Stop Overdoing Your Strengths: Harvard Business Review Article

Kaplan, R.E., & Kaiser, R.B. (2009). Stop overdoing your strengths. Harvard Business Review, 87(2), 100-103.

Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser explain the costs that arise when executives over-rely on their strengths and stay in their comfort zones in this February 2009 article in the Harvard Business Review.

Despite all the talk of “play to your strengths,” there is a potential downside to our upside: the problem of strengths overused. Most of us can readily see strengths overused in other people—like the direct leader who verges on abrasiveness, the inclusive leader who tries too hard to please everybody, the operational leader who gets lost in the details, and so on. But we are often blind to our own tendencies to go overboard. This article describes the costs of strengths overused and provides guidance for how to recognize and correct for this often under-appreciated source of ineffectiveness.

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