A Better Way to Manage Performance At Work

 

 

 

What if Your Strengths Were Your Weaknesses? 

 

 Throughout my career I’ve had a working theory that strengths and weaknesses are not two different things that fall into separate categories the way corporate management and performance reviews suggest. Rather, it seems to me that they reflect one quality that expresses itself along a continuum consisting of  "great" on one end, and "not so much," on the other.

This realization put things into perspective for me real fast. At work, we quickly learn what we do well, and probably even sooner, we learn what our “areas for improvement” are. But think about the challenge inherent to developing your strengths if they are also your weaknesses. It requires completely changing the way you think about managing your career in general, and exploiting your talent specifically.
Let’s take communication as an example. I have always had very strong verbal skills. Many say it is the result of being dyslexic - that my ears and mouth compensated for my eyes and brain. I think that is probably true, although I also grew up in a home with extremely articulate parents who made a habit of discussing everything. So who knows?

The point is that I excelled in my career because of my communication skills. However, there were also times when I was told I was “over communicating.” It was getting in the way, slowing things down. At the time I thought, “Well, shoot. That’s what I do.” Communicate that is, not slow things down; at least that’s not how I saw it. But it was true. Too much of a good thing, at times, was no longer good.
You can take work ethic, attention to detail, analytical thinking, tenacity, creativity or anything else, and know that chances are good, as a strength, it has a weakness attached in a yin-yang sort of way.
I have given and received a lot of reviews and performance feedback over the years.  Rather than have two columns with strengths on one side and weaknesses on the other, why not have one line with a slider in the middle to help show people where they are on their own continuum?
What I find helpful about looking at job performance through this lens is that it provides employees with an opportunity to manage themselves using a perspective that is far less negative, and far more holistic, than the way evaluation is positioned today.

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