Marcus Buckingham helped launch the Strengths Revolution when he co-authored Now, Discover your strengths. For two decades he has been a leading proponent of strengths based development. In this interview with Adam Grant he tackles overusing strengths:
“I’m just giving you my reaction. A strength is not good or bad, it’s morally neutral. You can use it for ill and you can use it for good. You can never have too much of a strength, you can only use it poorly. What we’re talking about here is intelligence. You can use your strengths unintelligently. If you think you can ever have too much of a strength, your coaching then sounds like this: “Be less of yourself, Adam. Turn yourself down.” And for you, you’re like, “How do I metabolize that?” Whereas if I say to you, “Listen, you’ve got a great strength in…” — maybe you’re super assertive — “Stop pissing people off, and start using that to persuade them to do something they didn’t intend to do.” And then you lean in and go, “How do I do that?” Now all of a sudden, I’m like, “I don’t know. Here’s what I would do, but what you might try …” That just feels better than me going, “Turn yourself down. You’re at 11. Turn it to six.” And you’re like, “I can’t.” Or “You’re too empathetic.” No. You can never be too — if you’ve got empathy, you’re empathetic. A challenge with you then is how do leverage that intelligently to create the outcomes that you want? You can’t be crying all over people all the time. But that doesn’t mean you have too much empathy. It means we’ve got to help you channel that productively. It leads to different conversations.”
Maximizers and Developers will love this episode, but so too will anyone interested in Strengths based development.
“Akimbo is an ancient word, from the bend in the river or the bend in an archer’s bow. It’s become a symbol for strength, a posture of possibility, the idea that when we stand tall, arms bent, looking right at it, we can make a difference.
Akimbo’s a podcast about our culture and about how we can change it. About seeing what’s happening and choosing to do something.” So goes the introduction to Seth Godin’s contemplations on how the world works. This is not your usual podcast: No guests. No fancy production. Just Seth and his thoughts. His very well groomed thoughts. Seth is the thinker’s thinker. Author of 23 books, many best sellers, Seth has long been the go to person for all things marketing every since Purple Cow took the world by storm.
I have long been a fan, having read the said Purple Cow, Linchpin and Tribes (among others and watched his Ted Talks like How ideas spread:
Seth’s podcast listens like a series of essays. Really thoughtful essays. Episode 19, the Big Sort, gets to the heart of arranging. “People strong in the Arrangertheme can organize, but they also have a flexibility that complements this ability. They like to figure out how all of the pieces and resources can be arranged for maximum productivity.” Seth gets to the heart of our compulsion to organize, the incredible Discipline it takes.
All of Seth’s shows go beyond the topic at hand, giving incredible Context to listener.
Aikimbo will feed not just your Context but also your
My love affair with podcasts continues as I binge listen these past several days the James Altucher Show. James made a name for himself by being an early tech reporter, Hedge Fund Manager and serial entrepreneur and author, with 20 books to his credit. There could be many of the 400 episodes I recommend, but Evan Carmichael stands out for its positivity.
I did not know Evan Carmichael, well not directly. Sure I had seen some of his youtube videos posted on facebook like Steve Job’s 10 Rules for Success:
or Oprah Winfrey’s Top 10 Rules For Success
or 5 PROVEN Ways to FIND Your True PURPOSE!
These make their way around motivational posts as Evan has over 1.7 Million Subscribers. All good great stuff. Evan distills the essence of success through carefully editing interesting and successful people’s stories from other video interviews. And he does it right, focusing on the positive, because that is the heart and soul of what he does and who he is. James and Evan were a fantastic pairing, two uber enthusiasts who love finding just one thing to give them an edge. And they love to share. This is their includer in action.
James is a very enjoyable interviewer. He has a way of connecting with his guest through making his own observations and interjections. Every episode I learn so much from James and his guests.
Strengths fed:
Evan radiates Positivity and optimism both in his action and how he profiles it
I love podcasts–heck we all do. Now I thought I would shine the light on specific episodes that caught my ears. First up: Happiness Researcher, Shawn Achor being interviewed by Jordan Harbinger.
I first encountered Shawn (great name by the way) through his first work, the Happiness Advantage, a book of highly actionable ideas, as his subtitle suggests: “How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life.” Shawn has a gift at taking research and bringing i alive. He is even better in person:
In this fast-moving and very funny talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that, actually, happiness inspires us to be more productive. His humor is part of why this has been viewed almost 20 Million times.
Jordan doesn’t just skillfully interview Shawn, he enters into a a dialogue, looking for ways to help us understand why this matters and how to put it into action. Jordan’s show notes takes it a step further by adding a worksheet to help you take action on the big ideas presented during the conversation. Jordan is an incredible engaging conversationalist that makes his guests feel at ease.
Jordan’s show is well worth subscribing to and mining the back episodes.
While Gallup has written definitions and action steps for each of its 34 themes, they do not always illustrate the point effectively. I have taken a stab at giving a more detailed explanation you can find here. The folks at Leadership Vision Consulting have done a wonderful job adding illumination through inclusion of real life examples culled from thousands of interviews over 16 years working with clients. They also focus on the generative aspect of the strength–ie how you can use this theme to make things happen. Check out yours:
One of the things that undermines us being at our best is procrastination.
