Strong Like Bull

Peter Drucker once quipped, "What everybody knows is often wrong." My admiration for Drucker knows no limits. However, I do acknowledge he often said things that pissed people off. Many of Peter's ideas were quite contrarian, but the son-of-a-gun was usually right. It wasn't his intention to be a thorn in the side, he only wished to be accurate. But a thorn he often was. Such is usually the case when a person dares to speak the truth. Sometimes the emperor is, indeed, naked. Regardless of how that truth might make others feel.

In the early 1940's Peter was invited to studied the General Motors Corporation. Drucker spent two years inside GM and this led to the writing of his book Concept of the Corporation. His conclusions were so disturbing, the book was essentially banned by Alfred Sloan. What Peter said definitely ruffled some feathers. Of course, time has proven Drucker's prescriptions to be correct. But cognitive dissonance can be a real doozy.

At any rate, the point I am trying to make is that Drucker was correct. What everybody knows is often wrong. Let me give you one example, that is off topic. I won't get into it in this post but everyone knows that bacon and saturated fat are bad for you. At least on this subject, everyone's wrong. But I'll save that for another post.

Right now I want to talk about a different misconception that holds a lot of people back. It is a mistake that certainly has held me back. The problem goes as follows. In America, we're largely schooled to correct our weaknesses. That is to say, we often work (with much pride) to improve on our shortcomings. As it turns out, that's a pretty bad idea. A much better recommendation is to IMPROVE ON YOUR STRENGTHS.

Nobody is perfect and we all have weaknesses. The problem is we're really bad at improving in these areas. Improvement is much more likely in our areas of strength. And, improvement not only leads to better performance, it also leads to increased levels of satisfaction and happiness.

Don't get me wrong, if you have debilitating weaknesses you might need to address them. For example, I used to be an extremely shy person. I mean shy like I couldn't return a “Hello” when I was greeted by a stranger. Due to my line of work, being shy caused me LOTS of problems. So, I had to improve, on this particular weakness, because it had proven to be highly destructive. I'm still a little bit shy but it no longer holds me back.

Another example might be someone who is extremely rude. Relationships are the key to happiness and success. And, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how important good manners are. If you're a rude and angry person, you're going to have a very tough time getting to where you want to go. Of course the irony is that the rude person seldom takes responsibility for his or her behavior. Instead they tend to blame others and label them “small-minded” or “judgmental.” Listen, if your weakness is that people think you're really rude, you're going to need to become less of a jerk.

The above aside, let's now assume that you don't have any pathological shortcomings. That is to say, your weaknesses are relatively minor. As I've already mentioned, we all have LOTS of weaknesses. As long as they aren't holding you back, you should forget about them. You heard me right, go ahead and be imperfect. Trying to succeed by improving, and building on a weakness, is an exercise in futility. You are MUCH more likely to become happier, and more effective, while leveraging your strengths.

So, what are your strengths? Actually, that's a really tough question to answer. Drucker was a management consultant for something like 60 years. He worked with some of the greatest leaders this world has ever known. And Peter said that people were more often wrong about their strengths than they were right. Drucker prescribed one activity to help discover your strengths and weaknesses. He called it the Feedback Analysis. I won't go into too much right now because I'm actually going to stray from Drucker in this post. But, as a quick overview, Feedback Analysis is the discipline to write down your expectations, whenever you make a decision or create new plans. Then, 9-12 months later you look back at the expectations you wrote down and see how they compare with reality. Done repeatedly, Peter says Feedback Analysis will make your strengths and weaknesses very clear to you.

As I've said a million times, I am a big fan of Drucker. And I do recommend the feedback analysis. Very few people take the time to write down expectations, and feedback reality against those expectations. It's a big part of the reason people repeat the same mistakes over-and-over. So please do utilize feedback analysis. But right now, there's another resource I want to call to your attention.

If you read this blog, with any frequency, there's a good chance you've seen me make reference to a gentleman by the name of Martin Seligman (in fact I mentioned him two weeks ago in the post titled True Grit). If you've never once seen this blog before, you still may know who Seligman is. He's a really big deal. Marty is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the world's preeminent expert on flourishing. Something I wrote about in this post: PERMA-net-GLEE

As it turns out, Seligman has created an OUTSTANDING resource that is available to you and I. If you go to Marty's website you can take a free test that will tell you your strengths. I've taken the test multiple times and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I now try to remain focused on my areas of strength. And I forgive myself for my areas of weakness. Incidentally, the whole “self-esteem” movement had it wrong. Self-esteem doesn't really help, even though “everybody knows it does.” What really seems to be important is not self-esteem but self-compassion. Again, this is something I will save for another post.

For now all I will say is that Seligman's strengths information, and test, allowed me to be myself. It allowed me to forgive myself for my weaknesses (self-compassion). It allowed me to accept that no one is perfect. It helped me realize that perfection shouldn't even the real goal. Ok, enough with the chat, here's a link to Seligman's site: University of Pennsylvania

Please go there and register. It's free. Once you're registered, and logged in, the strengths test you want to take, is called, “VIA Survey of Character Strengths: Measures 24 Character Strengths.” It's under the section titled "Engagement Questionnaires." I promise you, this is time well spent.

Lastly, to be thorough, and complete, let me tell you of another option. Another option is that you can utilize the strengths test available through the Gallup organization. This post has gone long enough, so I won't explain the Gallup stuff. But you will see it in a future post. So stay tuned.