The importance and significance of one's unique personal strengths–positive psychologists call these signature strengths–came to the forefront with Dr. Martin Seligman's book, Authentic Happiness (Free Press, 2002). People have always depended upon their core competencies and personal strengths to advance their careers, often with conscious intent, sometimes through good fortune and quirks of fate. Scientific study has confirmed the value of consciously building personal and professional development plans upon one's strengths.
Positive Psychology's Signature Strengths
Seligman, who might be termed the father of positive psychology — the study of human well-being — led the American Psychological Association during the period of initial focused scientific effort to better understand human happiness. The revolutionary wisdom growing out of positive psychology's studies is that people are happier, more productive, and more creative; perform higher quality work; and are even healthier when utilizing their personal or signature strengths.
Peter Drucker, prominent business and management consultant once noted, "The unique purpose of organization is to make strength productive." Despite this learned wisdom and advice, organizations and individuals have tended to focus personal and professional development plans on personal weaknesses.
How to Utilize Strengths for Personal Growth
Psychologist's advice, based on studies of happy, productive people, is to focus energy and improvement effort on better understanding and utilization of strengths, while minimizing the need to utilize personal weaknesses. For the individual intent on personal and professional development, fully understanding personal strengths and weaknesses is of the utmost importance; without the clarity of one's best assets and personal liabilities, personal growth efforts will be a hit or miss activity.
Though the work of Seligman and others introduced the identification of personal strengths — signature strengths — a recent research approach by prominent positive psychology researcher and entrepreneur Alex Linley has expanded and further advanced characterization and understanding of human strengths.
A New View of Strengths from Alex Linley
Linley's first strengths book, Average to A+ (CAPP Press, Coventry, England, 2008) focused on the benefits of using one's strengths. His latest book, The Strength Book: Be Confident, Be Successful, and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You (Capp Press, United Kingdom, 2010) describes a four quadrant model for understanding human abilities: realized strengths, unrealized strengths, learned behaviors, and weaknesses.
- Realized Strengths are competencies performed well that are energizing and frequently used.
- Unrealized Strengths are well performed and energizing, but underutilized.
- Learned Behaviors are performed well and frequently used, but are de-energizing.
- Weaknesses are performed poorly and are de-energizing.
Linley's advice for personal and professional growth enthusiasts is to continue to strengthen and utilize realized strengths, focus personal development on unrealized strengths, moderate dependence on learned behaviors, and minimize dependence on weaknesses.
Linley's research identified sixty core human qualities which can be measured in his on-line self-assessment tool, Realise2. Realise2 is currently priced at fifteen British pounds (currently about twenty-three US dollars).
Competencies and Behaviors Behind Burnout
A startling result of Linley's research is the identification of learned behaviors, differentiating these competencies from true strengths. Learned behaviors are competencies a person has learned and learned well, often depending on them for success in work and personal relationships. However, Linley points out that learned behaviors are energy drains, probably accounting for a person's burn out when used heavily. True strengths, which Linley terms "realized strengths," are sources of energy.
Previous research tended to lump all competencies together as strengths, therefore leading a person to focus on heavier utilization of abilities, some of which might be energy draining, leading to unhappiness and job burn out.
Strengths for Personal and Professional Development Plans
Advances in characterization and understanding of personal strengths, along with the availability of self-assessments for personalizing one's strengths, provide a strong foundation for personal and professional development planning. Current wisdom suggests that it's best to build upon strengths and minimize dependence on weaknesses. New information identifies energy draining behaviors which might cause professional burnout.
Jerry Lopper - IPPA member, business and engineering degrees. Jerry's passion for personal development shows in 5 books, hundreds of articles & ...
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