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Fear Your Strengths: What You Are Best at Could Be Your Biggest Problem
Once you’ve discovered your strengths, you need to discover something your strengths can work against you.
Many leaders know this on some intuitive level, and they see it in others. But they don’t see it as clearly in themselves. Mainly, they think of leadership development as working on their weaknesses. No wonder. The tools used to assess managers are not equipped to pick up on overplayed strengths—when more is not better.
Nationally recognized leadership experts Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser have conducted thousands of assessments of senior executives designed to determine when their strengths serve them well—versus betray them. In this groundbreaking book, they draw on their data and practical experience to identify four fundamental leadership qualities, each positive in and of itself but each of which, if overemphasized, can seriously compromise your effectiveness. Most leaders, they’ve found, are “lopsided”—they favor certain qualities to the exclusion of others without realizing it. The trick is to keep all four in balance.
Fear Your Strengths provides tools to help you become aware of your leadership leanings and excesses and provides insights for combatting the mindset that encourages them. It offers a practical psychology of leadership, a better way for leaders to calibrate their performance so that you can make sure your strengths don’t overpower you but rather move you—and your organization—forward.
Many leaders know this on some intuitive level, and they see it in others. But they don’t see it as clearly in themselves. Mainly, they think of leadership development as working on their weaknesses. No wonder. The tools used to assess managers are not equipped to pick up on overplayed strengths—when more is not better.
Nationally recognized leadership experts Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser have conducted thousands of assessments of senior executives designed to determine when their strengths serve them well—versus betray them. In this groundbreaking book, they draw on their data and practical experience to identify four fundamental leadership qualities, each positive in and of itself but each of which, if overemphasized, can seriously compromise your effectiveness. Most leaders, they’ve found, are “lopsided”—they favor certain qualities to the exclusion of others without realizing it. The trick is to keep all four in balance.
Fear Your Strengths provides tools to help you become aware of your leadership leanings and excesses and provides insights for combatting the mindset that encourages them. It offers a practical psychology of leadership, a better way for leaders to calibrate their performance so that you can make sure your strengths don’t overpower you but rather move you—and your organization—forward.
120 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
20 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
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April 3, 2021
Takeaways:
Most leaders overplay their strengths, undermining their effectiveness.
“Ahab beware of Ahab – there is something there!” Leaders beware of your actions.
Taken to excess, personal strengths can destroy careers and companies.
To avoid self-sabotage, identify your personal strengths.
Learn to “modulate” how you use and display these abilities by controlling your “mind-set” and behavior.
Most leaders are either “forceful” or “enabling,” or strategy- or operations-oriented.
You can never become the perfect leader – that person doesn’t exist.
The Chinese yin-yang symbol is a worthy metaphor for balanced, optimal leadership.
Executives must not be lopsided; to level out your leadership skills, develop capabilities that are the opposite of your primary strengths.
Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax achieved greatness only when he learned to complement his greatest strength – his fastball – with other pitches.
Summary:
Beware of Yourself
Sometimes, people can be their own worst enemies. Consider Ahab, the obsessed ship’s captain in Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby-Dick. Ahab has one mission in life: to capture and kill the great white whale he has been chasing. He will let nothing deter him from this task. Starbuck, the first mate, tells Ahab that their ship must stop for emergency repairs. Sensing that Moby Dick is near, Ahab refuses to listen.
Leaders whove mastered their internal opposites – the yin and yang of their own mind-set – can be completely and passionately engaged and at the same time utterly calm.
Undeterred, the first mate presses Ahab to drop anchor so the crew can repair their injured vessel. Enraged, Ahab picks up a rifle and threatens to shoot Starbuck if he doesn’t follow orders. The mate stands his ground. “I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck,” he says. “Thou wouldst laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.” The mate’s defiant words make a strong impression on Ahab, who changes his mind and orders the repairs. “Ahab beware of Ahab – there is something there!”
Jeffrey Skilling
“Beware of yourself” is an excellent warning for senior executives who let their strengths run amok and sabotage themselves to the point of destroying their careers and their companies. Consider Jeffrey Skilling, the disgraced former president of Enron. When Skilling joined Enron, it was a traditional natural gas company. Inventive, opportunistic, visionary and brilliant, Skilling transformed the firm’s trading division, marketing its natural gas contracts as special financial instruments. Skilling soon overplayed his hand. He began to take ethical shortcuts. He utilized questionable accounting practices and dubious schemes to inflate Enron’s books – and to overvalue its natural gas contracts. He borrowed $38 billion while showing only $13 billion on company accounts.
