People who drive rely not just on their eyes, but also on the vehicle’s mirrors to aid their awareness of risks including nearby vehicles, pedestrians and other dangers in order to avoid accidents. But what if your greatest performance risks as a leader are outside your current field of awareness?
When your greatest strengths are overdone or used in the wrong way, they can lead to negative unintended consequences and undermine performance and relationships. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that research shows that overdone strengths are a greater source of performance problems for managers and leaders than shortfalls in skills and competence.
So what are the main risk factors and how can you prevent these from undermining your performance and career:
First, learn to challenge habits and adapt them if necessary
Most people develop deeply ingrained ways of handling tasks and decisions based on what’s worked for them in the past. These habits often form over many years and are very difficult to change. For example, a newly promoted engineering manager might continue to be highly detail focused and critical in the way they approach their new management role. Although these strengths might have worked very well in their role as a technical expert, using these strengths too much is likely to come across as micro-managing and negative to their new team members, resulting in a demotivated and disempowered team.
You can avoid this risk by ensuring ongoing self-improvement and learning new ways of using your natural strengths in different roles and situations. Inviting regular feedback from a broad range of co-workers on how effective your strengths and behaviours are viewed by others will help you understand how well you are using your strengths. Through learning to better monitor your strengths ‘gauge’ across different situations and practising the art of dialing back on strengths that are over-used, you can minimize the risk of overdrive behaviours showing up.
Second, be aware of how you respond under stress and pressure
Stress and pressure often amplify overdrive behaviours. For example, if a highly determined manager becomes too stubborn and inflexible in the way they negotiate an important business deal, they could undermine the deal and damage relationships in the process.
Good awareness of what happens to your strength/s in times of stress and pressure is key. Once overdrive behaviours are understood, it is important to take appropriate action to minimize the risks of overdrive, including replacing negative, deeply ingrained stress responses with more positive, rational behaviours.
Guarding against excesses almost always starts with good awareness. But I’ve found through working with literally thousands of managers and leaders, that very few, only around 5%, understand what happens to their performance when their strengths go into overdrive. We always recommend that a great starting point is to take an accurate strengths profiler like Strengthscope®. As well as giving you more insight into how you can build on your areas of greatest strength to improve your performance, Strengthscope® will help you avoid the biggest risks you are likely to face in your career, your overdone strengths.
About the Author
James Brook
Founder and MD | Leadership Consultant | Organizational Psychologist
James is a leadership consultant, organizational psychologist and executive coach. He has over 25 years’ experience working with leaders, teams and organizations globally to optimize their performance, talent and future success. He specializes in positive leadership, thriving workplaces, collaboration and influencing, organizational change and transformation, accelerating innovation and coaching executives and leaders in innovative sectors including Tech, Digital, E-commerce and Life Sciences.
Before setting up Plexus Leadership, James held leadership roles in HR and Talent Management in the UK and abroad with companies such as NatWest, Yahoo! and Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals. After this, he founded and led several talent and leadership consulting and assessment businesses, including Strengthscope®, an online strengths assessment and development business serving a wide range of UK and global clients. James grew this venture into a global market leader before selling the business in 2018.
James has supported, advised and coached leaders and teams globally across diverse industries and geographies. Clients he has worked with include Allen & Overy, Commvault, Equinor, Facebook, GSK, Hilton, John Lewis, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, NHS, Oracle, Sainsbury’s, Swiss Re, Tesco, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, WSP and Yahoo!.
James has a Master’s in Organizational Psychology, an MBA, an Advanced Diploma in Executive Coaching and a Harvard Business qualification in Sustainable Business Strategy. He is a member of the Institute of Directors, the Association of Business Psychologists and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD). He is currently undertaking a PhD in Organizational Psychology examining the start-up experiences of Tech and Digital entrepreneurs.
James is a regular contributor and speaker on leadership, coaching, innovative talent management and the future of work. His most recent book, Optimize Your Strengths, explores how leaders can create thriving workplaces by inspiring and supporting people to optimize their potential and teamwork to deliver breakthrough results.