I’ve been a big fan of Marcus Buckingham’s since reading First Break All the Rules back in 1999. For the past couple of years, Buckingham has been working hard to promote the strengths movement. While I agree with his argument that individuals, companies, and society would be more productive if more of us spent time on activities that we enjoy, I think some of the movement will be stymied by confusion over terminology. Buckingham defines a strength as “any activity that strengthens you” and a weakness as “any activity that drains or de-energizes you.” Since most of us are used to thinking of a strength as “something we are good at” I suggest that better terms for his two main concepts are “energizing activities” and “draining activities.” If you and your manager can identify the specific parts of your job that energize you and the parts of your job that drain you, you are well on your way to a conversation that could make you more satisfied and more productive at work.
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This ties in with your later post about knowing “why.” I think many of us become drained when we don’t have a good reason for doing whatever we do.
So we stay away from tasks we’re not good at because they make us feel stupid, not understanding the value we would gain by mastering them.
Of course sometimes it just makes sense to delegate the things that drain us to those who like doing those things. That’s what I love about Buckingham’s work too.
When I talk about managing by building on strengths, people in some government agencies complain that they are forced to evaluate based on a balance of skills. And sometimes their best people don’t look so good due to a few weak areas they can work around.
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