Two Ways to Abandon Yourself Amidst Challenge

If you’re not meant to be excellent at everything, what do you do when you need to succeed at something outside your zone of strength?

It hit me again in a big way, the clear realization that what I do best was not what’s needed for the job.  When I zoomed out, I saw myself on a loop of repeat attack, fooled into thinking I was making progress, when all that was changing was my own acceptance of the discomfort. I felt like a robot vacuum whose pivot capacity had malfunctioned. I was wearing a path of energy straight into the wall, over and over again. 

In the world of coaching, this is an opportunity to create a change.  Sometimes we romanticize the change as an invitation to get completely out of whatever loop you’re stuck in.  But what happens when quitting the job, ending the relationship, or unbecoming responsible isn’t an option?  What happens to your strengths when the challenge must be met for real? 

Most abandon the concept of strengths altogether.  And this abandonment happens in one of two ways: Either they ignore the awareness of their strengths, shrink wrapping all the learning they’ve done around their own talent and putting it on a shelf for a time when things are easier.  Or like Cinderella’s evil stepsister shoving her fat toes into a comically small stiletto, they convince themselves they can contort their strengths into different ones that are better aligned to meet the challenge. 

No shade, I’ve done both. I’ve seen entire teams and organizations do both. I think there are nuggets of benefit in each, but I want to present a third option, informed by the first two.  Here’s our ingredients again– –two tempting ways to abandon yourself when your challenge and your strengths are misaligned:

Stick Strengths on the Shelf: You’re too stressed, too busy, or too emotional to focus on what’s right with you or others.  That approach works when things are steady, but right now it’s grit and sweat that will get you through.  

What’s right about this: Grit matters.  Acknowledging something is challenging helps you focus your energy and take yourself seriously.  And naming your own strengths well enough to know they’re not going to shine in a specific situation is some really awesome awareness of the tools you’re most likely to reach for.

Why it’s flawed: A strengths-based approach is not privileged icing on the cake.  It is the cake.  Sure, taking your team through their strengths feels like a positive, winning party trick.  But that doesn’t make a strengths-based approach fluffy or mono-channel positive.  Perhaps it gets a sugary reputation due to contrast: it’s tragically rare that we speak kindly of our own natural potential, and so much easier to name what’s broken.  

The return of this investment happens when people aim their strengths at personally salient goals. I don’t know many people who set easy goals.  Those aren’t goals—those are activities.  If you table your strengths-based approach for sunnier days, you miss the boost in flourishing that can happen when you overcome something meaningful. 

Option two…

Dial Up your Half-Strengths: You realize you are not a natural fit for the pathways of thinking and behaving the task requires, so you sit your own instincts in time out, and reach for synthetic versions of other people’s talent. Sometimes this is referred to as reaching for situational alternative strengths, leaning away from your dominant talents into your supporting options.

What’s helpful here: You’re naming the disconnect, still believing in your ability, and playing with options.  As a growing body of research suggests, you can absolutely rewire your brain and train yourself (or even hire coaches) to adopt new habits and build new ways of being. 

Why it bugs me: It’s crazy hard.  It requires you to stop the world from spinning, hop off your brain carousel, acknowledge and tame your natural instincts, and replace them with others. And even when we give ourselves the most grace, we typically do all this contortion and still compare our performance to the best, most naturally excellent at the task.

So where’s the third option?

I have a solution to propose. If you’re going to dial anything up, make it be active self-compassion.  And I don’t just mean give yourself a break.  I mean action.  Next time you are in over your talent, name it.  

LOOK UP: Name the behavior that leads to success in the situation, and decide whether you are up for demonstrating that behavior, knowing it won’t be something that happens without grit and constant awareness.  And while you’re naming it, remind yourself what values you hold dear that make you want to pursue the challenge at all. (BTW, this is really great change management theory, applied to self.) 

SLOW DOWN: When you’re working outside of your strengths zone, you cannot accomplish as much in any area of your life.  The energy that normally flows freely without you noticing is now spent deliberately, like counting coins and sliding them across the counter instead of tapping a credit card.  It takes effort, so schedule less.  (I’m looking at you, working moms.)  You cannot run as quickly in a 3-legged race as you can on your own two feet.  Slash your expectations of what you can accomplish by at least 10%. 

ADD RECOVERY: Rather than dial down your strength, dial up your strength recovery.  Your natural strengths describe your greatest access to excellence.  But they also offer clues to your most restorative exercises.  Someone with strong natural relationship building skills (think Includer, Empathy, Relator) likely won’t experience the same recharge benefit from a solo silent retreat as someone with strong strategic introspection (Intellection, Context, Analytical).   When you know you’re meeting a challenge outside of your natural capacity, add restorative acts your own strengths crave.  Don’t know where to start?  Ask yourself these questions: 

When recently did you feel most like yourself?  

What activities lull you into a zone of inspiration?

Who are you with and what are you doing when you feel the most energy?

If you are consistently feeling like the challenge you need to meet and the strengths you have to offer are playing on opposite sides of the fence, that is certainly grounds for greater change. Re-examine your role as well as your role within your role. But when there’s a reasonable finish line to a challenge, like completion of a project or duration of a situation, perhaps the more powerful alternative is awareness-based effort with a conscious nod to strengths self-care.

Strengths-based development is perhaps the most promising way we can examine our own contribution to this world. If we save it for when things are right, or force ourselves to make our strengths right, we are dealing in a dangerous trade.  We risk trading our complex, awful, beautiful, challenging, wonderful real lives for a promise of ease that does not exist.  So keep going through the tough, my friends.  You have what it takes, which sometimes is awareness that you’re going to be uncomfortable for a bit.