What is your “too much of a good thing”? What strength do you happen to overuse?
When discussing development plans, we tend to focus on potential development needs, areas for improvement, competencies we are good at that are critical for our success, so we may want to take them to the next level.
How often do you consider your overused #strengths, though?
For example, action orientation is generally a good thing. Unless you say yes to every task, requirement, and opportunity, and lose sight of the priorities and whether or not you can deliver. A recipe for overwhelm and firefighting. Or take strategic thinking – a competency many of us aspire to demonstrate more of. At its best, it is about anticipating future trends and implications accurately, creating a picture of possibilities, and defining ways to achieve the desired destination. Overused though, presents itself as focusing on the direction without paying attention to, or even discounting the tactical steps to get there, becoming theoretical and overcomplicating the picture.
One of my core values and strengths is my passion for learning/curiosity. Again – generally a good thing as it helps me to stay current, engaged and provide value to those I work with and serve. Yet, sometimes as I continuously read, listen and watch to learn, it becomes an activity in itself. You know the feeling when you eat in front of the screen without realising what you have just consumed? Or it translates to investing time and effort into an avenue without fully exploring or mastering what I had found there. In those instances learning becomes similar to planting a fruit tree and abandoning it before it bears fruit, just to move to plant another fruit tree in the very same garden. At times it takes me to commit to too many things as they all are so interesting! Generally, a useful strength, when overused depletes me of focus, time, and energy all limited yet precious resources.
Realising how the overuse of this strength looks for me, I have been slowing myself down this year- looking closely at opportunities before saying yes to them, becoming purposeful about learning and instrumental about applying what I learned. The idea of these weekly Linkedin challenges stems in fact from that commitment to digest what I learned in the previous week. The commitment to the weekly posts makes me pause, reflect and look for opportunities to apply the learning and share it with you to encourage you too to self-reflect, increase your self-awareness and take yourself out of your comfort zones.
� Are you aware of your strengths?
� Are you aware if you demonstrate too much of a good thing at times? If so, how does it look like for you?
� What do you want to do about it?