I didn’t set out to discover what the leadership field overlooked, but in helping executives raise their game over the last 25 years I kept tripping over obvious misses. Most of what I have found is in plain view yet its significance hasn’t fully registered, and it certainly hasn’t been put into practice.

Several years ago, a routine assessment provided such an insight. A colleague and I were working with an executive who, as one coworker had put it, was "an elemental force in nature." Yet he wasn’t as effective as he could have been. “Look,” we offered, “you are clearly a force to be reckoned with." Then we took it a step further. “The problem is that at times you're too forceful.”

There it was, plain as day in the way people described working with him. It was also in his psychological profile. But you wouldn’t know it from his 360: he received the highest ratings on items like “Drives for results,” “Takes charge,” and “Sets high expectations.”

It turns out that 360s, five-point rating scales, and many common tools do not reflect the simple fact that too much strength can be a weakness, that doing too much of something is as much of a problem as doing too little of it. And so there was the opportunity for a breakthrough in standard methodologies: extend the scale beyond strengths and weaknesses to include strengths that become weaknesses through overuse!

In subsequent years we built on this bridge between theory and practice in work using the patented leadership assessment methodology, the Leadership Versatility Index, which assesses helps leaders to understand when they turn their strengths into weaknesses through overuse. We’ve come to learn how many leaders do not know what they are truly good at in the first place, and how not knowing their strengths, they are liable to overdo them. Further, many have an odd relationship with their strengths: some discount them, some can’t take a compliment, and others worry that they will never be good enough.

We have also learned in working with CEOs and top executives around the world that no one is immune to the possibility of corrupting their strengths through overuse. In fact, and ironically, the more senior and successful the leader, the more likely he or she tends to rely too much on those skills that brought prior success. Clinging tightly to that success formula, unfortunately, is often what prevents them from adapting to the relentless change that characterizes today’s volatile operating environment.

To learn more about how to make the most of your strengths, without overdoing it, and become a versatile leader, come to the Master Class organized by HART Consulting on 12 November. I promise you will see yourself in a new light, one that will give you deeper insight into who you are as a leader—and a clear vision of just how great a leader you can become.

Sincerely,

Robert B. Kaiser

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