How to Overcome Your Strengths

1. You hesitate to take a stand on tough issues, fearing that you'll alienate people.
2. You put off difficult decisions.
3. You find that people abuse your time.

Coordinates: Charles Martin, charles_martin@ife.com

Heavyweight: Ed Garnett
Company: Amgen
Strengths: A fast thinker and a real-time problem solver

After nearly 12 years at Amgen, the world's largest biotechnology company (with annual revenues of $2.7 billion), 51-year-old Ed Garnett won a promotion to VP of human resources. Two years later, he joined Amgen's senior-management team, which oversees the company's day-to-day operations. Just three days into his new job, Garnett attended his first meeting with this select group of 12 executives.

Sitting in a Ritz-Carlton conference room, surrounded by Amgen's best and brightest, Garnett saw his confidence turn to mush. He had always prided himself on his ability think fast and to crack complex problems. But, surrounded by these heavy hitters, Garnett froze up.

His silence dismayed his new colleagues -- so much so that one committee veteran took Garnett aside after the meeting. "I kept waiting to hear your opinions," this executive told him. "Why didn't you contribute?"

Garnett's reply was uncharacteristically wooden: "I didn't feel that I had the necessary technical competency."

That response floored his colleague. "You're part of the leadership team now. We expect to hear your opinions: Opinions matter at this table."

Garnett was relieved to hear that his views were welcome -- and terrified at the thought of expressing them. But he knew that holding back at this fast-forward company would mean a slow death. And he feared that his verbose, "think out loud" mode of problem solving wouldn't fly in his new position.

Garnett's fears were, unfortunately, well founded: His shoot-from-the-hip approach frustrated members of his team, who were sent scrambling every time he changed his mind. His tendency to reverse himself, meanwhile, made him look wishy-washy in the eyes of Amgen's senior executives.

To his credit, Garnett was self-aware enough to realize that he needed help: He already knew how to think fast -- but now he had to learn how to make his first thought his best thought.

Frankel coached him on how to make his points in crisp, bulleted sentences. She also advised him to shape his remarks at meetings in the same way that an editor shapes a story. "I began creating headlines and subheads for what I needed to say," Garnett explains, adding that this technique also lets people know where he's taking a conversation.

Another way that Garnett tempered his tendency to deliver quick, half-formed opinions was by recognizing that most problems don't require instant resolution. Even when a query comes from Amgen's president, Garnett has learned, there's no harm in working out an answer overnight. "Getting it right the first time, although it might take a few extra hours, saves time in the long run," he says.

3 Signs That You're Losing Credibility

1. You learn that people can't follow you and that they tune you out.
2. You're left out of brainstorming sessions.
3. You ask people if they have a minute for a quick conversation, and they say, "Yeah, but just a minute."

Coordinates: Ed Garnett, egarnett@am gen.com

Heavyweight: Joan McCoy
Company: ARCO Alaska
Strengths: A driven, self-sufficient worker and a consummate "go to" person

Joan McCoy was devastated. The 47-year-old director of community relations had been passed over for a promotion that she thought she had bagged. She was sitting in her office after receiving the bad news, "feeling like someone had knocked the air out of me," she recalls. "I was angry and confused, and I guess I sulked for a while. Then I marched into my manager's office and asked her what I needed to do to get promoted. She told me to get leadership-development training."

That advice surprised McCoy, who had never imagined that her leadership skills needed improving. After all, she handled a delicate (and potentially perilous) job for one of the largest oil companies in the United States. She performed her responsibilites in the field with equanimity and aplomb.

But when dealing with her colleagues at work, McCoy failed to use the social skills that had made her so successful in public. To her peers, her zeal to succeed made her seem cold, aloof, and standoffish. She was so afraid of doing less-than-perfect work that she would delegate only the most minor assignments to her staff -- which frustrated her team and gave her a crushing workload.