In 1978, 5% of the population admitted to being chronic procrastinators compared to roughly 26% of the population today (Steele, 2007).
Indeed, it is no coincidence that Self-Control is the least occurring VIA Strengths (only 4% of the population) and Discipline is near the bottom of Gallup’s 34 Strengthsfinder themes (31st of 34). So, if you are like me, you cannot call on these strengths to help you.
Warning: While reading.viewing this post will help you effectively move beyond procrastinating if put into practice, you will probably go down a rabbit hole exploring procrastinating.
Tim Urban of Wait, but why offers one of best explanations for why we procrastinate:
Dr. Linda Sapadin has created a personality quiz to help you identify the type of procrastinator you are:
According to Dr. Sapadin, the 6 styles represent the outer polarities of 3 traits:
Attention to Details:The perfectionist pays too much attention to details; the dreamer doesn’t pay enough attention.
Focus on the Future:The worrier is overly concerned about what might happen if…; the crisis-maker is not sufficiently concerned (until crunch time).
Relationship to Others:The defier goes against what others want; the pleaser is overly oriented to what others want.
In her book, she offers prescriptions to each of the styles. Short of buying the book, what can you do?
Planning
First steps always involve having a plan. Part of the plan comes down to understanding your priorities. For big picture, short of having your own mission statement (which is a good idea), I like Warren Buffet’s 25/5 priority solution:
Write down your top 25 goals for the next year.
Circle your top 5.
Throw out the other 20. As Buffet said “Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”
You can do this on a life time, or five years or one week. It really does not matter. The idea is to zero in on the essential. Charles Schwab employed a similar idea brought to him by a consultant Ivy Lee
At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.
Repeat this process every working day.
A more macro approach has to do with understanding the nature of your to do list at any given time as General Eisenhower did: “”I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” This is best illustrated by this matrix:
“this is something I actually found when writing the book. The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit. So, willpower is like a muscle, right? It’s this muscle that you can build up, and it gets tired, but the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. The same is true of our ability to focus. The more you practice focusing, the easier focusing becomes. And so the other answer for procrastination is, don’t beat up on yourself. Let yourself practice going longer and longer and longer without taking a five-minute break to check Facebook because after three or four weeks, after three or four months you’ll be able to sustain focus much longer, but the key is, you can’t change everything overnight. You can’t suddenly say, I want a brand new habit tomorrow and expect it to be east and effortless. It’s something you have to give yourself permission to take a little bit of time to practices because you’re building up neuro pathways associated with certain behavior and those neuro pathways just build up over time. You can’t speed up that process any more than is natural.”
Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break
Other techniques
Visual Cues: Let’s say you need to learn a list of vocabulary words. You commit to reviewing 25 words every day. You can get a bowl of 25 paperclips–25 to be exact. Each word you review, you flip the clip to an empty bowl. And you keep going until the first bowl is empty. Repeat tomorrow.
Surrender your cell phone. Seriously, you know you cannot live without it, so let’s meet half way. When you get home, give your phone to your parent. You can give yourself an allowance of say 30 minute phone break to do all the things you normally do. A growing body of research is showing that Cell phone usage is driving anxiety levels up.
Exercise Self Control. Don’t have any? There is an app for that. You can block websites and apps that distract you. The nice thing is you can give yourself an allowance. So you can block Youtube for say 1 hour and then give yourself a break to do so. There is an app called Focus for your iphone that does the thing. More iphone apps for productivity here.
Focus Writer helps you concentrate on your writing on a mac. StayFocusd increases your productivity by limiting the amount of time that you can spend on time-wasting websites through this Chrome extension.
Practice mindfulness daily. Why? “Emotional regulation, to me, is the real story around procrastination, because to the extent that I can deal with my emotions, I can stay on task,” says Pychyl, a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada).
Podcasts worth listening to
A whole podcast dedicated to procrastination called iprocrastinate.
The guys at Releasing Strengths are aiming to connect you with someone who shares your top 5. The odds are slim:
We are all pretty unique, however some people share the same Top 5 themes. The chances of two people having the same Top 5 themes is 1 in 278,256. Even more incredible, two people having the same Top 5 themes in the same order is 1 in 33 million. (33,390,720).
And yet they have already connected 22 sets of Strengths Twins, 1 set of Triplets and 1 group of Quads in only 660 registrations. It is interesting the frequency of those filling in the form:
People strong in the Discipline theme enjoy routine and structure. Their world is best described by the order they create.
Needs on a team:To organize
As a Leader: Create order
In Conflict:Add structure
Partner with: someone with strong Ideation–this will stretch your thinking. Adaptability–They will help you manage with flexibility especially in times of change. Self-assurance–will give you confidence especially trying new things.
In academics:– loves organization – this student will also be well-prepared for the advising session and usually knows what they want – enjoys structured courses, well- organized profs with clear expectations, grading rubrics – will probably want to take all the required courses first to “get them out of the way” – will want to carefully plan their course schedule and will care about the times classes are taught and how they will get their assignments done – will want study time in between classes, so won’t want to schedule any back-to-back classes – will enjoy seeing the syllabus in advance of choosing the class
“
Jordan Harbinger unpacks with Shawn his new Book, 
