How to Optimize and Effectively Use Your Talent and Strengths
Organizations are increasingly helping their employees discover, develop, and deploy their talent and strengths more effectively. This approach is driving greater performance, motivation, teamwork, and retention. It also marks a significant shift from the traditional focus on fixing weaknesses to a more positive, strengths-based mindset. However, simply identifying and using talent and strengths isn’t enough. When overused, even the best talents and strengths can backfire, leading to unintended consequences or failure.
What Are Overused Talent and Strengths?
Overused talent and strengths refer to those that are applied excessively, resulting in negative outcomes. This occurs when a talent or strength, instead of being an asset, turns into a weakness. Overused talents can damage relationships, harm careers, and lead to poor performance. Studies show that more people experience career derailment due to overused talents than obvious weaknesses. For instance, my Boldness talent has been key to my career success, but early on, I was too eager to challenge the status quo without considering the audience. This led to perceptions of being overpowering—a classic case of overused talent.
Causes of Overused Talent and Strengths
Several factors can lead to the overuse of talent and strengths, including:
- Poor self-awareness
- Stress and pressure, especially when values are challenged
- Lack of honest feedback
- Positive reinforcement of past overused behaviours
- Poor situational awareness and lack of self-regulation
- Inflexibility and resistance to change
- Lack of learning agility
Understanding these triggers helps individuals become more conscious of how to use their talent and strengths more effectively.
Why It’s Crucial to Address Overused Talent and Strengths
Raising awareness of overused talent and strengths brings several benefits:
- Improved Performance: When people recognize that their perceived flaws are actually overused talents, they become more open to growth and change.
- Constructive Feedback: Framing feedback in terms of overused talent and strengths is often more effective than focusing on weaknesses.
- Team Dynamics: A focus on talent and strengths fosters a more appreciative and tolerant team culture. It helps team members understand each other’s uniqueness and provides a constructive way to give feedback.
How to Raise Awareness of Overused Talent and Strengths
The first step in managing overused talent and strengths is raising awareness. We recommend using a scientifically validated talent assessment like TalentPredix™, which helps individuals pinpoint the specific behaviours limiting their performance. With this insight, they can use their talent and strengths more selectively and effectively. Learn more about the science behind talent assessments here.
Matching Talent and Strengths to Situations
At TalentPredix™, we believe that for talent to be fully optimized, individuals must learn to adapt their talents across different situations. This is expressed as:
Optimized Talent = f (Talent X Skills X Adaptability)
We help employees develop strategies to match their talents to the situation’s needs. Some of these strategies include:
- Dialing Up or Down Talent: Learning when to amplify or tone down a talent depending on the context.
- Being Intentional: Encouraging people to think carefully about when and how to use their talents before acting.
- Leveraging Complementary Talent: Bringing in colleagues with complementary talents to support and provide feedback.
- Using Supporting Talent: Identifying additional talents that can help mitigate the limiting effects of overused strengths.
Conclusion
To unleash the full potential of your people and help them achieve their goals, it’s essential they understand how to apply their talent and strengths effectively across different situations. They also need to actively mitigate the effects of overused talents. With this holistic awareness, they can use their talents in a more conscious, careful, and competent way, leading to thriving careers and exceptional results.
For more insights on managing talent and strengths, check out this article. Learn more about TalentPredix™ and how to tackle overused talents and strengths by clicking here.
