I’ve just outlined the first three chapters of a book called Breaking the Rules by Kurt Wright. I’m enjoying the book, though I’m only 50 pages through it.

His basic premise is that effortless, high level performance is predicated on developing a few simple capacities. Two of them are: One, seeing how limiting our perceptions are. Two, specifically looking at the perceptions we have about what we believe are our weaknesses. His belief is that we need to focus on our strengths, when in fact most of us are obsessed with our weaknesses (trying the hide them, wallowing around in them, or swinging between both). That, and learn how to ask questions that (1) engage your intuition as opposed to your mind and (2) help you shift your perception into a state of receptivity.

Now, I am not buying the focus-on-your-positives “thing” hook, line and sinker. (More on that later.) I mainly don’t buy the “positive thinking” thing because “focusing on the positive” often means avoiding or denying the negatives. He kind of tippy-toes around this, and it is a slippery slope to see your weaknesses without indulging in them, so I am suspending judgment until I’ve completed the book. Perhaps he addresses this later in the book.

But I do believe that it is very important to be able to see my positives clearly, and to see with fresh eyes how my focus on the my negatives / weaknesses holds me back. I do know that I do focus on my negatives too much. Often through defensiveness. And sometimes by avoiding stepping up to things that have the potential to draw my negatives to the fore where they can be seen. And I know that keeps me “playing small.”

Whether I agree with Wright wholeheartedly or not, I’m learning some things I can integrate in to my approach to becoming a leader. What I am doing while reading his book is looking at my own bias against “focus on the positive” thinking while also looking at how I overamplify and therefore attempt to suppress my weaknesses and avoid playing a bigger game where they may come out in spades.

The first three chapters provided the context for his work and his framework for “asking the right questions.” That was what encouraged me to read the book in the first place–I love the power of asking “right questions.” And I tend to be too directive when I ask questions of others, like I know what they should know. So I use questions to guide them to what I think I know on their behalf, rather than asking questions that support them in finding their own answers in their own timing.

Chapter 4 is about learning to work with perception, and most specifically the perceptions we have about our strengths and weaknesses. This is what I will be sharing with you. The five steps I just worked through on the airplane on the way here to Toronto. I’ll give you the steps, what I came up with, the insights I reached, and the actions I’ll be taking as a result of the insights. In short, I’ll share how I am applying what I’ve learned from the book as I learn what it is to become a leader.