Sounds absurd doesn’t it?  No one would ever critique an elite quarterback for having a weakness in tackling.  Especially since he won three Super Bowls, two Super Bowl MVP awards, seven Pro Bowl selections and holds the NFL record for most touchdown passes in a single regular season. What gets highlighted are his strengths!

Why do we spend so much energy trying focusing on our weaknesses?

Management consultant Peter Drucker summed it up:

The effective executive… knows that one cannot build on weakness…. To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant.

Although Peter Drucker makes a strong case it’s hard to imagine a world in which weaknesses are irrelevant. For almost everyone, “weakness” is a dirty word, a concept we’d love to avoid but feel we can’t. We end up going through the motions when we have to. You’ll rarely make it through a job interview without being asked to discuss your weaknesses. Your performance reviews are laden with bullet points highlighting weaknesses addressed as “areas for improvement.” Rarely does your supervisor ask you to put together a plan that focuses on your strengths; having a road map intentionally designed around contributing your best to the organization.

In one of my recent workshops - Maximizing Your Strengths - a well-respected woman in a manufacturing company said to the group, “This is such a positive message. It has been wonderful to focus on strengths. It seems that so much of the emphasis is to focus on our weaknesses, pointing them out repeatedly. I would be more encouraged if I was taught how to manage my weaknesses and spend more energy getting better at my strengths.” Wow…it was a ringing endorsement!

She was right. You know what drags you down, what fills you with dread, what you’d never do again if your job didn’t require it.  Marcus Buckingham wrote,

“You may even be good at what you hate doing — but that doesn’t mean you don’t hate doing it. More often, what we hate and what we do badly overlap and reinforce each other in a vicious circle. It’s hard to love what you’re not good at, and it’s hard to get good at something you hate doing.”

What do we do with this vicious circle? I am happy to be associated with other coaches who help encourage people not to dwell on their weaknesses or obsess over how to fix them. We believe you get the best return on your investment by focusing your attention on your strengths. The good news is that research backs up our belief. “Workplace survey data over decades reveals that people who play to their strengths every day are much more engaged, less likely to quit, and much more likely to contribute to high-performing teams.”

What if we learned to simply manage our weaknesses and spent most of our energy building on our strengths?

Jim Collins – Good to Great (Chapter Five)

The Personal Analogy

Suppose you were able to construct a work life match that meets the following three tests.

You are doing work for which you have a genetic or God-given talent, and perhaps you could become one of the best in the world in applying that talent.

I feel that I was born to be doing this!

You are paid for what you do…playing to your strengths more than 75% of the time.

I get paid to do this!

You are doing work you are passionate about and that aligns with your purpose and values, enjoying the actual process for its own sake.

I look forward to getting up and throwing myself into my daily work, and really believe in what I’m doing!

If you could drive toward the intersection of these three circles and translate that intersection into a simple, crystalline concept that guided your life choices, then you’d have your personal Hedgehog.

So often we begin the new year with every intention of accomplishing a task(s), making a paradigm shift, or changing a habit. We might even play the mind-game of avoiding the word “resolution.” As I approach this year, both personally and with the people I coach, we might do well to dust off one of the principles proposed years ago by Stephen R Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – start with the end in mind:

“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you are going so that you better understand where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”

What strikes me is how Covey begins the chapter. He asks the reader to create a space that is both uninterrupted and alone. That is a bold ask! Given our activity-rich, jammed-packed schedules it almost seems like gibberish. It isn’t just the concept (Why) that is difficult to grasp but also the means (How) to step into it.

What if you decided to embark on two activities this month that would truly enhance your well-being and bring deeper levels of satisfaction? These activities won’t cost you money but will demand the attention of your mind, your heart, and your soul.

• Take the courageous step to block out 90 minutes of your schedule where you can be alone and uninterrupted; where you can breathe deeply and begin to think clearly. Open your spirit.

• Begin to ask yourself the questions with the end in mind. My encouragement is to write your answers. Here are just a few to start you off:

                       What would I like to be like at the end of 2012?

                      How can I think more often about things that are good, noble, and right?

