Changing Perception about Strengths and Weaknesses–Part 2

Step 2: Reflection

The second step in the process involves some reflection.

First, consider the following questions:

1. Which of the two lists do you have the strongest feelings about right now as you read over them–your strengths or your weaknesses?
2. What words would you use to describe your sense of enjoyment or appreciation of such introspective exercises as this, where you are asked to examine your strengths and weaknesses? Is it a pleasure? A pain? Neutral?

Second, go back to your two lists now and place a check mark by as many as five of the chararacterisics on your list you would most like to see changed over the next 12 months.

Changing Perception about Strengths and Weaknesses–Part 1

Now I’m going to give you the steps I am working with from Chapter 4 of Breaking the Rules. The chapter is called Changing Perceptions, and it is primarily about developing a strengths-based mindset.

Step 1: Define Your Strengths and Weaknesses

The first step in working with strengths and weaknesses is to define them. It is pretty simple:

1. Grab a piece of paper and something to write with
2. Draw a line down the middle of the page
3. Title one column Six Greatest Strengths and the other Six Most Bothersome Weaknesses
4. Write the six strengths and weaknesses

It is very important to notice how you feel while writing the list. Notice how you feel as you write each one. You will need to remember these feelings to complete the remaining steps.

Book Summary: Breaking the Rules

I have found I’m pretty good at taking information, distilling it down and adding some context that makes it more understandable to most folks. I enjoy doing that, and wish I had more time to do it! I once thought of making a business out of reading books, distilling them, adding context and designing what the authors almost always leave out–how to take action on the information.

Anyway, I’ve outlined the first three chapters of Breaking the Rules, the book I mentioned in my last post. I am going to try an experiment of selling the outline on my web site to see if people might like to start buying my summaries. I call them Otis Notes.

I’m looking for some feedback on them. So if you are willing to provide me with some feedback regarding how I’m doing this, I will send you my outline of the first three chapters free. Just email me privately at otis@leadershipforge.com with a subject line that says “Three Free.” You don’t even need to write a note, nor will I use your email address for any other reason other than to send you the free notes that describe how to ask right questions.

Working with Strengths and Weaknesses

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.