I recently took a personality test at the request of my mindful coach as a first step on a journey of self-(re)discovery.
It wasn’t my first time taking a personality test. A few days into business school, I took a Meyer Briggs test. According to 16 Personalities (based on the Meyer Briggs Test Indicator and Five Factor Model), my personality type was an Architect.
My recent personality test, courtesy of the VIA Institute on Character, further confirmed my top six strengths: creativity, love of learning, leadership, fairness, love, and perseverance.
Seeing my traits written on paper (or on my screen) again reminded me of their significance and the engine of my life's motivation and well-being.
Then, it dawned on me that I had been unhappy and stressed for a while because my signature strengths had been deprived of nourishment. In other words, I had not been feeding my strengths.
I have known my personality all along. It was with me from the day I was born and/or developed at a very young age.
I remember loving to draw from the moment I could hold a pencil. That’s an instinct at its core. Drawing was a feel-good moment for a young kid who knew nothing about what it meant to have an asset like creativity for a career or the future.
Did we focus on the wrong thing?
It’s not that we don’t love our strengths. It’s just that in the daily grind of working in corporate America, we too often are told to focus on improving our weaknesses, spending more energy chasing improvements than reinforcing strengths.
Here’s an example of an imbalanced focus in my 1:1 meeting with a direct report. It would start like this:
“Hey Paul, good job on the presentation today. But here’s some constructive feedback I would like you to consider…”
Then we spend the rest of the meeting picking apart his flaws.
That’s just one meeting. But what if Paul took it seriously and spent too much time on self-correction?
As a manager, I missed taking advantage of his strengths.
Here’s a better version of a conversation starter:
Me: “Hey Paul, I love what you did with the presentation today. By the way, do you like teaching others?”
Paul: “Yeah, I feel that helped me organize my thoughts, and I loved the reaction from the crowd.”
Me: “I am just thinking. Perhaps you should turn that into a regular lunch and learn for the team.”
Paul: “Yeah. I would enjoy doing that.”
Have you heard of the cliche “For every strength, there’s a weakness”? Well, there’s truth in that piece of wisdom. Case in point: my mindful coach’s strength of Love was fully exploited by her colleagues at work, leading to an undesirable outcome. But should she stop feeding her strength? No. She left the toxic environment and found a way for her strengths to flourish.
Team of Avengers
In our workplace, we often try to mold individuals into Superman or Superwoman by patching every weak spot we can find.
Sometimes, the constant personal Kaizen becomes exhausting and a source of burnout. Doubts start to sip in:
“You are never going to be good enough.”
Instead of a bunch of Superman and Superwoman, why can’t we be a team of Avengers?
I love the Avengers from Marvel. They are super cool and a good example of teamwork from which we can learn.
Each one of the Avengers has superpowers and flaws. When alone, each can be defeated. But when they are together, they become a force to be reckoned with because they have complementary skills, or specifically, their strengths as a unit can mask an individual member’s weakness.
We, as managers, need to fit the human-strength puzzle together and find ways for individual strengths to shine in a team setting.
Here’s another secret for managers. When we read people, it’s not about whether the individual likes doing an activity (coding, presenting, talking); it’s about the individual’s personality (e.g., love of sharing). We need to find activities for the individual to boost energy levels and intrinsic motivation.
Finding What I Lost
Without career disruptions, I would have continued down my path without a second thought to strength starvation. I had been telling myself it was okay to sacrifice some of my strengths for financial stability and continuity.
Yet as I fell over the career cliff into the dark abyss below, my strengths held me firmly in place like webs shooting out of Spider-Man.
My love of learning kicked into high gear as I replenished my skill inventory, adding pieces such as AI, no-code, and the business of starting up.
My creativity found a home in writing, which serves as a channel for self-reflection, innovative thinking, and knowledge sharing.
Helping others to build their leadership skills became a source of joy and reassurance of my values and beliefs.
In fact, I am experiencing my own Renaissance.
My Wisdom to You
Do you remember the steward reminding you to fasten your seat belt and locate the air mask and floating devices before the plane takes off? Well, I am here to remind you to locate your strengths.
Your hard and soft skills can be retooled, but your personality traits and strengths remain unchanged and will most likely accompany you for the rest of your life.
So feed your strengths.
They will thank you and protect you from the hardest fall. And I hope someday you will tell me your strength story.
You can greet me with
“Hi, I am ENFP the Campaigner. Nice to meet you, Architect!”
Share this post