                      What relationships would I like to nurture and what relationships should I give more distance?

                      What are my unique talents and how can I serve others more fully with them?

Here’s a thought from Strengths-Guru, Marcus Buckingham:

When most people hear the word “coach,” chances are they think of a middle-aged guy with a whistle around his neck barking orders at a bunch of athletes. Our stereotypical professional athletic coach works in a field in which the only thing that matters is results. He gets paid a lot of money to help people perform to the best of their abilities, and if coaching didn’t have an impact, he probably wouldn’t have a job.

Athletes and sports fans aren’t the only ones who care about excelling, though. So why shouldn’t the rest of us have coaches, too? A recent article by Atul Gawande, medical correspondent for The New Yorker, observes that a growing number of surgeons and other professionals are turning to coaches to help them improve on their technique and stay sharp (no surgical pun intended) as they advance in their careers. (December 2011, Inside Strengths)

What would it mean to have a coach pay attention to each client’s personal strengths, keeping a sharp eye out for abilities, skills, talents and other positive personal characteristics?

I am grateful for 2011, when CEOs invited me into their corner to support their effort to build a strengths-based organization through Maximizing Your Strengths workshops and monthly coaching sessions.

As we enter 2012, more CEOs have invited to me into their corner to support their effort as I lead Maximizing Your Strengths workshops with their senior teams.

Whatif…you put a coach into your corner?

The other day at an Advisory Committee Meeting I chair, the introductory questions was, “Name one thing for which you are grateful in the last two weeks.” One response was, “Summers in Michigan!”

Yup, there’s nothing like it. 

Last weekend Deb and I had the opportunity to enjoy some of Michigan’s beauty: Lake Charlevoix area.

I officiated a wedding on the south shore of Lake Charlevoix on Saturday evening. The setting was magnificent as the guests observed the wedding ceremony with Lake Charlevoix in the background. The reception was on the roof-top deck on star-lit evening cooled by the lake breeze.

Sunday we leisurely toured Charlevoix – walking out to the lighthouse – then Petoskey, and Little Traverse Bay. The myriad shades of the blue water were breath-taking. The next two days spent at Boyne Mountain Grand Lodge Resort lounging at the pool and reading couldn’t have been better.

Whatever you may do this summer to get-away, relax, recalibrate, or somehow take care of your spirit, may you truly be re-created:

RE-CREATE: to refresh by means of relaxation and enjoyment; restore physically or mentally

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Most people who know me would classify me as a reader. However, my reading is limited to a few key learning areas. To be truthful, I’ve never been drawn to novels or classics. My wife reads them rigorously. Per her consistent urging I may read one autobiography or history book a year (Last year it was Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.) She repeatedly tells me that I should expand my reading horizon, “It would be good for me. I think you will really enjoy them.” Her chastising has fallen on somewhat deaf ears. That is, until this summer.

As my son, who loves to read as much as if not more than his mother, and I prepared for our second annual “Man-Cation” my wife inquired which book I was taking. I was silent and then hemmed for enough time for her to shove Steinbeck’s East of Eden into my hands. Expressing just enough compassion combined with earnest intent, I got the message. My client made the comment just days later.

Here’s my confession. I had never read this classic before and not only did I read it, I enjoyed it. My wife wryly smiles at my admission. And, she is right, it IS good for me!

Parenthetically, yesterday I reconnected with a friend of mine who I haven’t seen for years, himself and avid reader. Of course, he inquired about what books I was reading. When he asked the question I noticed my overall response was more receptive. I spent the next minutes absorbing not only his interest in books but taking as many recommendations from him as I could. If it’s a sign, I got it!

With all that in mind, I share with you a quote from East of Eden – which most of you have probably already read – that I read for the first time and now on which I am reflecting:

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love…We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

 By Carolyn Mycue

Often times we use the words “respond” and “react” interchangeably.  Even when I check my MS Word 2000 thesaurus, the top synonym for each word is the other.  I’d like to take some time and share with you what I feel is a very fine but powerful distinction between the two.

