Knowing yourself, especially your strengths and weaknesses, is essential work for personal development and for reaching your potential.
Through a lifetime of feedback, recognition, and reward, most people have a relatively keen understanding of their personal strengths and favorable attributes. They know what they’re good at and what contributes most to their success. But that doesn’t mean they know how to combine their strengths and apply them with even greater success to specific situations.
That’s where leaders come in.
Even experienced team members who long ago discovered their strengths need some assistance in learning how to apply them, especially in combination with other favorable qualities. What is not as obvious to others is that when strengths are combined in specific situations, they often amplify each other, creating a brand-new strength. The best leaders and coaches show team members how to combine their strengths in a multitude of situations for maximum effectiveness.
Take, for example, a team member who is comfortable with themselves and is quite witty and humorous. When not overused, this strength often adds levity to team meetings and conversations, making them more enjoyable for everyone.
Let’s also say this same team member is highly compassionate and has the strength and skill of empathy. Their ability to see matters from the perspective of others comforts and consoles colleagues, especially when teammates need a boost or a tender ear.
An exceptional leader might point out to this team member how their humor and empathy together might be an even more powerful combination that could work to diffuse tense and high-pressure situations. By exploring with this colleague how they might use both strengths together in some settings, they offer an invaluable insight, one that might be a game-changer.
Attaching the combination of strengths to a specific outcome or goal is how leaders bring this point alive and encourage others to act and to see themselves and their strengths differently.
Team members benefit immensely when they learn how to combine such strengths and skills as collaboration and communication, creativity and technical expertise, emotional intelligence and negotiation, passion and presentation, resilience and optimism, and judgment and risk-taking, to name a few.
Learning how and when to combine key strengths doesn’t come naturally to anyone. We depend on others, especially those we respect and who know us well, to suggest, instruct, or show us how to integrate our strengths.
Once they gain this perspective and insight, team members typically begin experimenting by fusing their best qualities in new and varied situations. To their surprise, they often discover that their effectiveness is enhanced in a wonderfully unexpected manner.
Some combinations of personal qualities are unbeatable for newfound success. Of course, as Nelson Mandela liked to say, “A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” If only they were everyone’s signature strengths.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
