Quote Journal: Turning the Table

"If you want people to stay the same, tell them what they want to hear. If you want people to change, tell them what they need to know." -Fulton Sheen



I like this quote. As a leader, you want to be liked. But being liked and being effective are two different things. I would prefer to err on the side of being firm and challenging someone rather than sugar-coating a piece of news so it did not pierce the poor soul’s thin skin. Gee, even the way I stated that sounded harsh! I am a believer in full-disclosure and use that technique during employee evaluations. And I think it helps people understand what they need to do to truly improve.

I’ve been saving many leadership quotes lately, for use with my staff. When I accepted my current position, I sort of skipped a level of management. I was given several departments that all had their own managers. I was asked to manage the managers. So I’ve been trying to motivate my managers from within. I once read that true leadership is where you get people to do things because THEY want to do them.

So my next plan in developing my managers is to highlight their strengths.

I’m running in this counter-cultural (at least to me) angle about highlighting strengths. Where I’m from, you humbly accept your strengths (and don’t you dare boast about them), but you highlight your weaknesses so you can improve upon them. You do everything you can to strengthen your weaknesses so they become less of a liability to you.

Then one of my fellow leaders at St. Fozzie’s turned me on to a book called StrengthsFinder 2.0. The premise of StrengthsFinder is to highlight your strengths so you can excel in your strong areas and work with others’ strong traits. It’s a whole paradigm shift for me…I know exactly what my weaknesses and frailties are. But I had no true understanding of my strengths.

I took the StrengthFinder assessment (about 170 questions) and emerged with my Top 5: Achiever, Discipline, Focus, Competition, and Relator. The relating piece surprised me, but the other four did not. Except that I had been viewing my need to achieve, my insane OCD focus, and my competitive streak as liabilities and flaws in my character. I kept trying to weed out these facets of myself, thinking they were unchristian or presumptuous. I kept trying to overcome my incessant need to race in traffic, win at Scrabble, and accomplish many new projects at work and FORCE myself to chill out and not care so deeply about what I achieve. Obviously, it wasn’t working and only served to re-enforce that deep insecurity that arises when you try to change something that is unchangeable and fail. Repeatedly.

Just like my impatience. I will admit that I’m one of THE most impatient people you will ever meet. I can’t help it; it’s a core facet of my personhood. And to be honest, it drives me to obtain results and increase accountability to others…so it works in its own odd way. But I about drove myself batty, trying to change these unchangeable facets of my personhood and I didn’t exactly have the utmost patience while I continually failed to change.

My point is that, by accepting and celebrating our strengths, we can utilize our God-given uniqueness and celebrate the strengths we have. I hate to sound so after-school-special, but I actually learned how to better accept myself and the strengths I offer this world. I highly recommend the book if you want to learn a thing or two about yourself.