Internalizing Strengths: An Overlooked Way of Overcoming Weaknesses in Managers
()
About this ebook
Related to Internalizing Strengths
Related ebooks
How to Appreciate Your Strengths Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA True Leader Has Presence: The Six Building Blocks to Presence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to Give It Their All, and They'll Give You Even More Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Think Again: A Thought-Provoking Book on Inner Power, Awareness and Choice that Everyone is Reading Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGetting to G.R.E.A.T.: A 5-Step Strategy For Work and Life; Based on Science and Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoyage of an Independent Thinker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocial Joy: A Quick, Easy Guide to Social Media for Writers, Artists, and Other Creatives Who Hate Marketing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife Is to Live – Worry Not Be Happy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiving Less Stressed: Keeping Calm in the Chaos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocial Equations: The STEM Professional's User Guide to Building Positive Relationships Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImproving Learning Transfer in Organizations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPracticing Lean: Learning How to Learn How to Get Better... Better Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Get to the Point!: A Short and Snappy Guide Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Harper Business Omnibus: What the CEO Really Wants from You; Mid-Career Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLive a Life Worth Remembering: Seeing Change as a Process for Achieving Your Goals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Owner's Manual to Life: Simple Strategies to Worry Less and Enjoy Life More Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBuilding the Best Version of You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStop Playing Safe: How To Be Braver in Your Work, Leadership and Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDon’t Just Settle: Live Your True Life: Twelve Practical Steps to Design, Build, and Step into the Life You Were Meant to Be Living Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDiscover Your WHO: Ignite the Answers Within and Reinvent Your Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Have a Purpose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnlocked: Essential Keys to Manage Family Conflict Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUncertainty Rules?: Making uncertainty work for you Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAge Well Now: Body, Mind and Soul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIt's Not Your Fault!: Because You’Re Not Choosing! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Woman's Guide to Power, Presence and Protection: 12 Rules for Gaining the Credit, Respect and Recognition You Deserve Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeading hArtfully: The Art of Leading Through Your Heart to Discover the Best in Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Management For You
The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 360 Degree Leader Workbook: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Third Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else's Maze Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, 20th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Emotional Intelligence Habits Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of The Laws of Human Nature: by Robert Greene - A Comprehensive Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 12 Week Year (Review and Analysis of Moran and Lennington's Book) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win | Summary & Key Takeaways Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Company Rules: Or Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the CIA Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Principles: Life and Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spark: How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Motive: Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Revised and Updated: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: by Patrick Lencioni | Includes Analysis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The First-Time Manager Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Managing Oneself: The Key to Success Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Internalizing Strengths
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Internalizing Strengths - Robert Kaplan
Introduction
A primary responsibility of effective leaders is to develop key people as well as themselves. In the area of leadership studies, quite a bit is known about how managers develop. We know, for example, that much of it happens on the job; challenging jobs, for example, can bring out latent capability.¹
Another common way of helping managers to develop is to confront them with their shortcomings. If job challenges pull capability out of managers, feedback (especially 360-degree feedback) is intended to strongly encourage managers to correct their weaknesses. This is an effective way to address performance issues, although, as you will see, not the only way.
The purpose of this report is to call attention to a kind of development that goes beyond addressing shortcomings, yet one that is often overlooked. I propose that much of the energy spent in developing managers is channeled into getting them to see and take seriously their deficits, but what is often not considered is that it may be equally valuable to help managers recognize and internalize their strengths. A counterintuitive notion—yes, but one that is borne out if one takes a close look at the stance that many managers take to their strengths.
The report begins with the idea that the failure to recognize one’s strengths is, in fact, at the root of many performance problems. Next I take up the difficulty of getting through to managers about their strengths. Following that I treat the gains that can be realized from internalizing strengths. Finally, I identify a series of principles to guide practitioners in using strengths as leverage for helping managers develop.
Certainly recognizing strengths as developmental tools has relevance for anyone in the field of management or executive development. No less so, it has value for managers at all levels seeking to grow and improve. It is also a useful idea for supervisors at any level to keep in mind when they enter performance appraisals and coaching conversations with their direct reports.
¹ McCall, M. W., Jr., Lombardo, M. M., & Morrison, A. M. (1988). The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
How the Failure to Recognize Strengths Affects Executive Performance
Not fully recognizing one’s strengths, far from being a mere curiosity about managerial high achievers, is actually at the root of many performance problems. Not appreciating that they are already strong in a certain area—not knowing their own strength, as it were—managers tend to overuse it or they tend to overinvest in developing it.
This link between performance problems and managers’ relation to their strengths is critical. One senior manager, understanding this connection, said about the top person in his company, If he internalized his strengths, a lot of his weaknesses would go away. It’s because he doesn’t accept his strengths that these weaknesses exist.
Seeing that link can help executives and their coaches alike avoid working away on the presenting symptoms while failing to get at the nonobvious root cause.
There is one attribute, more frequently than any other specific skill or trait, that our executive clients underestimate in themselves. Of all the many things that executives, the majority of them overachieving perfectionists
(as one of their number called them), must do or be to meet the diverse, continually changing demands placed on them, what could that one thing be? Is it presentation skills, conflict management, sensitivity to people, long-range planning, leadership ability? No, it is intelligence. The tendency to underestimate one’s intelligence can turn out to be responsible for an executive’s performance