When we react, we are coming from a place of limitation.  This limitation is the result of direct experiences that have caused us to narrow our ability to see a situation for what it really is.  These direct experiences cause us to think we know what something is about and what it means to us (good/bad/indifferent), and then when we come upon that thing again at a later time we react with a pre-established bias and with pre-established behavior.  Some of this type of reaction is useful and helpful, such as a reaction to imminent danger such as fire.

But by and large, most of our reactions take the form of personal indulgences or injustices.  These reactions limit how we see ourselves and the world around us, and are a large source of so much of our suffering and unhappiness.  They limit the possibility for us to act in a different way.  For example, if as a child you were the target of a lot of yelling, you develop coping mechanisms to deal with that behavior.  As an adult, without awareness of those coping mechanisms, you are probably going to react in much the same way as you did when you were a child.  These limitations prohibit us from being able to respond to situations and drain our empowerment to effectively make whatever changes we need to make.

A reaction also sets us up to play the victim in situations and then we try to, either inwardly or outwardly, make the situation or person wrong.  A good example of this can be seen in situations where we find ourselves saying “You’re behavior makes me feel (insert feeling here).”  An important distinction is that no one’s behavior can ever make you feel anything.  What you feel as a result of someone’s behavior is up to you.  To use the above example, if someone yells at me, I can react from a place of feeling threatened if that’s what my past conditioning has set me up to do.  Or if I am aware enough of those triggers, I can recognize that there are many other ways I could act, and then I can choose from that list of actions and respond accordingly.

So the distinction there is that no one is making me feel anything.  They are doing what they are doing, and it’s my pre-established bias that makes me feel a certain way.  If I can recognize that trigger, I can open myself up to new options and respond to the situation more compassionately.

So to be able to respond means I am free to act instead of react to a situation.  It opens me up to more gracious behavior, and empowers me to effectively make whatever changes need to be made without adding more fuel to the fire by triggering the other person’s reactions.  Responsibility means “the ability to respond”, and when we reclaim that power, we can diffuse difficult situations, we can modify our harmfully indulgent behaviors, and we begin to find a new deeper level of trust for ourselves in this world.  We are then free to love difficult situations as much as we love the lovable ones because they no longer threaten us, and those responsible actions of love are far more powerful than any reaction of fear.

Carol’s Blog- http://carolynmycue.wordpress.com

Transformational people are externally-open!

Let’s set the stage. Being someone who is externally-open does NOT mean you need to be an extrovert nor be a person who is non-principled or can be easily swayed. Rather, it means having an openness to learn and become aware (of yourself and situations around you).

When I served as the general manager of a conference center we continually stressed the importance of being open to new ideas or processes. It didn’t matter if the process made sense and would make the job more efficient, there was some type of push-back – some more intense than others – that the new approach would make matters worse or even damage morale. We also taught our employees that owning a mistake and displaying a willingness to learn from it revealed emotional maturity and should be pursued. Yet, they would remind us how difficult it was to avoid the first response to blame someone else or lie to avoid responsibility.

We humans share a common trait, we go to great lengths to defend the status-quo or what we perceive as “normal.” Routine is not bad; mindless routine is. Consistency is beneficial; mindless consistency is debilitating. Defending a principle is not bad; being closed-minded is. The question is, “Are you open?”

How do I know if I am internally-closed? Evaluate your response when change is suggested, constructive criticism is offered, or your point of view challenged. Do you roll your eyes, huff, or mumble under your breath, “Whatever!”? Do you feel yourself shutting down; not listening? Are you preparing your defense instead of using your energy to listen and learn? Do you find yourself blaming others, passing the buck, or repeatedly saying, “No!” If you do, these are signs that you may be bordering on being internally-closed.

Transformational people – who are pursuing inner transformation and a new normal – choose a different perspective. They intentionally put rhythms in their life to support the “why”: they seek to become people who are externally-open.

• They are aware of their tendency to resist anything that challenges their “normal” and  make conscious decisions to become more aware of themselves and the situations they are in
• They become avid learners of themselves
• They seek feedback and look for the kernels of truth
• They are open to the possibilities of being challenged
• They take themselves less seriously and are open to more enjoyment and fun

What if… you took the opportunity to become aware and open to learn?