Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

I took the online “test” to determine my areas of strength (see my previous discussion of the book Now, Discover Your Strengths). My areas are:

F O C U S
People strong in the Focus theme can take a direction, follow through, and make the corrections necessary to stay on track. They prioritize, then act.

C O M M A N D
People strong in the Command theme have presence. They can take control of a situation and make decisions.

C O M P E T I T I O N
People strong in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.

C O M M U N I C A T I O N
People strong in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.

S I G N I F I C A N C E
People strong in the Significance theme want to be very important in the eyes of others. They are independent and want to be recognized.

So what does that mean? No areas are better than others; it’s all about introspection and insight. These areas are the areas from which I naturally lead. Finding ways to capitalize on these strengths should prove more satisfying and effective in creating excellence than trying to develop talents I don’t have.

The real trick, I think, is figuring out what my particular combination of strenghts means for me. As a manager, I think focus, command, and communication will be easy to develop further. Competition and significance seem to be harder to satisfy in a managerial context. Hmmm. There is much pondering to be done.

The book assigned for our second month-long break is Now Discover Your Strengths. The book introduces the key concepts in the first three chapters, asks you to take an online assessment called the “StrengthsFinder” which is accessible only to people who buy the book, and then spends the rest of the book helping you understand the results of the assessment.

I’ve only read chapter 1, so no strengths to report yet, but here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1. People in general, and companies in particular, tend to focus on what people DON’T do well. Strengths are taken for granted and time and energy are put into improving the weaker areas.

2. This is a recipe for individual and corporate mediocrity because nobody is spending time developing his or her strengths into something truly world-class.

3. While a minimum level of skill is required in all job areas, focus on playing to strengths and managing around weaknesses. This will result in higher productivity and happiness, and lower turnover.

That’s a pretty interesting thesis. The book doesn’t tell you what your strengths are, but promises to help you identify them yourself. They name three components of strengths: talent, skills, and knowledge. Talent is innate, skills are steps developed with practice, and knowledge consists of facts and lessons learned. They say you can have a strength without skills or knowledge, but not without talent.

I wonder what my strengths are.

In order to adopt this philosophy, a company would have to give up the desire for interchangable employees and resign itself to building a team based on strengths. I suspect most companies would balk at this idea, but I wonder if it would really be as bad as it sounds on the surface. I imagine the authors would argue that the lower turnover would more than pay for that cost.

I’ll let you know if that’s what they say.

I’m taking a class right now. It’s called Leadership Skills Training. I won’t repeat the words from the site there, but it’s a pretty good description. There are six of us in the class, and we’re between weekends 2 & 3.

I’ve learned a great deal about myself so far. The first thing that became obvious was that I care a LOT about whether people like me. I got up to make my first presentation and completely left my body. I was be so busy worrying about how I came across that I wasn’t able to focus on my presentation. At the end, I had no idea if my thoughts had made sense, I didn’t know whether my heart had been beating, and I was out of breath, suggesting I’d forgotten to breathe.

This obsession with being liked began back in my youth, and didn’t start to abate at all until I started working on it. It turns out I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I’ve always known that, but I rationalized it as the thing that kept my standards so high (and thus my results so good). That’s not fully rational, but I’ve come to understand that my subconscious is not especially rational, either. I compare myself to only the best parts of other people. I beat myself up over things long past and things that I suspect or fear might happen. Talk about irrational!

So, perfectionism leads to extreme image-consciousness. This, for me, leads to a problem of authenticity. As I think of people I admire, they’re all authentic, which is to say, transparent. I don’t like people I can’t trust and I don’t trust people who don’t appear to believe what they say, or don’t act in line with their speech. So, projecting the same tendencies on others, it would behoove me to be authentic. So why don’t I just do that?

Fear, in a word. Fear of negative judgements. Now, it turns out that people are making those judgements anyway, so I may as well be me, right? See my previous point about the subconscious and it’s irrationality.

Anyway, because I’m afraid of negative judgements, I tend to go on the offensive when I’m worried I might be judged. I guess I figure I’m more likely to be in control. Maybe getting others on the defensive will keep them from noticing my faults. I’m not 100% sure, but this isn’t far from the mark.

According to our reading assignment from the first break, the only way out of perfectionism is compassion and it looks like a long, slow road. The only way out is through, though, so I’m on the path!