they are
seen to be performing at the 18th percentile in the eyes of their peers, direct
reports and bosses.
- The second group consists of those who have neither strengths nor
weaknesses. Strengths are behaviors or competencies at the 90th percentile
and above. This second group also has about one-third of the population
of leaders in it. Overall it is seen as performing right in the middle of the
curve, or at the 50th percentile.
- Third, there is a group of leaders who have one or more strengths and it
also contains approximately one-third of the leader population. As a
group they are perceived as performing at the 81st percentile.1
When a “strengths focus” is poor advice
Having a “fatal flaw” gets in the leader’s way. This leader should not spend time working on developing strengths at this time. It is extremely important to first correct the obvious flaw. Only when it is been improved does it become useful for a person in the left hand group to work on developing a strength. Therefore, for one-third of the leader population, the focus should be to correctly identify the weakness and get it fixed.
Here’s a metaphor that may help to explain that principle. You need a piano moved into a second story apartment, and it won’t fit in the elevator. You hire two men to move your piano. Let’s assume there’s a state of physical fitness that the average piano mover enjoys and we’ll call that “0”. If our piano movers have the flu, have broken limbs or bad backs; they are in minus territory. Getting them back to “0” is mandatory if the job is to get done. This is the arena where working on weaknesses is necessary and pays off.
But getting our piano movers to zero is not sufficient. In this case, being strong, having the stamina to carry the piano up two flights of stairs and having the ability to balance this heavy object as they go---those are the strengths they’ll need. It is the presence of strengths that ultimately gets the piano upstairs. After getting over the flu, having the broken leg heal and their back muscles no longer painful, then they can get in good condition to move the piano.
Much of our work in counseling, coaching and behavioral therapy has been to get people who are in negative territory up to ground zero. We can’t over emphasize the need to get that done. But never forget that such work only gets you to ground zero. Now the focus has to be on the “positive deviance” side of the equation where the real payoff comes. That is when building strengths come in to play.
The challenge of fixing a weakness
Leaders are prone to believe that they know their weaknesses and their strengths. Our data confirms that self-scores on a 360 degree feedback instrument are notoriously deviant from everyone else’s. As a rule, people are not accurate in their perception of their weaknesses nor their strengths. That is why the 360 degree feedback process is so valuable. It ensures that people have more accurate data, which in turn provides both guidance and motivation in the improvement process.
We believe that in general, fixing weaknesses is harder that building strengths; but motivated people with low scores need only do a few new things to begin to change those perceptions into positive territory.
When building strengths is the correct advice
A popular idea of late has been to have leaders focus on developing their strengths and largely ignore their weaknesses. When is that good advice? For the second and third groups, or those leaders without any detracting weakness, working on strengths is good advice.
To start with, it is clear that extraordinary leaders possess strengths. In our data base containing 360 degree feedback results for tens of thousands of leaders, here’s what the data shows:
a. 64% have no strengths (that’s roughly the bottom and middle third)
b. 11 percent have only 1 strength
c. 15% have from 2 to 5 strengths
d. 10% have six or more.
Organizations differ. In one extremely well managed financial services organization we found that 46% of the leaders had no strength, and that 33% had six or more. This “rabbit ears” distribution of strengths signaled a big opportunity for development of leadership skills with the nearly half who possessed no strengths at all.
The challenge of getting leaders to focus on strengths
However, convincing leaders to develop their strengths rather than hack away at their weaknesses is hard work. Like Ulysses’ sailors being drawn to the Siren’s song, despite all the passionate encouragement we can give, the majority of leaders gravitate toward fixing their weaknesses.
For example, when we go back to groups of leaders who have put together their personal development plan some 12 to 18 months earlier, we discover that about 60% are working on weaknesses, nearly twice as many as should be. The tacit assumption appears to be something like: “My strengths came from some unseen source. They will take care of themselves. My job is to discover what I’m bad at and work on that. That’s what ‘real development’ is all about.”
Is it because so much of our early childhood development consisted of parents and teachers focusing on correcting weakness? Is it some deeply imbedded cultural norm from which no one escapes? There are many possibilities, and no one knows the answer.
Important strengths:
Strengths obviously range from the trivial to the titanic. Being really good at “Guitar Hero II” may elevate you in your teenager’s eyes; but would seldom be relevant to your work. We view strengths as important job skills or behaviors that apply to many situations, endure over an extended period and produce excellent results for the organization. Our operational definition of a strength is a behavior or trait that is seen by the combination of your boss, your peers and direct reports as something that you do at the 90th percentile. In other words, you’re really good at it. It is also something that has been shown to be important to people who lead in organizations. It differentiates those who excel from those who lag.
