How personal strengths and weaknesses are viewed has a significant bearing on an individual employees utilization, growth and satisfaction as well as an organizations overall performance. Managers and organizations are changing their view on how best to develop and utilize individual strengths and the role of weakness. Some deeply ingrained obstacles and beliefs about training, promotion, employee development and organizations must be confronted and challenged.

The following quiz can assess your understanding of the most effective way to view personal strengths and weaknesses.

Instructions:

Take the quiz without looking at the answers, but when you are reviewing the answers, the questions and answers are "linked" so that you can easily move back and forth between them. When you've totaled your scores, find out how to interpret the score.

The Answers

Question 1

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8 out of 10 employees feel they are miscast; they never have the chance to reveal the best of themselves. Based on The Gallup Organizations survey of 1.7 million employees working in 101 companies from 36 countries and reported in Marcus Buckingam & Donald O. Clifton. Now Discover Your Strengths.  The Free Press, New York, NY. 2001

Question 2

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Usual performance reviews focus on what was done well then quickly turn to areas we can do better which are usually individual weaknesses.  Reality is that developmental plans translate to improving individual weakness not building strengths.  What should happen is just the opposite, building strengths.

Question 3

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Most development efforts and training dollars are spent to address weakness and applied to everyone as opposed to selective training to build strengths.  At best development based on weakness is damage control, they should not be ignored however they will never be alleviated.

Question 4

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They already know your credentials and can read about your past experiences from your resume.  The real question they have is: “So what, what can you do and contribute that is unique?”

Question 5

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What a tragedy, employees have the opportunity to do what they do best every day only 20% of the time! Is the corollary that organizations operate at 20% capacity? Based on The Gallup Organizations survey of 1.7 million employees working in 101 companies from 36 countries and reported in Marcus Buckingam & Donald O. Clifton. Now Discover Your Strengths.  The Free Press, New York, NY. 2001

Question 6

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Achievements or what you have done is the best predictor of what you will do in the future.  Strengths are also discovered in things you learned rapidly and enjoy doing.  Why, because they are easier for you than others.

Question 7

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Unfortunately, organizations place their training dollars and developmental time on developing well rounded contributors.  The argument is that organizations and individuals would be more productive and satisfied if they focused on sharpening or honing the person’s strengths.

Question 8

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Past behavior and results are the best predictor of the future—describe situations, actions and results you have produced to illustrate your strengths. Most find it hard to accurately describe their unique strength in behavioral terms; they usually talk about education and work experience.  These experiences are like tickets to a sporting event, they get you in the door, articulating strengths are what allow you to play in the game.

Question 9

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Defining strengths is hard work; we would rather focus on our weakness than give ourselves credit for what makes us truly unique.  If anything we underestimate our strengths. Our biggest enemy is that we assume that everyone can do what we do well; we take our strengths for granted. Systematic approaches are available yet underutilized resulting in an incomplete answer to what makes each of us truly unique.

Question 10

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At least 4-6 will allow you the focus to develop these to an exceptional level.  This number will also be useful in determining for which careers these 4-6 strengths are mandatory for superior performance. The real tragedy in life is not that each of us lack enough strengths, it’s that we fail to identify and use the ones we have.  Wasted strengths, or what Benjamin Franklin called “sundials in the shade.”