Do you overuse your strengths?  Do you use them as a fallback strategy when dealing with most challenges?  Building awareness of your strengths and when to use them is the cornerstone of a powerful leader.  And more importantly, the key to successful leadership is understanding when you overuse them.  Your strengths can actually get in the way of your success.

Raymond runs an account group in a fast-paced, service-oriented business.  Kolbe told us that Raymond is a detailed guy, who innovates with his strategic approach.  Raymond recognized that his specific approach is a wonderful aid to him, especially when working with clients.  At the same time, he recognized that he needed to shorten his long responses in client presentations.  As he explored ways to communicate more efficiently, he realized that telling the “whole” story was important to him and often too much for clients.  Raymond started experimenting, watching clients and colleagues for their non-verbal cues to increase his impact in meetings.  He has adapted how he presents to ensure he keeps the room engaged.  And interestingly, he has been fascinated watching when others lose the room and understands what is at play.

Then Raymond completed an assessment called Realise2, a strengths tool that provides feedback from 60 strengths. The assessment asks: 1) what do you do well, 2) what gives you energy and 3) how often do you use specific strengths?  It turns out that Raymond’s top strengths are RESOLVER and EXPLAINER.  Resolver is the ability to solve complex problems, the more complicated the better.  People with the strength of Explainer take complex ideas and explain them in simple, easy to understand ways.

This feedback was very helpful as we thought about how Raymond could be a better boss.  He really enjoys solving client issues and then teaching or explaining to his direct reports how to solve the problem.  We recognized that Raymond was greatly overusing these strengths.  They are wonderful strengths and certainly got him to his current role, but they are interfering with his ability to lead and use his time wisely as a boss.  He must stop solving the problems himself and find ways to develop others to become great problem solvers.

Overusing strengths is easy for many of us.  We are good at certain tasks and these can be our “go to” responses in many situations.  A goal in coaching is to recognize when the strength is useful and appropriate for the situation and conversely when it actually gets in the way.

Watch yourself and think about your patterns.  More importantly, pay attention to the feedback from others or the results of your actions.  Often our overused strengths do not solve the problem; they create a comfort zone from which we like to operate.   Develop internal radar to detect when you are leaning too hard into your strengths.

Susan is certified to administer CAPP’s Realise2 strengths assessment.  Read more about the tool at Realise2.  Reach out to Susan to learn more about how strengths are supporting or being overused by you and your team.  Connect with Susan at coach@susanspritzmyers.com.