"How to Overcome Your Strengths", FAST Company, May 1999

FAST Company May 1999

"How to Overcome Your Strengths"

Michael Kaplan writes about "How to overcome your strengths". Kaplin interviewed three management executives who believe it is not your weaknesses that can trip you up on our way to the top, it's your strengths.

Kaplan categorizes people like the perfectionist team leader who won't delegate, the detailed-obsessed finance wig who can't see the big picture, the super geek who alienates everyone. He talked to Lois P. Frankel, a business coach and senior partner at Corporate Coaching International, based in Los Angeles who says, "people rely too heavily on the skills that contributed to their early success. As a result, they fail to develop new skills when problems arise and they revert to the same old tactics and then wonder why those don't work.

In Extension, we have personnel who are simply brilliant in their own disciplines and areas of expertise especially at the campus and research centers. Many times, they fail in technology transfer because they fail to build the networks, relationships and teams needed for effective program and information delivery.

Charles Martin is a Fox Family executive who found that being nice was a liability. Whenever someone disagreed with him, he backed down. He spent too much time helping others and not himself. With help from a survey by Frankel, Martin was considered too passive and wasn't a take charge leader type.

This hurt him in terms of respect from coworkers. Frankels technique, considered a self-administrative pep talk, gave Martin the confidence to tell people what he really thought, rather than what he thought they wanted to hear.

I have seen this type of personality in Extension both in the administration and also at the county level. It doesn't work very well. Clients or co-workers want to know where you stand on issues, recommendations, and why you do what you do. We have to be able to make sensible decisions and back them up with sound unbiased research.

Ed Gannet works for the world's largest biotech company called Amgen. He was promoted to Vice President of Human Resources, but suddenly lost his self-confidence at the high level board meetings even though he was noted and respected as a fast thinker and real time problem solver. Frankel coached him to make his points crisp and help shape his remarks at meetings in bulleted sentences.

This situation can occur in extension when less experienced staff may be appointed to committees and become intimidated. Many times new ideas and thoughts can be stifled, especially when one feels insecure and probably doesn't express ones self as well as they would like. Researching and preparation, along with practicing the responses you anticipated, would gain much respect.

The third person to Kaplan interviewed was Joan McCoy, a driven self-sufficient workers and a consummate "go to" person who worked for an oil company ARCO Alaska. Her performance was outstanding. However, she kept her nose to the grindstone, never realizing that she was alienating all of her coworkers. She was so afraid of doing less than perfect work that she would delegate only the most minor assignments to her staff; which frustrated her team and gave her a crushing workload. Her bosses told her she needed leadership training for further advancement. She needed to share her workload, develop team building, and tear down the isolation she had built around herself. Now she is talking to people in the elevator or the cafeteria. And for the first time, she is getting a lot of good information about what's going on in the company.

This example certainly occurs many times in Extension. We function at our best in team situations. Having a comfort zone in the workplace is critical for effective programming. Extension staff need to share their workload and communicate with coworkers. It's not a power trip to go ahead and do things without consulting anyone. One can still be in control by sharing the workload and being open and warm to coworkers. Ownership of a project or program has to be felt by everyone involved in order to have any degree of success.

--James B. Nesseth (jnesseth@extension.umn.edu), October 14, 1999

-- Anonymous, October 15, 1999