Embracing our strengths...why does that seem so hard?

Is it just me or is it really hard to focus on your strengths instead of your weaknesses?

I suspect I’m not alone on this one.

Actually, I know I’m not.

I’ve been doing leadership development work for upwards of 20 years. I’ve debriefed literally hundreds (maybe even thousands) of personality assessments and 360’s in my career. And a common theme I see in at least 90% of all those cases is people zero in on their “weaknesses”. Especially with 360’s…they gloss over the positive scores/comments and nosedive straight for the critique.

And I have always coached individuals to at least be fair…give as much time to your positive attributes as you do to your shortcomings.

But as I sat through a Strengths Finders session today as part of the UB CEL program, I thought to myself…do I practice what I preach? Do I focus on my strengths enough? Or just the things I can and “should” be doing better?

I’m think I’m guilty of the latter.

Makes me think…what feels so uncomfortable about focusing on our strengths? And why does focusing on our weaknesses feel more natural?

Is it a confidence thing? Need for perfection thing? Are we just compelled to “fix” things?

Not that our shortcomings should be ignored…quite the contrary. We need to have awareness, so they don’t get in the way of us reaching our goals. But what if we gave equal attention to our strengths?

Owned them.

Developed them.

Harnessed them.

How might we be different?

I hear about imposter syndrome a lot…especially from women. And I’m not immune to it. At least once a day the thought crosses my mind, “Who am I to be starting my own business…am I crazy?”

But what if we flipped the ratio of thought from our shortcomings to our strengths. To success. Would imposter syndrome go away? Would fear settle down? Would our confidence soar?

Probably.

So why don’t we do it more?

Maybe we take our strengths for granted.

“Nothin special here.”

Quite the contrary actually. I was shocked by a statistic that was shared today in our StrengthsFinder class. 1 in 33 million share your unique combination of strengths.

1 in 33 million.

That is truly mind blowing. Really brings to life how unique each of us are.

What if we got uncomfortable and harnessed that uniqueness to conquer our fears and become the absolute best version of ourselves? Not ignoring our shortcomings but also not letting them overpower our brilliance, our light.

And in actuality, when we do focus on building our strengths, we are more likely to be successful in strengthening those muscles than our weaker ones. Why?

Because our strengths give us energy! We enjoy them. We naturally gravitate to them.

One of my favorite leadership books is Multipliers by Liz Wiseman. She speaks about a concept called native genius. These are strengths that come so naturally to you, you may not even realize you have them!  But others see it.

Not sure what your native genius might be? StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Gallup is a great place to start- you can buy the book, and it gives you code to take the assessment.

Or ask around! Ask your friends, partner, peers at work…people you trust and who will be honest with you. “What do you think my strengths are?” You might be surprised at what you find out.

And then get uncomfortable. Revel in your native genius. Dwell on it, fully understand it, build on it.

After today’s session, I know I am going to dive into my strengths to best understand how I can apply them to building my leadership consulting business. And how I can leverage them in my personal life as well as a mother, wife, daughter, friend and sibling.

Your weaknesses don’t define you; your strengths do.

You are 1 in 33 million…