BLOG 081920: Two Disastrous Assumptions Made By Business Leaders That Destroy Productivity

Two Disastrous Assumptions Made By Business Leaders That Destroy Productivity

Two Disastrous Assumptions

Two costly, operative assumptions that many leaders and managers make are:

  1. that anyone can learn almost anything if they put their mind to it (you can be anything you want).
  2. each person's greatest room for growth is in the areas of the person's greatest weakness(es).

Both of these assumptions are dead wrong! I'll be going into further depth in later blogs about why. For now, let's focus on the second assumption.

The Language of and Focus on Weaknesses

Unfortunately, there are thousands of studies on people's weaknesses, but few on strengths.

The language of human weakness is rich and varied. There are meaningful differences in the terms neurosis, psychosis, depression, mania, hysteria, panic attacks, and schizophrenia. An expert in mental illness is acutely aware of these differences and takes them into consideration in making a diagnosis and determining treatment. In fact, this language of frailty is so widespread that most of us nonexperts probably use it pretty accurately.

— from Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.d.

If you've ever seen a DSM manual from the psychiatric industry (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association), you'll know what I mean.

There's nothing wrong with diagnosing and treating serious mental health diseases and kudos to the thousands of people who work in that industry, but as Martin Seligman, Ph.D. (former president of the American Psychological Association) once said, the psychiatric industry is half-baked. They've become experts in mental disease, but know little about what works.

Even when we have a precise term for a strong pattern of behavior, we often use a negative connotation.

  • someone who has a bias for action is impatient or impulsive
  • someone who's ordered and structured is anal
  • someone who anticipates what could go wrong is a worrier.

Think of all the money, time, energy, and effort that is wasting on sending employees (and ourselves) to training and seminars that will never produce a viable ROI or ROE (return on expectation — a quantitative means of measuring training based on the expectations of the operating official who sponsors it).

So, stop trying to fix your weakness. In future blogs, I'll tell you how to "manage around your weaknesses."
 


Jim Castiglia, Founder 
Business Street Fighter Consulting, LLC
919-263-1256
http://www.BSF.Consulting