I was looking for something else in the Harvard Business Review and came across an interesting article cautioning people about the current focus on personal strengths.  In:  Stop overdoing your strengths,  Roberts Kaplan and Kaiser point out that whilst it is more productive to focus on your strengths than to focus on your weaknesses, we need to be moderate in that focus. 

So how can too much focus on a strength become a weakness?  Kaplan and Kaiser say that most 360 degree leadership surveys assume high scores are best, but the reality may not be quite so rosy. For example, we all know managers who would score highly on measures of collaboration and as a result find it very difficult to be decisive.  

The article sets out an interesting chart of opposing dualities: Strategic vs Operational, Forceful vs Enabling. Their research shows that even a mild overdose of one of the pair will cause the other to suffer.  They also have found that overuse of one strength will crowd out another – to the detriment of the people they lead and to their own career. The more forceful a leader becomes, the less she will use enabling approaches.

What can you do to achieve a balance?

1. When you get a high 360 rating – once you have finished feeling pleased with yourself, just question whether it is too much of a good thing.
2. Ask your colleagues those three powerful stop/start/continue questions: What should I do more of?  What should I do less of?  What should I continue to do? These questions should flush out the overuse syndrome!
3.  You should also ask those same questions of someone close to you in your personal life.  During coaching, we often discover that the manager’s partner could have given them similar feedback years ago and it would have been just as reliable as any 360 tool!  Sometimes a manager who was shocked by some feedback received, discovers that  their partner was not at all surprised.

At Communicate we really like the practicality of the DiSC behavioural style inventory.  DiSC highlights a common tendency of  overusing a DiSC strength when we are under pressure, to the point where it becomes a negative.  For example, a peersuasuve influencer, under pressure will often over promise and completely under-deliver.

It might be worthwhile considering whether you O.D. on some your strengths. No idea what strengths you have?  We recommend: ‘Now Discover Your Strengths’

The interesting topic of  workplace romances came up in the Training  Journal Digest late last week.  Stephen Engelhard talked about some informal research his UK  firm, Angel Productions, had conducted on the topic.   His firm were looking at the possibility of providing a training package on the management issues.  No, not on how to manage your workplace romance, but on how to manage  the situation.

Admittedly the research only covered 27 HR managers and 27 people in other work roles, but there seemed to be four HR main issues:

1. Favouritism – real or perceived
2. Risk of fraud
3. Inconvenience of the  happy couple wanting to take holidays together
4. Distracting emotional fallout if the couple split.  (I would have thought there is distracting emotional fallout while the couple are madly in lurve, as well!)

 Very few respondents had policies on the issue and fewer still enforced their policies. I presume there is a similar pattern here. One UK university researcher on the topic suggested that the recession is leading to an increase in workplace romances…..people turning to sex to deal with pressure?!

The comments are wide open for double entendre – A cognitive behavioural coach suggested the training DVD should include ‘managing hot thoughts’. I think that one at least was accidental.

Interesting working out which categories to allocate for this post.  Possibly I should have included community involvement?