Play to Your Strengths

When you were in grade school and came home with a report card that looked like the example below, which area would your parents focus most of their attention?

Math: D-
Social Studies: A-
Science: B+
English: A+

They would focus on that big D minus of course.

I’ll come back to that, keep it fresh in your mind. Fresh like a pair of high tops in the 80’s with acid wash jeans tucked into them.

When I was originally hired as a sales representative I wasn’t good at it. While this is true of most new jobs, I was very, very bad.

I’m an outgoing person and it's easy to talk to people. Most of the time people don’t even realize that I’d rather be somewhere else. Preferably, somewhere that didn’t involve me talking to them.

One day, I stumbled across a prospective client that did all of their business online. I was happy as Angelina Jolie in an orphanage for cute African babies. Computers have been with me since day one. Becoming a cyborg always seemed like a good idea.

Sales people normally don’t understand the internet. Most don’t know that wireless technology doesn’t involve Voodoo.

After flexing all the knowledge a year of IT related college courses can give you, the account signed with us. It happened to be the largest account that my department had ever worked with.

After that, I was given more opportunities to identify and develop prospective online business opportunities. This was something I enjoyed and was very good at.

Let’s go back to the fresh fresh 80’s high tops and acid wash jeans.

Earlier this year I took a personality test. Based on my answers the test promised to list my top 5 strengths.

My Top 5
Ideation
Strategic
Individuality
Futuristic
Learner

We can all use a little encouragement – if this test says that I’m great at strategic futuristic individual ideas, who am I to argue?

I shared these results with my family, friends, and co-workers. They all said it was an accurate picture of me.

Good to hear that it’s accurate. But that doesn’t help me much, does it?

Beyond the results, the real meat of the test was on how to develop your Top 5.

This test is another chapter in the “play to your strengths” trend that is sweeping management and leadership circles everywhere. The theory is that you’ll get better results by developing your strengths rather than your weaknesses.

Marcus Buckingham (marcusbuckingham.com) is one of the trend’s most prominent spokes people. I probably owe him some royalties since I jacked the opening to this blog from his material.

We can find testimonials almost anywhere. Bill Gates hired Steve Ballmer to handle the business side of things at Microsoft so he could focus on what he was good at. Michael Jordan stopped playing baseball so he could be Michael Jordan.

This makes sense to me, because I don’t like doing things I suck at. I would guess that you feel the same way.

The test came with a book that had about 5 pages of book material, and 200 pages describing each individual “strength”. The book is called StrengthsFinder 2.0, and I recommend that your employer to buy it for you.

There’s a whole lot of information about this on Marcus Buckingham’s website. Go there, stop doing stuff you suck at. Always play to your strengths.