The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
A peer of mine many years ago found himself facing a professional quandary. He had served as an officer of the law for decades until one day he was in an accident that damaged his ability to think critically.
After physical rehabilitation he found he no longer qualified for law enforcement. Being extremely confident as a general rule however, he applied and was hired for a position amongst a team of analysts (of which I was a member) who provided support for a government defense project.
What follows below is a quick summary of his experience, and what we can learn from it about not fitting our role or playing to our strengths.
To bring him fully on stage, let’s just say that when he joined my team, he found his gift for enforcement was as strong as ever. Meaning that, when computing systems failed and engineers called us for assistance, my acquaintance would race forth to be first on the scene, taking charge and issuing orders like: “I told YOU to BE QUIET while HE describes the problem!”
Entering the room after him, I would often find wide-eyed engineers sitting ramrod straight as my peer took names and made notes on scraps of paper or a napkin.
Unfortunately, that was as far as he could go. After establishing control, my coworker had little to offer, and no amount of training made up for his lack of ability to deal with technical complexity.
It was difficult for the organization. It wasted time and created hard feelings. Each event became a stage for my coworker’s unnecessary application of force. Eventually, no one took him seriously, and no amount of chutzpah could change that. Without analytical ability, he simply didn’t fit the role. He left the organization as confident in himself as he’d arrived.
While this is an extreme example, it can still be generalized to make a practical point: Consistently playing to our blind side creates failure. Further, if the primary requirements of our role involve capacities for which we’re not wired, we create failures for others too.
This is amplified when we confidently see every problem as a nail for which we’re the hammer.
Granted, we can’t always play to our strengths. Rather, it’s a matter of having appropriate strengths that apply to our primary responsibilities. A careful look at our role description – and some honest feedback from our upline – should provide that point of reference.
Against this reference then, we have the critical task of knowing ourselves, which requires serious objectivity. As that’s difficult if not impossible on our own, a good way to acquire this objectivity is through standardized assessments.
Thankfully, there are a variety of strength-focused assessments on the market. At Influence we use TTI assessments, and when determining strengths, we recommend a two-science combination that assesses both behavior and motivation with impressive depth. We particularly like TTI assessments because their reports explain the findings in direct, practical, and applied ways.
To wrap this up: Comparing role requirements to personal strengths will help you position yourself for success, whether it’s inside the organization or elsewhere. And for next steps, if you suspect a poor-fit or are tempted to place clients in a headlock, we highly recommend objectivity through assessments. We’re happy to assist with the process.