“My CliftonStrengths Results were Disappointing”: Navigating the Trap of Negativity Bias
Reflections | Personal | 8 Minutes Read
When I first received my CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) results several years ago, the very first emotion that hit me was that of disappointment.
“Hold up…” you might find yourself thinking. “Isn’t this supposed to be an article about Strengths and the benefits of the strengths-based approach? You are writing for Strengths School after all!”
But if I were to stay completely honest with myself, disappointment was the exact emotion I felt when I first saw my Top 5 strengths.
My top 5 results all fell within the Relationship Building domain: Connectedness, Empathy, Individualization, Relator, and Adaptability. That made me feel inferior to my peers who had other non-Relationship Building domain strengths.
I frequently tried to convince myself that this had to be a mistake. These were the thoughts that ran through my mind:
Why do all my peers have strengths that can produce tangible results while I just have strengths that make me nothing more than a glorified Care Bear?
After all, I didn’t want to be known as the “guy who is only good at making friends but not much else”!
But I was not alone.
I realised there were others in the same boat.
Having facilitated various strengths workshops with Strengths School™, I received a recurring question from workshop participants: “What if I don’t have strengths of a particular domain in my Top 5 Strengths?” These questions are valid and can sound something like:
If I am in a leadership position but don't have any strengths from the Influencing domain in my Top 5, does it mean I can’t lead people?
If I don’t have any strengths from the Executing domain in my Top 5, does that mean I’m someone who can’t get things done?
If I’m required to work with people but I don't have any Relationship Building strengths in my Top 5, does that mean that I can’t forge meaningful relationships?
If none of my top 5 strengths fall under the Strategic domain, does that mean I can’t make ANY good plans?
Of course, that’s not true. But it is often very easy to focus too much on what we cannot do rather than WHAT WE CAN DO. When we are focused on the former, we end up trapped in an unproductive cycle of constantly envying other people’s strengths while missing out on the opportunity to build on our existing strengths.
The Trap of Negativity Bias
Everyone is born with a unique set of strengths. Did you know that according to Gallup, the chances of two people having the exact same Top 5 talent themes in order is actually an astounding 1 in 33 million?
That’s how unique our strengths are.
So why does knowing what sets me apart from my peers (i.e. my unique strengths) make me feel disappointed?
Enter Negativity Bias.
Negativity Bias (also known as Positive-Negative Asymmetry) is a human tendency to focus on negative details and remember them more vividly.
Our lives are filled with examples of negativity bias:
Hearing a compliment would make us feel good for a brief moment, but criticism or sarcastic remarks about us would affect us more deeply and potentially even ruin our day.
If we receive a report card and find that we score multiple “A” grades but 1 “F” grade, we tend to fixate on the “F” grade.
If we see beautiful scenery while hiking but come across a dangerous wild boar, we will tend to focus more on the wild boar than the scenery.
There are so many more instances of negative bias. And it does serve an important function in ensuring human survival. Evolutionary psychologists have noted that the tendency to focus on the negative helps aid humans in survival by quickly identifying and remembering potential dangers.
However, while it can be a crucial instinct for survival, focusing too much on the negative can also be detrimental to our personal growth and performance at work.
Dwelling in the “Trap of Negativity Bias” Leads to Mediocrity
Due to negativity bias, we tend to focus more on things we cannot do rather than on things we can do. This often manifests in our tendency to spend time and effort fixing our weaknesses rather than exercising our strengths.
However, focusing too much on our weaknesses drains us of energy and motivation at work. But when we use our strengths, it energizes us.
Think of it as a mountain climbing enthusiast who successfully climbed Mount Everest. While he is physically exhausted from prolonged climbing, he is emotionally at a high. Similarly, tapping on our strengths means that while our work may make us physically tired, our emotional self will feel fulfilled and energized.
Beyond discovering a sense of fulfillment, the principle of focusing on our strengths goes a long way in helping us reach a level of excellence in our work that is unique only to us. Our CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) Talent themes offer us a glimpse of what we naturally do best. Only through understanding our strengths can we find out the areas in our work that we can naturally excel in.
Focusing too much on fixing our weaknesses is like teaching a cheetah to focus its energies on learning to climb trees because that is its area of weakness. Even with our best effort, we would get a cheetah that is simply mediocre at climbing trees. This is because its physiology and natural instincts were made to run rather than climb trees.
Focusing on developing our strengths, on the other hand, is like “training” a cheetah to run. It wouldn’t require much out of the cheetah to hit the ground running and break records while at it.
The Power of Embracing My Strengths
Should we completely ignore our weaknesses then? Definitely not!
But from here on out, we should put a stop to spending excessive time and effort trying to fix our weaknesses.
Instead, we should instead look to manage our weaknesses by embracing our strengths.
One of such instances would be to tap on the strengths of working partners to cover our blind spots.
For example, I tend to thrive in situations requiring immediate spontaneous decisions with my Adaptability theme. However, this means that I tend to leave things to the last minute, a trait that is detrimental to important long-haul projects. As such, having a colleague who has the Focus and/or Discipline talent theme to keep me accountable during a crucial project can go a long way to help.
Alternatively, we can leverage our existing strengths to manage a weakness.
For instance, I often find it difficult to plan ahead and make strategic plans as someone who leans predominantly towards the Relationship Building domain. However, when the need arises to make plans, I realized that I could tap into my Relationship Building strengths and gather my various personal connections to brainstorm viable plans and make well-thought-out decisions.
As such, even though I have hardly any top talent themes in the Strategic Thinking domain, I can still achieve an outcome where I have a strategic plan by tapping into my Relationship Building talent themes.
Curious to find out more about how to manage weaknesses by tapping on strengths? Read what my boss and co-founder of Strengths School™, Coach Jason Ho, has to say about it here!
Closing Thoughts
Our strengths give a unique insight into what makes us special.
Fast forward to today, I am now learning to appreciate my unique strengths more and more each day.
I have come to learn that our StrengthsFinder results should not limit us to what we can or cannot do. The CliftonStrengths assessment is simply a tool that tells us how we are naturally wired and we can use this knowledge to excel in our work. People with vastly differing top talent themes can still find success in the same roles, just as people with similar talent themes can achieve success in different roles.
Fixating on our weaknesses will only tear us down and trap us in mediocrity. Our strengths are the key to empowering us to excel in what we do.
WRITTEN BY LIM TING WEI
Ting Wei is an intern and trainer at Strengths School. He is passionate about investing in the development of others and believes that the process of growth can be both fun and fruitful. As a natural relationship builder, he enjoys using the power of storytelling to help people identify teachable moments through the stories in their lives.
