Strengths as an Excuse?

Sometimes I hear people use their signature talent themes as an excuse for poor performance or as a reason not to engage in a task that's expected of them.

Examples?

• Kate enters the department meeting 20 minutes late, after 8 people have waited impatiently on her. As she slides into her chair, she breezily says, "oh well, that's my Adaptability for you...what can I say?"
• After Jeff rudely interrupts a colleague's story and has obviously hurt that person's feelings in the process, he shrugs and says, "Hey--I have no Empathy, and Command is my #1. Get over it."
• When Jake is asked to organize his reports more effectively and turn them in by the deadline, he says, "Well, Discipline is not in my top five. I'm not sure this is something I can do."
• When colleagues are asked to take turns on a departmental task that simply has to get done and that no one enjoys doing, Tamara responds with, "hmmm...that's not my strength" as she slides out the door.

In each of these examples, the task or skill is one that is routinely expected in the job. It's not a choice, a preference, or a privilege. Some things we just gotta do--and saying, "that's not my strength" misses the point.

So what is the point?

Strengths are qualities that enable us to do something particularly well--thus, they cannot be a reason for poor performance. Strengths only lead to positive outcomes, or they wouldn't be strengths! Talents can have a "shadow side" when we haven't honed them or developed them fully into strengths, or when we misapply them or fail to apply them. So a talent theme of Command can have a bossy shadow side, whereas an appropriately leveraged Command talent theme can result in the strength of taking charge and leading people through an emergency evacuation of a building.

A weakness is anything that interferes with our own performance or the performance of others. When we don't meet the expectations of our work, that's an area of weakness. Or if what we do keeps others from doing their jobs well, that's an area of weakness as well. And the trick is to apply our talent themes to those areas, so that they no longer interfere with performance. So rather than saying it's okay to be late and make others wait on me since I have the "strength" of Adaptability, it would be better to deploy my Strategic talent theme and set my watch 10 minutes early--and ask a colleague to stop by my office on her way to the meeting to help me be on time.

Talent MULTIPLIED by knowledge and skill equals strength, not excuses.