Despite what you may think, your mental tendencies can be reformed, or at least managed better, to reinforce your actions.
A big-idea genius, Skilling paid little attention to execution. He hired bright people like himself, who possessed scant social skills. He was abusive to junior employees and blind to corruption. When he became Enron’s president, Skilling relied on his exceptional gifts and creative acumen. At the same time, he failed to temper these attributes with sound judgment and prudent leadership.
Too much strength can be a weakness.
Aided and abetted by CEO Kenneth Lay, other top executives and the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, Skilling put his company on a perilous path. His presidency turned out to be the death of Enron. In 2001, it declared bankruptcy, the biggest corporate collapse on record at the time. Skilling was a lopsided, out-of-control executive. His personal and professional strengths, unfettered, earned him 25 years in jail for fraud and malfeasance.
Self-Undermining
Skilling’s story is common. Many executives undermine themselves by overusing their talents and inadvertently letting overuse of their finest skills undercut their effectiveness as leaders.
The more capable and heroic the leader, the more lopsidedness presents a serious downside risk.
Take the boss who will not shut up. Many top executives excel at communications. They are exceptional public speakers, intelligent, forceful, dynamic, entertaining and articulate. Unfortunately, once some of them begin to speak, they don’t know when to stop. They drone on and on, eventually turning off those people who had looked forward to hearing them and silencing any dissenting or creative voices. Consider the consensus-loving manager who becomes a pushover, or the CEOs who focus so much on shareholder value that they sacrifice everything else to short-term thinking. Their strengths become their main weaknesses.
Identify Your Strengths
Co-worker-feedback questionnaires, like “360-degree reviews,” offer no provisions for employees to say when an executive has gone overboard exercising an obvious strength – a clear case of when something good, taken to excess, becomes something bad. Ironically – considering how common this problem is – many leadership books advise executives to concentrate on their strengths, and never warn about the danger of going to extremes.
In what may be the cruelest of ironies, overplayed strengths are often at the root of career failure.
“The Leadership Versatility Index” is a form of 360-degree review that assesses the strengths executives most often overplay. Research using this instrument found that most bosses couldn’t identify their strengths. To learn how to manage your strengths, you must first know what they are.
The same research indicates that most leaders find it unsettling to learn they must sometimes tamp down their biggest abilities. After all, their strengths got them where they are. Told to dial back their sharpest assets, many leaders react by saying, “I’m afraid I’ll lose my edge.” When well-grounded executives learn that they must occasionally turn down their personal flames, they accept that responsibility. As one intense executive explains, “I don’t have to give up my fastball. I just don’t have to throw it all the time.”
Sandy Koufax
Sandy Koufax was a Los Angeles Dodgers pitching ace with a blazing fastball. His career is a sound teaching metaphor for executives who over-rely on their strengths and must learn control. Koufax did not become truly great until he learned to mix up his pitches, adding “curves and change-ups.” Koufax had no-hitters in four consecutive seasons and a perfect game during the 1965 season – all because he changed his pitching style.
Most American managers dont know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare. (Peter Drucker)
Following Koufax’s example isn’t easy. Learning to modulate leadership behavior is hard work, particularly when it comes to inhibiting the strengths that are the foundation of your winning formula. It takes courage to be willing to change.
Yin-Yang Symbolism
The Chinese yin-yang symbol is an emblem for perfect leadership. The ancient symbol depicts two “black-and-white teardrop shapes” flowing into each other to form a circle. While each element of the symbol is the other’s opposite, they are inextricably linked. The symbol represents what the Chinese recognize as the eternal duality of life and nature – “sky and earth, day and night, water and fire, active and passive, male and female.”
Leaders often have trouble backing off an overused behavior because they see it is an all-or-nothing choice.
Executives should adopt this holistic way of thinking. Sadly, most see themselves fulfilling – of necessity – one side or other: “strategic or operational, visionary” or detail-oriented. They cannot conceive of uniting the yin and the yang of management. Most executives concentrate on building only one area of professional capability, while letting its opposite atrophy.
Leaders are five times more likely to overdo a strength than their other attributes.
“Two core dualities” apply to leadership – “the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of leading.” The challenge comes from balancing your style as a forceful leader with enabling your employees to grow; or making sure you use your strength in developing strategy while managing operational concerns. Strong executives are often poor enablers; weak leaders support their people, but don’t lead with sufficient vigor or rigor. Leaders will find the same inverse relationship between “strategic leadership and operational leadership.”
