As Amelia, a Vice Chairman in a large multinational organization, walked into the meeting room filled with 35 Exco members and SVPs she was a bit nervous. After all, only last year these people were all her peers, and most of them have been in the organization longer than she had. She sat down, took a sip from her tall cup of water, and observed the faces of her friends and colleagues. She was unsure if they were ready to hear what she was about to say, but it was high time they did.
Taking a deep breath, she recounted her path in the organization; joining only six years ago as a young VP, she experienced a rapid ascent to the role of Vice Chairman, becoming the youngest Exco member last year. It was not an easy path, she admitted, but what helped her cover that distance in such a short time was a feedback session she had with her manager almost five years ago.
“Walking into my manager’s office with pen and paper in hand, I was ready to note down all my areas for improvement. To my surprise, my manager started talking about all my abilities and strengths. Oh well, I thought to myself, this is one of those feedback-sandwich sessions; once my manager is done with the positive feedback, she will finally get to the important parts. But then our time was up, and my manager concluded our talk, and walked me to the door. I was confused.
Preparing to leave her office I turned around and asked, “But what about my points of weaknesses and areas for improvements? We never got to talk about that.” My manager smiled. Dear Amelia, she said, let me tell you the most important lesson I learned during my career: “if you want to become better, focus on your weakness, if you want to become exceptional, focus on your strengths.”
I didn’t know what Amelia would share during her talk, but it ended up being the perfect setup for our two-and-a-half day top leadership retreat on “Reconnecting with your Best Self”, a deep dive training into the power of strength-based leadership.
Strength-based leadership
I started teaching strength-based leadership in 2016 after reading a Gallup article titled “Employees Who Use Their Strengths Outperform Those Who Don’t” [1] – I remember rereading the article’s headline just to make sure I was getting it right. Seriously? I asked myself, isn’t it obvious that those who use their strengths would do a better job, stay longer, and experience less burnout?
The article intrigued me, and I delved deeper into the research to look for more data. It didn’t take long before I found an answer, and it was not a pleasant one.
In one survey [2] 1.7 million employees working in 101 companies in 63 countries were asked a simple question: “At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?”
The result? Only twenty percent answered yes to this question (or even less[3]). This was very confusing for me. The question was not “are you doing what you do best all day every day” but “do you have the opportunity” to do what you do best.
This meant that 4 out of 5 employees do not have (or use) the opportunity to do what they do best even sometimes during their work day.
And the worst part? Results show that the more senior you are the less likely you would be to play to your strengths, a phenomenon also known as the “seniority trap.”
The benefits of strength-based leadership
These findings are disheartening, especially when there is staggering evidence of the positive effect of strength-based leadership on work performance, lower churn rate, happiness, and even health.
Multiple studies have found that employees who feel they are allowed to be at their best at work are 6 times more likely to be engaged at work [4], experience 8% to 18% increase in performance, 29% increased profits, 59% fewer safety incidents, 72% lower turnover (in high-turnover organizations) [5,6], improved creativity, increased ability to perform under pressure and stress, closer social connections, and even better health and enhanced resilience to disease [7,8,9,10].
So why don’t we as leaders focus on our strengths?
Usually, it is because of these 3 misconceptions:
Misconception #1: To grow, leaders need to focus on areas of improvement not strengths.
As we have previously seen with Amelia’s story, this is one of the most common and persistent misconceptions around strength-based leadership. However, this approach leads to what some researchers call an endless “remedial path” [3], compelling us to continually work hard in order to be average at work, instead of focusing on what truly makes us shine.
What you should do instead: In my work with leaders I often help them focus on what they do best, while making sure they build a team around them that would support them in their areas of improvement.
Misconception #2: Leaders need to first focus on their weaknesses before their strengths
While this concepts seems well balanced, it does not take into account how our brain works. Evolution has structured our brain in such a way that triggers us to feel much more pain when we focus on the bad than it rewards us for the good. In 2001 Roy Baumeister wrote in his seminal work [11]:
“In our review, we have found bad to be stronger than good in a disappointingly relentless pattern…The lack of exceptions suggests how basic and powerful is the greater power of bad. In our view, this difference may be one of the most basic and far reaching psychological principles.”
What you should do instead: First, start by focusing on your own strengths as well as the strengths of your employees, and only then use these qualities and abilities (I call them Super-Powers) in order to work on your areas of weakness. In my work, I often see that when leaders are at their best, those huge insurmountable mountains can quickly become gentle rolling hills.
Misconception #3: Focusing on your strengths would only lead to stagnation, not growth
This misconception is based on the belief that when leaders are at their best, they tend to rest on their laurels. However, as we saw above, research [4-10] as well as my own experience show that when leaders are able to bring their best self to work they are happier, more motivated, creative, resilient, and feel a sense of purpose.
What you should do instead: Having the opportunity to do what you do best every day at work removes a lot of inner friction – but it is by no means smooth sailing.
When people tell me that leaders who focus on their strength rather than their areas of improvements are choosing the easy path, I am reminded of E.E Cummings’ poem:
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”
A week following our retreat I received this email from Amelia:
Dear Yaron,
I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for facilitating our leadership retreat last week.
It was truly an amazing experience. Wow!
Our team has never felt so close before.
Your ability to gently guide and unite us as a team, giving each participant the feeling that they matter was invaluable.
Since the retreat, our team has been actively engaged in collaborative discussions to explore new ways of incorporating more Moments of Light into our teamwork, which led us to continue to work together on our shared vision.
I want to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and energy you put into ensuring the success of the retreat. Your professionalism and dedication have made a significant impact, and for that, I extend my heartfelt thanks.References:
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Flade, P., Asplund, J., & Elliot, G. (2015). Employees who use their strengths outperform those who don’t. Gallup News.
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Buckingham, M., Clifton, D. O., & from Now, E. (2001). The Strengths Revolution. Gallup Management.
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Grant, A. , Buckingham, M. (2019) When Strength Becomes Weakness, WorkLife Podcast, TED
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Robison, J. (2020). Your Best Day at Work (and How to Have More Like It). Gallup News.
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N.A. (2020). Strengths Development & Coaching. Gallup.
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O’Keefe S.M (2015).How CEOs Can Transform Their Culture With Clifton Strengths, Gallup
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Alexander, R., Aragón, O. R., Bookwala, J., Cherbuin, N., Gatt, J. M., Kahrilas, I. J., … & Styliadis, C. (2021). The neuroscience of positive emotions and affect: Implications for cultivating happiness and wellbeing. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 121, 220-249.
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Cable, D. M., Gino, F., & Staats, B. R. (2013). Breaking them in or eliciting their best? Reframing socialization around newcomers’ authentic self-expression. Administrative science quarterly, 58(1), 1-36.
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Cable, D. M., Lee, J. J., Gino, F., & Staats, B. R. (2015). How best-self activation influences emotions, physiology and employment relationships.
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Fujishiro, K., & Heaney, C. A. (2017). “Doing what I do best”: The association between skill utilization and employee health with healthy behavior as a mediator. Social science & medicine, 175, 235-243.
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Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of general psychology, 5(4), 323-370.