The history of focusing on strengths
The first person whom we recall talking about strengths was Peter Drucker. In a variety of his speeches, writing and training films dating back to the 1950’s, Drucker highlighted the value of focusing on someone strengths and lamented the strange process of companies hiring people for their skills and then immediately identifying their flat sides and expecting them to correct these deficiencies. With Drucker it was the leader’s strengths that made the difference. Regrettably it appears that no one listened.
In the past decade we’ve had the advent of “appreciative inquiry” by David Cooperider, which is the application of the strengths philosophy at the organization level. We’ve also had the Marcus Buckingham books on the need for employees to discover their strengths. Our work at Zenger Folkman has focused on the relationship of strengths with extraordinary leadership. Our research confirmed that a small number of strengths, specifically 4 or 5, elevated leaders to the top levels of their organization.
The appeal of strengths
There is a strong logic to the argument about working on strengths. People seldom argue against the philosophy. This is reinforced when you show the compelling data that clearly shows that effective leadership is directly correlated with the number of strengths a person possesses. Add to that that working on strengths, for most people, is more appealing and fun. They smile when they think about doing that and frown when they think about working on a weakness.
What is the allure of working on weaknesses?
There’s something appealing about Mary Poppins who proclaims, “I’m practically perfect in every way.” We all admire Thomas Jefferson who could write brilliantly, manage a plantation, invent and build clever devices for his home in Montecello and ultimately serve his country as President.
In a strange way our educational system begins with expecting every child to do well in every subject and it isn’t until late in college and graduate school that we seem to acknowledge that people specialize and become good in specific and increasingly narrow fields.
But the explosion of knowledge and technology has virtually made the Renaissance person a myth and illusion. That isn’t to say that we can’t have broad ranging interests or that we can’t learn new things. But simultaneously excelling in science, art, literature, music, business and philosophy does not frequently happen in the world today.
The reality is that most adults begin to gravitate toward some groupings of skills and traits that enable them to succeed in some occupational family. They gravitate toward numbers and become accountants and bookkeepers. Or, they enjoy solving problems and investigating things and become researchers. Some are fluent with words and ideas and move to occupations that reward that. Others are mechanically minded and move toward automotive repair and maintenance. Still others enjoy designing and creating objects, or software. The list goes on and on. In today’s world, it is simply impossible to be excellent at everything.
Acquiring strengths
Strengths can be acquired by most people, if they make the decision to do it and then put in the study and practice required to make it happen. Effort and determination, coupled with hours of practice produce miraculous results.
One key ingredient that is missing for many people is accurate information about progress. Having a source of accurate, regular feedback ensures that you are working on the right things. It also provides strong incentive and motivation for you to continue working on this topic and added incentive to proceed.
People can grow and develop. Children demonstrate that in amazing ways. Their ability to learn new skills and acquire new bodies of information is a joyful process. We have compelling data to support that proves that if adults will focus on their strengths they will have far greater success in their development. In a study conducted with 141 leaders in a packaged food company we saw the following result:
Note that while the group that focused on weaknesses made some improvement, 12% to be exact, that the group worked on a combination of strengths and weaknesses improved 36%, or exactly three times as much.
Conclusion
The answer to our original question becomes clear. If you possess a profound weakness then work on that. Working on strengths is relatively futile until that is rectified. Once the serious weakness is corrected, instantly begin to work on developing strengths. It is the presence of a handful of strengths that will make you the strong leader your organization needs. The latter activity will be more fun and you’ll feel yourself making more progress.
1 (We should note that 2% of leaders have both strengths and weaknesses, but because this is such a small portion of all leaders, we’ll ignore them for purposes of this analysis.)
About the Author
John H. Zenger, D.B.A., is the CEO of Zenger Folkman, a firm that brings empirical research, innovative development methods, and software tools to leadership development. He is a member of the HRD Hall of Fame, and has authored or coauthored eight books and 50 articles on leadership, productivity, and teams. His latest book, The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate (McGraw-Hill, 2009) is due out in June.
About Zenger Folkman
Since 2003, Zenger Folkman (www.ZengerFolkman.com) has been providing leadership and
performance development that directly drives an organization’s profitability. Founded on
pioneering, empirical research using 360-assessments and other surveys, Zenger Folkman has
built one of the world’s largest collections of leadership research data. Based on that data,
Zenger Folkman has crafted a set of practical and provable techniques that focus on building
strengths in today’s modern business environment. Using implementation tools, personalized
coaching and more, their approach lifts the performance of leaders, coaches and individual
contributors to deliver today’s most sensible and flexible leadership training programs.
Global HR News, an independent media company based in California, is involved in assembling and distributing news & information which impacts "global hr" decision-making, and the people and companies affected. For more info about our programs and policies please contact us soon; thank you.
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