An iterative cycle of reflection and action is required to achieve lasting change: Insight begets action begets insight begets action.
Executives must not be lopsided; try to develop your strengths on both sides of these dualities. One executive explains, “You can’t just be one thing. You have to be big picture and little picture. You have to be a big power tool and sometimes a small screwdriver. You have to be able to zoom in and zoom out. And you can’t just use one extreme quality to solve the problem.”
The notion that one can try too hard is counterintuitive for many leaders.
This is not a formula for middle-of-the-road leadership. Take-charge executives must learn to be judicious. An empathetic leader must learn when to be assertive. The challenge is to eliminate “misplaced forcefulness or overdone empathy.” Strong leaders must become more versatile and expand their repertoire of complementary skills. Don’t infer by this emphasis on versatility that a leader should never lean on his or her ultimate strength. The effective leader does rely on his or her primary strength, but that strength cannot be the default solution in every situation.
A Matter of Mind-Set
Many leaders are so convinced that their success depends on only one strength that they abhor any opposite strength. One executive who takes pride in being visionary describes the execution side as “operational gruel.” Such extreme leaders often hurt themselves, their organizations and even their families. They suffer from limited or distorted thinking. The forceful executive may say, “I’ve always believed that being effective means...getting things done.” That declaration fails to acknowledge the need to collaborate with colleagues. Co-worker-feedback questionnaires often label such people as poor at relationships.
The only way to manage your strengths is to accept them.
Many leaders adopt either-or thinking, due to anxiety or other deep-seated psychological issues that trace back to their childhoods. Their mental “inner game” is off. Another destructive mind-set is the “more-is-better mentality.” The executive with this fixed idea arrives at the job before anyone else and stays until everyone leaves, without acknowledging that this behavior leads to burnout. Consider the leader who praises data and analysis, but falls into “analysis paralysis.”
Few leaders are able to combine opposite approaches in a holistic way.
Beware of the manager who takes pride in always being completely candid with everyone, while failing to recognize that many regard him or her as overly confrontational – or the executive who claims ethical superiority over everyone in the office, but doesn’t recognize that others view this as moralizing. Also beware of the executive who claims to be a superb work coach, although no one wants or needs his or her help.
For better or worse, who you are is how you lead.
Most leaders are not prepared to work on mind-set problems or underlying issues. Instead, they try to alter their behavior, which is never easy. To implement lasting change more smoothly, focus on root causes, the psychology behind lopsided behavior. The best approach is to tend to the “outer work” (behavior) and the “inner work” (mind-set) at the same time.
Dial It Back
For the highly intense executive with a Koufax-like, fastball approach, behavior change can mean, “Stop overwhelming people,” and mind-set change can mean, “Don’t retire the fastball. Just don’t throw it for every pitch.” This is “dialing it back.” Sometimes you must also dial it up.
In the beginning when the world was young there were truths and they were beautiful, and then people came along. The moment a person took a truth to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live by it, he became grotesque, and the truth became a falsehood. (Sherwood Anderson)
If your excessive strengths are a problem, use counterweights – in the form of “processes or support people” – to change your thinking and behavior. One executive with an overbearing personality explains how this works: “I need a couple of temperate souls on the team, and if they find my presence too intense and difficult to approach, they can safely let me know.” To become an effective leader, find a way to dial back your primary strengths so they don’t overwhelm you, endanger your career and harm your organization. This involves three essential steps:
“Accept yourself” – The leader you are is the person you are. Get in touch with that person. Step outside of yourself to see yourself as others see you. Internalize what others like about you. This requires courage. You can’t accept their plaudits until you first accept and come to terms with your fears and flaws.
“Test yourself” – True change takes time and hard work. Facing the challenge of personal transformation means resetting your thinking and behavior. Know that people can grow and change. “With 100 billion brain cells” apiece, human beings are remarkably plastic. New experiences change people anyway, so you know you can adapt and change.
“Offset yourself” – “When you chase perfection, you’re chasing something that doesn’t exist,” says tennis coach Brad Gilbert. Don’t expect or demand perfection. No matter how much you dial up or down, you can never become the perfect leader – that person doesn’t exist. Every leader needs good people nearby, to offset his or her weaknesses. “The difference between a good CEO and a great one is the ability to attract big people.”
Most leaders overplay their strengths, undermining their effectiveness.
