INTERNALIZING STRENGTHS
AN OVERLOOKED WAY OF OVERCOMING WEAKNESSES IN MANAGERS
INTERNALIZING STRENGTHS
AN OVERLOOKED WAY OF OVERCOMING WEAKNESSES IN MANAGERS
Robert E. Kaplan
Center for Creative Leadership
Greensboro, North Carolina
The Center for Creative Leadership is an international, nonprofit educational institution founded in 1970 to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. As a part of this mission, it publishes books and reports that aim to contribute to a general process of inquiry and understanding in which ideas related to leadership are raised, exchanged, and evaluated. The ideas presented in its publications are those of the author or authors.
CENTER FOR CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
© 1999 Center for Creative Leadership
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
CCL No. 182
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaplan, Robert E.
Internalizing strengths : an overlooked way of overcoming weaknesses in managers / by Robert E. Kaplan.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-882197-49-1 (print) — ISBN 978-1-932973-38-9 (ebook)
1. Executive ability—Psychological aspects. 2. Executives—Psychology. I. Title.
HD38.2.K3755 1999
658.4'09—dc21
99-29770
CIP
Table of Contents
How the Failure to Recognize Strengths Affects Executive Performance
They Overdo What They Underestimate
They Underdo What They Underestimate
They React to Perceived Lack of Talent by Trying Too Hard
Why Talking to Executives About Their Strengths Can Be Difficult
They Are Uncomfortable with Praise
They Have a Fear of Complacency
They Feel Pressure to Keep Up the Good Work
What Can Be Gained from Internalizing One’s Strengths
Energy Is Freed Up for the Weaker Side
How to Help Executives Use Strengths for Development
Principle 1: Don’t Let Them Take the Strengths for Granted
Principle 2: Engage Them in Potent Self-reflection
Principle 3: Concentrate the Messages and Distill the Data
Principle 4: Get Personally Involved
Preface
The thesis of this report, that looking at strengths can help managers develop, is something my colleagues and I have discovered in our work with senior managers. Over the past several years I have joined forces first with a team at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, and then with a team in my own consulting firm to find ways to help executives develop their capabilities and increase their effectiveness.
Our work with individual executives takes the form of an intense, longitudinal development program, which affords significant opportunities for executives to grow and for us to learn how better to help them do that. We collect large quantities of data of different types about each executive we work with. We go to a lot of trouble to figure out, systematically, what these data say about the individual. We focus hard on his or her behavior, as well as what drives this behavior. Then, in collaboration with the executive, we get to the bottom of performance deficiencies.
Following the assessment we stay involved over time, as the individual attempts to put insights into practice. An ongoing relationship enables us not only to assist each executive but to understand what is useful.
In the last three years of doing this work, we have discovered that assessment should involve more than delivering the bad news and finding ways to address it. A problem-centered intervention isn’t the entire answer to a successful developmental experience. We have come to see that encouraging executives to recognize and internalize their strengths has as much to do with the success of the experience as presenting them with their deficits. This counterintuitive strategy of having managers come to grips with their strengths has proven to be extremely useful since we have explicitly and deliberately employed it.
This report documents our ideas about this technique and some of the ways we have used it.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for reviewing an earlier draft of the paper: David DeVries, Bill Drath, Rebecca Henson, Bill Hodgetts, Rob Kaiser, Rebecca Kaplan, Denise Lyons, Connie McArthur, and Amy Webb.
Introduction
A primary responsibility of effective leaders is to develop key people as well as themselves. In the area of leadership studies, quite a bit is known about how managers develop. We know, for example, that much of it happens on the job; challenging jobs, for example, can bring out latent