Conscious Leadership

Of Course Your Greatest Strength Can Become a Liability

An article in this month's Harvard Business Review, Stop Overdoing Your Strengths by Robert E. Kaplan and Robert B. Kaiser calls attention to the conventional wisdom in leadership development circles of coaching executives to focus and capitalize on one's strengths versus learning to minimize your weaknesses misses a "newly discovered" point that strengths can be taken too far, thus becoming weaknesses.

Kaplan and Kaiser give examples of some of the common problems of strengths taken too far: "a supportive boss who cuts people too much slack" and "a gifted operational director whose relentless focus on results leads to hypercontrol." The authors aptly point out that we can all see strengths overdone in others, but it's "extremely difficult to see such overkill in yourself." The authors conclude that leadership development tools (particularly 360-degree feedback), their research shows, are failing us because they implicitly ignore strengths overdone.

You've got to be kidding? was our reaction. A good executive coach or leadership development practitioner should help a client identify what strengths are overused (as well as underused), and have become weaknesses by no longer delivering desired results. With the client, the consultant should analyze and interpret leadership assessment data (especially 360-degree feedback) for signs of overuse of strengths as one of the key issues.

Executives and organizations are successful because they have focused on their strengths with persistence and determination (and stay with what works). Yet, who could argue that the systems we work in (now more than ever) demand from each of us: innovate, change, grow, adapt or perish.

Some of the most important work we do with a client is to help them become more conscious of the patterns, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, systems and skills that are no longer serving him or her, nor their organization.

In a rapidly changing marketplace, every successful leader must regularly ascertain which individual and organizational strengths have worn out their welcome (turned into weaknesses), and need to be dialed back in order to make room for learning new ways of operating -- thus developing new strengths.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

A Quick Organizational Scan to Improve Performance

If performance is lack-luster in your organization, you can do a quick culture scan that'll give you a snapshot of where you and your leadership team need to focus.

Paring down organizational complexity to its simplest terms (note: simple does not imply easy!), in essence there are 4 major buckets or quadrants of "work" senior managers are responsible for to create a high-performance culture:

Planning: Creating a compelling vision for the organization and a strategic direction that includes values (not just the ones you embrace, but telling people what's not accepted in the culture and why); mission; the firm's client/customer and market focus; overarching goals and objectives.

Persuading:  Communicating the strategic direction within the organization to develop followership and commitment to the areas in "Planning". Developing followership ensures every person at every level knows how their role contributes to the company, understands how performance is measured, and receives consistent feedback and coaching from bosses, peers, and other key players on how they're doing and what they need to do better.

Achieving:  Operationalizing Planning and Persuading into the day-to-day work of every division, department, and employee that delivers on what you promise to clients/customers, shareholders and stakeholders. Streamlined processes, procedures, and coordinating mechanisms are in place so work flows smoothly and efficiently. People are given the tools they need to do their jobs well. Goals are met and results achieved.

Enforcing:  Following through on Planning, Persuading and Achieving. Performance is managed at all levels. Results are measured, learned from, and adjustments are fed back into the other three quadrants on an on-going basis. Conversations about performance are embedded into the culture. Consequences and rewards directly link all 4 quadrants.

Scan your organization against the 4 quadrants. Regardless of size, sector or industry, organizational cultures develop a preference and aptitude for one or two of the four leadership competencies.

An executive team can improve performance almost immediately by raising its awareness to recognize which quadrant(s) it excels in and which quadrants are weak.

Next, develop the skills or shake up the leadership team so you collectively lead the firm better through excellence in all 4 quadrants.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates