Save Us From Our Strengths – via The Energy Project

Save Us From Our Strengths – The Energy Project.

I can see it now. Like in a dream. In the not so distant future, workplaces will be more efficient than ever.

Imagine a scenario when newly hired employees are pre-assessed, assessed again and then surveyed about their strengths before their very first day.

When they pull their hybrid hovercraft into the parking lot and shuffle through the doors, perhaps they’ll be handed t-shirts to wear that display their pre-determined strengths… “Superb Listener”, one organic shirt might say.

Okay, maybe this is overkill…besides, hovercrafts are SO 2050… but Tony Schwartz and The Energy Project make a serious case that spending so much time and effort on building “strength-based” organizations “narrow[s] attention to the preferred aspects of ourselves [and] vastly oversimplifies who we are, what stands in our way, and what it takes to operate at our best.”


Are we afraid to let weaknesses enter the picture, for fear that no one will take the time and effort to change? 

The challenge in developing strengths is not to over-emphasize them or to use them to pigeon-hole your workforce. Instead, as The Energy Project indicates  it’s to learn flexibility, adaptability, balance, and empathy so then we can dial up or down our strengths at appropriate times and moments.


To make the most of what we’ve got, we must instead take on the messy whole of who we are. That means making the best possible use of our strengths, but also slogging away at the weaknesses they can serve to reveal.

We don’t need leaders who’ve got it figured out. Rather, we need ones who feel confident in and clear about their strengths, but are also courageous enough to recognize and take on their shortcomings. It’s a paradoxical challenge we all face: to hold ourselves fiercely accountable for becoming more of what we’re capable of being, but to simultaneously accept ourselves exactly as we are.”


One link between emotion and creativity

Say you want to help a group be more creative. 

What emotion would best help the group achieve this goal?


The choices:

1. Happiness

2. Worry

3. Sadness

4. Anger

5. Other








What makes people more creative on some days and not others…

The million, okay, billion-dollar question: How do you create a culture of creativity, and make it last?

Harvard University Professor Teresa Amabile wanted to find out.

Discussing her research into the topic with Bloomberg Television, Amabile and her team compiled over 12,000 individual daily diaries over 5 months, from professionals who were working on creative projects within their company.

What she found, “People do their most creative work on days when they’re feeling most positive emotions, most pleasant thoughts about their organization and their co-workers and strongest intrinsic motivation in their work”.

To put it simply: inner-work life drives performance, and allows teams and individuals to come up with better, creative ideas.

Every area in business requires coming up with creative solutions – and to foster that kind of creative thinking takes more than waving a magic wand:

  1. create an atmosphere of trust and collaboration
  2. tap into those favorite intrinsic motivators of autonomy, purpose, and mastery
  3. Remember that “small wins”, making progress on meaningful work (Amabile’s Progress Principle) matters.

For more:









A note on happiness, by the godfather of positive psychology



What’s the drill – July 2: Re-defining weakness

This morning I enjoyed a coffee talk with a fellow Applied Improviser. Deep into conversation, he shared this gem:

“A weakness is just an over-developed strength”.

This one threw me. Imagine if everything we once thought was a weakness – something that held us back before – could be spun in a way that made us less critical of ourselves, more accepting of others, and more growth oriented?

Would this change our view of let’s say, performance reviews, or even job interviews?

What is your definition of ‘weakness’?

To embrace uncertainty, start with this strategy

Paul B. Brown, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer (authors of  Just Start: Take Action; Embrace Uncertainty and Create the Future ) give us a secret to a happier, more successful life:


Life is unpredictable and uneven. The strategies we use to embrace uncertainty in our everyday life can be no different from the strategies we as Improvisers use on stage.

To embrace uncertainty is to:

1. View mistakes as gifts

2. Accept whatever is in front of you

This weekend I led an improv workshop in the wilderness for a group of 50 adults and kids.  At one point, we were speaking about failure and what Improvisers do when we “mess up”. To improvisers, mistakes are gifts. Actually…

To Improvisers, everything is a gift. 

One participant chimed in, “well, not all mistakes are okay, it depends on the situation”. True, I responded.  But to accept a mistake as a gift, to be more tuned into what is happening around us, to stay focused on the positive and in the present moment are all strategies that help us thrive and grow in times of failure. It’s a mindset. And, if this mindset makes us more successful (however you define success), it’s a mindset worth working towards.

What’s the drill – June 14: Five questions to get you listening differently

Listen up (said with a friendly, have a comfy seat tone!)… here are five questions to get you thinking about HOW you listen.

To me, active listening means more than paying attention. What we choose to pay attention to when we listen is just as important.

1. Are you listening for potential? If not – what is it you are listening for?

2. Are you planning your response while the other person is still talking?

3. Are you listening with more than just your ears – are you paying attention to non-verbal communication?

4. When someone is talking about something they are really passionate about, or feel strongly towards – how can you listen for more than just the facts – listen in a way that focuses on their values, and what matters to them. What does this person care about, and how can you help? After all, it feels wonderful to know that someone understands you.

5. How can you listen with a focus on the future, instead of hanging onto the past?