The exponential power of Strengths

I used to believe that performance reviews were about fixing weaknesses.
At IBM, every year we’d go through the same cycle:

Annual reviews with my boss
Reviews with my team
The pattern was the same:
✔️ A quick mention of what was going well.
❌ Then, 80% of the conversation was spent dissecting the 20% where I was struggling.

The focus? Development areas.
The message? "Fix your weaknesses."

I did the same thing with my team.

Every quarter, we’d follow up on these so-called “improvement areas.” But looking back, it was a flawed approach.

🔹 Then, I read a book.
First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman.

An epiphany.
We’d been delusional.

👉 If you focus on weaknesses, at best, you become mediocre in those areas.
👉 If you build a team this way, you get a team of mediocrity.

Instead, what if you focused on strengths?  When people do:

💡 Their work energises them.  
💡 They flourish.
💡 They move closer to mastery.
💡 There's an exponential return on their investment.

From that moment—16 years ago—I shifted my focus.

I’ve spent my time helping people identify, harness, and refine their strengths.
Not to say we ignore weaknesses (we’ll cover that in another post), but true performance acceleration happens when you double down on strengths.

🚀 Worth thinking about.  How much of the day are you doing work that aligns with your strengths?