Natural talent and stengths in the workplace
The members of a club I belong to had a discussion recently about working in teams, and how they often do not work well.
The main points were:
1) Individual personality does not change over time. Behavior changes, not personality.
2) An individual has natural strengths and talents, and is happiest when those strengths and talents are allowed to grow and be used.
3) Most teams do their best when they understand their member’s strengths, and assign teamwork based on taking advantage of those strengths.
My personal observation is that people tend to be motivated to impress someone important in their life, such as parents, friends and teachers. My wife added: some people do not want to let others down, or disappoint someone. For example, if I was naturally talented in eye-hand-coordination, balance and fine-motor muscle control, I may enjoy playing ball sports, such as baseball. If I wanted to impress someone, and they were watching me play, and I knew where they were, I would often be looking at them to see if they were watching me. After I played, I would seek their approval of my ability and glow if praised. I would be unhappy if they seemed disappointed or disapproving. If they were approving, I would take pride in further developing my playing skills, such as batting, throwing and catching; success dependent on my natural strengths. There is a positive effort-reward quotient and you feel good about your effort.
Praising someone doesn’t always motivate further development. Undeserved praise may actually de-motivate one’s appetite for hard work, because the effort-reward quotient is negative. Indifference from those admired also de-motivates effort in development.
I widely held belief is that weaknesses are usually given more attention than strengths. I agree and believe the current public school system has no incentive to identify the student strengths, only the weaknesses so as to prescribe remedial class work to avoid low school-wide test scores. And this contributes to mediocre achievement by the Centurial generation.
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