For years we have been hearing about how important it is to discover and maximize our strengths. But is it possible to overdo your strengths with detrimental results?
In a recent HBR article, Stop Overdoing Your Strengths (executive summary here), Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser say "more is not always better, and executives lose their jobs when their strengths become weaknesses through overuse."
Kaplan and Kaiser describe the negative impact of overused strengths:
In our research we tested the effects of overused strengths on
two aspects of team performance: vitality (defined as morale,
engagement, and cohesion) and productivity (quantity and quality of
output). We found that taking a strength to an extreme is always
detrimental to performance, but even a mild tendency to overdo it can be
harmful. Be a little too forceful, for instance, and your team’s output
may improve some—but vitality will take a hit, and weakened morale will
eventually undercut productivity. Be a little too enabling, and you may
shore up vitality—but productivity will suffer over time, which will in
turn erode morale. In general, overdoing it hurts your effectiveness
just as much as underdoing it.
