Ask almost any business leader how to develop people and build teamwork in the most effective way and you will hear “leverage employee strengths.” However, when it comes to their own careers, many managers still focus most of their personal development efforts on shoreing up areas of weakness.

Sometimes this is due to well-intentioned criticism from superiors. Other times, managers moving up the career ladder try to emulate those who have done so before.

While all managers must hone their communication and people skills, learning these skills and adding knowledge is simple. Deliberately recognizing, developing, and leveraging your own strengths is more difficult.

There are many programs available to help the ambitious manager improve performance, but a review of typical business practices points to a common fallacy. Whether in individual development plans, performance reviews, or 360 assessments, efforts to help people change for the better often focus more on weaknesses than strengths.

From our earliest years we are programmed to believe that our greatest potential for growth is in our areas of greatest deficiency. Think about it. If your child got an A in English and a C in math, where would he focus most of his attention?

This is not necessarily wrong. In fact, everyone can and should develop basic competence in multiple important areas. The problem is that this philosophy can perpetuate the focus on weakness long after basic proficiency has been achieved.

Social psychologists have found that focusing on strengths leads to higher performance, higher productivity, and greater satisfaction. In fact, honing your skills to their fullest potential can essentially make your weaknesses irrelevant.

Today’s business environment offers many more opportunities for advancement than ever before. But to take advantage of these opportunities, you must recognize your areas of greatest competence, work to develop them to their full potential, and then match your strengths with the right challenge and the right role.

To maximize your effectiveness, follow the lead of high-performing organizations. The most successful companies identify their core competencies and then work to develop them in order to maximize their potential. Functions that the organization performs less well are outsourced, markets that do not fit core competencies are abandoned, and divisions that do not add to the strengths of the company or advance its purpose are sold or spun off.

Reaching the next level of performance involves identifying and improving your core competencies, your strengths, rather than trying to remedy every weakness. Delegate as many activities as possible that don’t fit your strengths and only address areas of weakness that get in the way of doing what you do best.

Determine your strengths first

While it seems that most of us should be aware of our strengths, we often confuse them, what we do well, with traits (our personality characteristics) or work habits (the conditions in which we perform). Many of us also take our strengths for granted. By doing what seems absolutely natural and logical to us, we fail to recognize that we are actually creating results far superior to what others might have expected.

Harvard psychologist and pioneer of the theory of multiple intelligence, Dr. Howard Gardner, notes that people have many more areas of intelligence, or capacities to produce useful results, than previously thought. Where traditional IQ tests measure linguistic and mathematical ability, we now know that other skills such as interpersonal intelligence, the ability to understand and relate well to others, and spatial intelligence, the ability to create or plan in multiple dimensions, can have significant value. .

So how do you determine your greatest strengths?

One way is to examine your own past and present performance and try to discern a pattern of successful behavior. What easily occurs to you that could be more difficult for others: negotiating a difficult contract, analyzing financial data, creating an advertising strategy, leading a team?

Or you can use feedback analysis as described by management guru Peter Drucker in his book Management Challenges for the 21st Century. Whenever you undertake a key activity or make an important decision, write down your expectations. Then a few months later, re-examine your expectations and the actual results you achieved.

Colleagues, family, and friends can also serve as resources to help you determine your strengths. In the January 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review, management professors Laura Roberts and Gretchen Spreitzer and their colleagues propose a reflected better self exercise, in which you actively solicit feedback from those who know you well. However, it is critical to this exercise that the feedback focuses on describing the specific areas in which you have excelled, not the areas where you could use more work.

Match your strengths with your tasks

Once you know your strengths, you need to figure out how best to use them. It used to be that organizations managed the careers of their people, but today that obligation belongs to each one of us. You have a responsibility to get to know yourself and determine where and how you would perform best.

Often the difference between success and failure is not learning additional skills, but discovering how, given your strengths, you can adapt to the demands of your specific position.

This is particularly important when the nature of your work changes. Jack was a star sales manager for an educational products company. His ability to form strong connections with his team and develop his people resulted in lower turnover and a significant increase in sales.

Jack also worked well with his colleagues, leading brainstorming sessions that resulted in a new integrated offering of products and services, with significant profit margins for the company. Jack’s skills both in the office and in the field caught the attention of company executives who saw him as a natural leader. When the opportunity for significant career advancement presented itself, Jack seized it.

Jack had the advantage of following in the footsteps of Ellen, an admired veteran. Unlike Jack, Ellen had risen through the ranks of finance. He spent three weeks assisting Jack in the transition to the new position before leaving to run operations in Europe.

However, a few months after his new job as a regional manager, Jack grew increasingly frustrated with his job. His productivity had dropped and his old desire to go to work each morning was gone.

As we worked with Jack, we began to see that his strengths were largely interpersonal and creative. He shone while working with his team, giving presentations, and coaching his direct reports. But most of his work now included written reports, formal strategy sessions, and routine management tasks that had little to do with Jack’s greater competencies.

After pointing out his strengths, Jack began redesigning his work to better suit his job.

skills. He began spending more time in the field, visiting clients and prospects to see their needs first-hand.

He used his natural team-building skills and creative ability in meetings that brought together representatives from the sales and product design departments to brainstorm ways to better serve customer needs. He found an assistant who excelled at writing reports and organizing data and began to delegate these tasks as much as possible.

With this new focus on his areas of greatest competence, Jack felt renewed satisfaction in his job. Its productivity and performance were greatly improved. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and while there will be many who will encourage you to work on your shortcomings, the key to high performance is to look for what you do remarkably well and focus there.

Armed with this self-awareness, you will be able to better determine how you can best contribute, both now and in the next phase of your career.

Your greatest successes will come from placing yourself in a position where your strengths can find opportunities for your regular expression. And, as maximizing your strength becomes a habit, you’ll be in a better position to help those around you maximize their skills, leading to increased productivity and satisfaction for you, your team, and your organization.

© 2007 Dr. Robert Karlsberg and Dr. Jane Adler