Perhaps the biggest fad to sweep through management in the last decade wasthe strengths movement. Itsmessage was that you should build on natural talent to maximize strengthsrather than try to improve weaknesses. It was the brainchild of Donald Clifton, the late grandfather of Positive Psychology, but isassociated in the popular culture with Marcus Buckingham, Clifton's coauthor of Now, Discover Your Strengths(2001).
Like any successful movement, the strengths movement drove a single issueand inevitably left out a lot. Although several important things gotoverlooked, we want to call attention to a very real danger: Strengths canbecome weaknesses when overused.
Our new book, Fear Your Strengths(2013), is a cautionary tale based on 50 years of combined experience assessingthousands of leaders and coaching hundreds of executives. We've seen virtuallyevery strength taken too far: confidence to the point of hubris, and humilityto the point of diminishing oneself. We've seen vision drift into aimlessdreaming, and focus narrow down to tunnel vision. Show us a strength and we'llgive you an example where its overuse has compromised performance and probablyeven derailed a career.
We've studied the extent of the problem with an innovative assessmenttool, the Leadership Versatility Index. The tool uses the 360 method ofgathering ratings from bosses, peers, and subordinates, but instead of thetypical five-point rating scale that assumes "more is better" it hasa unique scale that ranges from "too little" to "the rightamount" to "too much." Coworkers can therefore indicate if amanager overdoes it on four dimensions of behavior: forceful, enabling,strategic, and operational. Most executives are rated "toomuch" on at least one of these dimensions [PDF].
Further, the more pronounced your natural talent and the stronger yourstrengths, the graver the risk of taking them to counterproductive extremes. In one study, we compared coworker ratings on theLeadership Versatility Index to leaders' strengths as identified by the CliftonStrengthsFinder, a questionnaire that managers fill out themselves to identifytheir natural talent. There was a clear correlation between having talent incertain areas and overdoing behaviors associated with those talents. Forinstance, leaders whose StrengthsFinder results indicated such talents as"Achiever," "Activator," or "Command" were moreoften rated as doing "too much" forceful leadership. Similarly, thosewho had the talents "Developer," "Harmony," or"Includer" were more often rated as doing "too much" enablingleadership. Overall, leaders were five times more likely to overdo behaviorsrelated to their areas of natural talent than areas in which they were lessgifted.
Taking these strengths too far has consequences. Across thousands ofmanagers ranging from middle management to CEOs and spanning the US, LatinAmerica, Europe, and Asia, we find a curvilinear relationship between leaderbehavior and employee engagement, team productivity, and effectiveness. Inevery case, these outcomes are lower for managers rated "too little"on the leader behaviors, peak for those rated "the right amount," anddrop back down for those rated "too much." Overdoing it is just as ineffective as underdoing it.
One of the more counterintuitive things we have discovered is that notonly do many leaders not know what their strengths are, but they also downplay and deflect feedback about theirstrengths. It takes extra effort to get the strengths to sink in, but doing sois prerequisite to fine-tuning how you use them. Fine-tuning is an art that requiresan exquisite blendof both self-awareness and situational awareness.
Be aware of yourself. To handle thechallenges that come your way, you must be able to read and respond adeptly.This requires knowing your default tendencies — for instance if you are moreachievement-oriented and commanding, then you may be biased to respond tooforcefully. Self-awareness allows you to respond mindfully to the needs beforeyou, rather than out of habit. As one executive exclaimed upon making theconnection, "I don't have to give up my fastball; I just don't have to throw it all thetime!"
Be aware of the situation. We find ithelpful for leaders to think of adjusting their strengths like a volume control[PDF]. The trick is to get the setting just right for the situation — from softmusic for a quiet, intimate exchange, to a louder and lively level for a danceparty. Knowing how much passion to put in a speech, how seriously to stress aconcern, how long to let a discussion go on, how deep to get into the details,how fast to drive a change initiative — all of this requires a deft touch,equal parts knowing your own strength and knowing your audience.
Itis neglectful if not irresponsible to emphasize strengths without warningleaders that the stronger the strength, the greater the danger of taking it toofar. Toning downoverused strengths requires a different approach from the skill development neededto improve upon a weakness, where the challenge is adding to a repertoire with basicskill building. Getting a strength under control is about refining a skill youalready have. It requires learning to be more selective about what situationscall for that strength and calibratinghow much is enough, versus too much