Strengths

Play to your strengths - not just a cliché

‘Play to your strengths,’ ‘Focus on what you’re good at’ – these may sit near the top of any list of obvious clichés, but it would be unwise to dismiss them too hastily.

Like many managers and leaders, for a long time I had a vague idea of what I was good at, or at least what I enjoyed and therefore assumed I was good at. Formal and informal feedback from managers and colleagues confirmed some of this, but it was still fuzzy.

After identifying gaps in my leadership skills, I might dutifully add advanced project management, or assertiveness training to my annual development plan, to be worked on…or quietly buried under a towering ‘to-do’ list.

What are you good at, really?

Focusing on the positives, from an early stage in my career I noticed team working, collaboration, and strategic alignment were strengths I could build on. Over time, I refined these strengths and added others, but some things remained stubbornly on the development list.

I suspect this is a familiar story. It made me wonder how much more potential I could fulfil with a sharper view of my strengths – and by focusing on these, rather than attempting to excel across the board.

The Primary Colours Model of Leadership

In Leadership – No More Heroes, Pendleton, Furnham and Cowell present the Primary Colours® of Leadership Model, which identifies three domains: Strategic, Operational, and Interpersonal. Visualised as a human being, the head makes sense of the organisation’s context and direction (strategic), the hands and legs get things done to achieve results (operational), and the heart shapes how it feels in the organisation and maintains relationships (interpersonal).

The incomplete leader

For me, the game‑changer was Pendleton et al.’s proposition that “most leaders are incomplete, so it is extremely unlikely that any individual leader will become expert in all aspects of leadership” and that ‘leaders need to work in teams made up of colleagues whose differences complement their own’.

This opened the door to deeper thinking about the domains where my strengths lie (Strategic and Interpersonal), where I need to be competent (but not expert), and how to build leadership teams with complementary strengths across the domains.

Identifying leadership strengths

This naturally leads to the question: how do you identify your leadership strengths?
I’ve experienced survey‑based tools like CliftonStrengths assessment and the VIA Character Strengths Survey, but I’ve found reviewing performance evaluations, feedback and comments from team members and colleagues over time to be the most useful way to confirm, complement, and sometimes challenge my own strengths assessment.

Strengths in coaching

I now put strengths front and centre of coaching conversations, because I believe it’s the key to fulfilling more of your leadership potential.

Which domains are your strengths in? How did you identify them?

Resources
Leadership – No More Heroes, Pendleton, Furnham and Cowell
The Primary Colours® Model of Leadership
CliftonStrengths assessment
VIA Character Strengths