The short, and slightly depressing, answer is that you can’t be at your best every day. That’s because you’re human, and you’re surrounded by other humans! But you can create situations and move yourself into contexts that bring out the best in you, and encourage you to be your best self. And one of the […]
I was delighted to join Tash on her new podcast, ‘Lead With Less’. We talked all things strengths, including: What it means to be strengths based Why you should play and experiment with your strengths What reputation strengths are and how they might make you feel The importance of creating healthy work boundaries And my
Podcast Episode: Lead with Less with Tash Pieterse Read More »
I hate getting things wrong. And I really hate getting stuff wrong when it’s in my area of expertise. Apparently I don’t like being reminded that I’m human (anyone else with me on that?). It happened again in a fairly spectacular way recently, so I decided to turn it into a teachable moment for myself.
How satisfied are you when you make mistakes? If you’re like most of us, you probably feel pretty bummed. And that attitude is holding you back from doing your best work. It is a good thing to make mistakes – in fact, you should be trying to make more of them. The best thing about
Sometimes doing things in reverse can get you better results – and this insight has led to one of the most counterintuitive strategies in The Strenths Deck – reverse pairing. Some years ago, I was working with a client and discussing the strategies she was using to make wise use of her Genius1 strengths (the
The Zone of Potential is one of the five Zones in The Strengths Deck Matrix (which you can download a free copy of from here). It contains the things that make you say “I enjoy this but I’m not great at it”. People’s first reaction is often “Ah, so this is the stuff I should
One issue that comes up over and over again, whether I’m coaching one person, or speaking with a group, is the concept of strengths overuse. The usual question is, “If I’m good at something, isn’t it better to use it more?” Sweet or sour? Almost anything in life has a sweet spot – the point
I love the huge variety of strengths-based approaches that are out there, but many of them get one key thing wrong. They focus on the extremes of super-strengths and worst weaknesses, and make only passing mention (or worse, completely ignore) what sits in the middle of the spectrum. It’s as though they don’t realise that
Appreciative Inquiry is a method for solving problems and implementing change by focusing on the positive. It emerged from the work of David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva in the late 1980s, and has since been used by businesses, teams and organisations around the world. The Ai (1) approach is perfectly aligned with the strengths-led approach,
The Link Between Appreciative Inquiry and Strengths Read More »
If you’re like me, you have sat in countless training sessions or performance reviews being told to identify your weaknesses and develop strategies to compensate for or overcome them. Did anyone ever tell you to focus on your strengths? It seems to be a totally foreign concept in most workplaces. But focusing on strengths will
