Drucker on Strengths

Continuing on the subject of the history of the strengths philosophy, if you haven't read Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker's seminal work on the subject, written for the Harvard Business Review in 1999, I suggest you do so. How about this to whet the appetite:

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at - and even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

Awareness

While wrestling with the tricky issue of helping a client to reach the point where he felt he would benefit from soliciting some feedback around his leadership performance, I came across a recent blog post from Tom Peters on the subject of self-awareness in leaders. It led me towards the conclusion that the ability to understand, exploit and develop our strengths, and commit to a plan for managing our weaknesses, may just be the most essential of all leadership attributes. Tom appears to have never agreed with Jim Collins that in reaching for the top, ‘Level 5’ leaders demonstrate a high degree of humility along with their strong will. However, a willingness to listen; take feedback on the impact of our behaviour; and to recognise that our talent is often not enough, surely requires a degree of modesty and respect. Our performance and the performance of others depends on this?

Performance and Strengths

My colleagues at K2 Performance Systems have created a first class blog highlighting issues that connect elite performance in sport with the workplace. In this recent post they provide us with a simple question that captures the essence of the relationship between strengths and performance: How easily can you list your strengths? Take a look.

Negative Self- talk

In his recent blog post Dave Shearon tackles the issue of dealing with negative emotions within Postive Psychology head on. One way to do this, he suggests, is by 'learning to contest and re-direct negative self-talk'. As someone who has struggled with this art I thought, 'easier said than done' - that is until I came across the work of Julie Ness Bell on Performance Intelligence at Work. In this easy to read text she outlines the The 5 Essentials to Achieving The Mind of a Champion, and offers this practical model - 'Recognise, Re-focus, Routine' as process for applying our attention to the elements of performance that are more likely to help us achieve a positive outcome. She says:

...especially in today's tough economic times, many corporate leaders are stalled by fears of failure. This approach robs us of any chance at greatness, but this three-step method (R3) overcomes this challenge by creating new habits in the brain. Recognising self-talk, learning to refocus attention on different aspects of a situation, and establishing new thought routines ensures that those debilitating tapes will stop being replayed in your head.

A quick scan through related work on the web reveals an large amount of papers and texts from the world of Sports Psychology that offer similar models and ways of 'thinking'. I wonder whether Positive Psychology pays enough attention to the world of sport as it searches for new ways to bring its theories to life?