As a Leadership Coach and Trainer who spends a lot of time helping leaders uncover and leverage their unique strengths, you might find it odd that I’m writing about weaknesses, but let’s face it – we all have weak areas in our game.
What I have found over the years is that the very trait that makes a leader or employee valuable, is the same trait that when overdone, becomes a negative. For example, a director I was working with was always the go to person in a crisis. He would drop everything including his time at home with his family to make sure the work crisis was managed well.
In his work in human services, there were always crises, allowing him to leverage this strength on a weekly basis. There were also frequent licensing updates and program evaluations requiring chart inspections and documentation. For this director, documentation was boring and became the last thing on the to do list. Crises were exciting and got him out of doing documentation. Monitoring his staff’s records was an equally undesirable task. As a result, he looked bad when his programs were evaluated because he did not have the proper documentation in the files.
His manager was frustrated with him because he was under performing in this aspect of his job despite repeated counseling. The manager saw him as a rock star in certain areas of his job but was left considering whether the tradeoff of his crisis management versus his inspection readiness skills was worth it.
How did I help this client manage his weakness? Here are 5 things we did together that were helpful. These can be applied to any strength that is being over used and looking like a weakness.
- Build awareness of the behavior. I firmly believe that without self-awareness, behavior change is not going to last. I had him keep a log of his crisis management events, noting what the crisis was, how long it took to manage, whether delegation was possible, and what plans were aborted in favor of the crisis.
- Hit the pause button when confronted with a decision to be made. This gives time for a quick internal assessment to inform what action to take. What’s to be gained? What’s the cost of managing the crisis? Who else could get involved? Where can time parameters be put in place?
- Bring in real time support. I offered for two weeks to be on call to help him with his decision making process. This was helpful for him to have outside perspective. If you don’t have a coach, consider having your supervisor or a colleague help you.
- Examine how this strength can be balanced so as not to become a weakness. This client knew managing crisis was his most valuable contribution to the organization. What he needed to see was that he was not playing a balanced game. You can be the best 3 point shooter in the NBA but if you are terrible at playing defense you are going to get benched.
- Let others know you are working on not overusing your greatest strength. Give others at work (and home) permission to point out when you are tipping in the weakness direction and when you are leveraging your strength positively. My client enlisted his supervisor and had the courage to let his supervisees know what he was working on to get their help.
Now it’s your turn. What is your greatest strength? When does it become a weakness for you? How can you apply the five steps listed above to reign your strength in and show up as a rock star leader?
PS If you are thinking about becoming a part-time or full-time Professional Coach OR want to bring coaching skills into your workplace, consider signing up for this course. Information here:
http://chriscoward.com/programs/