Deception #8 - Developing Weaknesses Into Strengths

Once upon a time, the animals got together and decided to start a school. They adopted a full curriculum that was easy to administer and designed to develop a well-rounded animal. There were classes in running, swimming, climbing, jumping and flying.

The duck was a very good swimmer… actually even better than his instructor. He passed flying but only barely, and failed running. Before long he was asked to drop swimming and stay after school so he could practice running. The running practice caused problems with his webbed feet to the point he became only average in swimming. Average was acceptable, so no one worried too much… except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but he was asked to drop that and stay after class and work harder on his swimming. He developed a nervous twitch from so much swimming, and that negatively impacted his running.

The squirrel was naturally a fantastic climber, but he was constantly frustrated in flying class because his teacher wanted him to start from the ground. He regularly got cramps from over exertion and ended up with only a C in climbing and a D in running.
The eagle was always in trouble for being a non-conformist. In climbing class he beat everyone else to the top of the tree, but he used his own methods for getting there.

Then one day, a wise old owl came to be the new headmaster of school. He re-arranged the curriculum so that ducks could spend most of the time swimming, rabbits could spend most of their time running, squirrels could spend most of their time climbing, and eagle’s could spend most of their time flying.

The animals went on to get very good high paying jobs doing what they loved and were good at.


The End

I’m guessing your time in school may not have ended that way.

This is so ingrained in our culture. We absolutely believe that the path to success is more about fixing our weaknesses than amplifying our strengths. This has been verified by Gallup Polls and Surveys and can be confirmed in most families where a report card is brought home. Marcus Buckingham regularly tells the story about the proverbial kid who brings home 2 A’s, 1 C, and an F. Then he rhetorically asks which grade gets the most parental attention. In most every family the answer is the F. Buckingham suggests that the parents role is not to ignore the F but most of the attention should be placed on the A’s. My experience is that this suggestion is hugely counter-cultural. 80% of American families would place most of the attention on improving the F.

Leadership author and speaker John Maxwell has good way of explaining this. He will draw out a graph that looks something like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And then he asks if 1 is poor and 10 is great, where should you spend most of your time trying to get better. He recommends focusing on your 7 and 8’s because that is where you can make enough improvement to move into the circle of greatness. Maxwell maintains that most people can’t improve much more than two numbers on the scale. If you are a 3, the best you’ll probably ever be is a 5 no matter how hard you work. My experience and work in corporate America confirms this. My experience with golf actually suggests that if I am 5, if I work really hard I might actually regress to a 3. In an area of non-talent, hard work might actually send you backwards.

Note: The Animal School story is now in the Public Domain.  The above is an adaptation of a version by Don Clifton.