Don’t only build your strengths:

Here’s another little trap to avoid if you are trying to land a job or a promotion.

Many populist life-skills coaches promote the idea that you should
concentrate on building your strengths, while ignoring your
weaknesses.  They argue that you are employed and rewarded for your
strengths, not to work on your weaknesses.

This is nonsense.  And it is harmful.

If you build one or two strengths then you will be valued exactly for that
and little else.  Specialists are seldom credited as team players or
leadership material, and they are often feared for the power their
special strength gives them.  And in a rapidly changing world, special
strengths have a nasty tendency of becoming irrelevant.

Your strengths might make you a superstar for a while in one special area,
but those same strengths might make you a dysfunctional manager, parent
or spouse.  Over time, you will be valued more for being balanced and
well-rounded.

I’m James McIntosh at nonsenseatwork dot com

Listen to the radio version of Don’t only build your strengths  (10 most recent radio files)

© 2009 James Henry McIntosh