Focusing on your strengths

photo by moriza

Last week, Rachel Maddow delivered the keynote address at the Invent Your Future Conference For Women.  On Tuesday, I stumbled across a blogger who attended the event and shared her takeaways:

Rachel works very hard preparing for her show by reading volumes and volumes of material. She spends 10-11 hours a day getting ready to bring us a great show that over 1.9 million people watch. She also said that it is critically important to only do what you are BEST at and to be true to yourself!

If you watch Maddow’s show, you know she’s well read on the topics, so the first conclusion comes as no surprise.  Her deep dig into the background material allows her to have very informed discussions with guests, unlike hosts such as Joe Scarborough, making her show engaging and enjoyable to watch.

With regard to the second conclusion, doesn’t it make sense to focus on your strengths?  I used to work for a company that had an arbitrary list of accomplishments that must be achieved before a promotion was possible.  Leadership explained they wouldn’t hold you back indefinitely for not doing everything on the list, but it was made clear that crossing those items off the list made a big difference when it came to speed of promotion.   That system never quite jived with me.

When hired at a company, you sign on for a particular job description.  As you settle in and hit competency, it starts to become obvious where you excel and where you struggle.  Since a company is typically focused on a singular bottom line: money, isn’t it a waste of time to try to make every employee perfectly balanced and well-rounded?

Once it becomes clear to you and your colleagues what your company-specific assets are, why wouldn’t you be encouraged to gravitate towards full-time use of those skill sets?  And wouldn’t you be a more productive employee if you were working on projects that you enjoyed, rather than dreaded?

A 2006 study by UPenn grad student Gordon Parry cites a 2005 Towers Perrin study that found:

only 14% of employees worldwide indicate that they are highly engaged.  Roughly a quarter are genuinely disengaged, and the remaining “massive middle,” 62% are only moderately engaged in work [or willing] . . . “Willing employees get the job done as required.  Engaged employees redefine the job to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and results.

Engagement makes for better employees.

Workplaces psychologists have previously identified three types of work: jobs (taken primarily for the financial incentive), careers (focused on the perks attained through promotions and increased power), and callings (with the work being more inspirational than the payment and benefits of the role).

Positive psychologist Seligman suggests the workplace satisfaction can be maximized by trying to make strengths the focus of individual’s work responsibilities.

His “recipe” is as follows: 1) identify your signature strengths, 2) choose work that lets you use them every day, 3) re-craft your present work to use your signature strengths more, and 4) make room for employees to re-craft their work

So Parry put this recipe into play using a team of corporate human resources professionals from the same company.  Half of the participants increased their job satisfaction and increasingly identified with “careers” and “callings.”

While it seems like a truly American habit to want to be good at all we do at the work place, what with the historic American penchant for rugged individualism, it seems you and your employer might be better off if you focused on your assets and left your weaknesses on someone else’s task list.  You’ll enjoy your job more, and your employer will get your best efforts.

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