“Ahab beware of Ahab – there is something there!” Leaders beware of your actions.
Taken to excess, personal strengths can destroy careers and companies.
To avoid self-sabotage, identify your personal strengths.
Learn to “modulate” how you use and display these abilities by controlling your “mind-set” and behavior.
Most leaders are either “forceful” or “enabling,” or strategy- or operations-oriented.
You can never become the perfect leader – that person doesn’t exist.
The Chinese yin-yang symbol is a worthy metaphor for balanced, optimal leadership.
Executives must not be lopsided; to level out your leadership skills, develop capabilities that are the opposite of your primary strengths.
Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax achieved greatness only when he learned to complement his greatest strength – his fastball – with other pitches.
Summary:
Beware of Yourself
Sometimes, people can be their own worst enemies. Consider Ahab, the obsessed ship’s captain in Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby-Dick. Ahab has one mission in life: to capture and kill the great white whale he has been chasing. He will let nothing deter him from this task. Starbuck, the first mate, tells Ahab that their ship must stop for emergency repairs. Sensing that Moby Dick is near, Ahab refuses to listen.
Leaders whove mastered their internal opposites – the yin and yang of their own mind-set – can be completely and passionately engaged and at the same time utterly calm.
Undeterred, the first mate presses Ahab to drop anchor so the crew can repair their injured vessel. Enraged, Ahab picks up a rifle and threatens to shoot Starbuck if he doesn’t follow orders. The mate stands his ground. “I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck,” he says. “Thou wouldst laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.” The mate’s defiant words make a strong impression on Ahab, who changes his mind and orders the repairs. “Ahab beware of Ahab – there is something there!”
Jeffrey Skilling
“Beware of yourself” is an excellent warning for senior executives who let their strengths run amok and sabotage themselves to the point of destroying their careers and their companies. Consider Jeffrey Skilling, the disgraced former president of Enron. When Skilling joined Enron, it was a traditional natural gas company. Inventive, opportunistic, visionary and brilliant, Skilling transformed the firm’s trading division, marketing its natural gas contracts as special financial instruments. Skilling soon overplayed his hand. He began to take ethical shortcuts. He utilized questionable accounting practices and dubious schemes to inflate Enron’s books – and to overvalue its natural gas contracts. He borrowed $38 billion while showing only $13 billion on company accounts.
Despite what you may think, your mental tendencies can be reformed, or at least managed better, to reinforce your actions.
A big-idea genius, Skilling paid little attention to execution. He hired bright people like himself, who possessed scant social skills. He was abusive to junior employees and blind to corruption. When he became Enron’s president, Skilling relied on his exceptional gifts and creative acumen. At the same time, he failed to temper these attributes with sound judgment and prudent leadership.
Too much strength can be a weakness.
Aided and abetted by CEO Kenneth Lay, other top executives and the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, Skilling put his company on a perilous path. His presidency turned out to be the death of Enron. In 2001, it declared bankruptcy, the biggest corporate collapse on record at the time. Skilling was a lopsided, out-of-control executive. His personal and professional strengths, unfettered, earned him 25 years in jail for fraud and malfeasance.
Self-Undermining
Skilling’s story is common. Many executives undermine themselves by overusing their talents and inadvertently letting overuse of their finest skills undercut their effectiveness as leaders.
The more capable and heroic the leader, the more lopsidedness presents a serious downside risk.
Take the boss who will not shut up. Many top executives excel at communications. They are exceptional public speakers, intelligent, forceful, dynamic, entertaining and articulate. Unfortunately, once some of them begin to speak, they don’t know when to stop. They drone on and on, eventually turning off those people who had looked forward to hearing them and silencing any dissenting or creative voices. Consider the consensus-loving manager who becomes a pushover, or the CEOs who focus so much on shareholder value that they sacrifice everything else to short-term thinking. Their strengths become their main weaknesses.
Identify Your Strengths
Co-worker-feedback questionnaires, like “360-degree reviews,” offer no provisions for employees to say when an executive has gone overboard exercising an obvious strength – a clear case of when something good, taken to excess, becomes something bad. Ironically – considering how common this problem is – many leadership books advise executives to concentrate on their strengths, and never warn about the danger of going to extremes.
In what may be the cruelest of ironies, overplayed strengths are often at the root of career failure.
“The Leadership Versatility Index” is a form of 360-degree review that assesses the strengths executives most often overplay. Research using this instrument found that most bosses couldn’t identify their strengths. To learn how to manage your strengths, you must first know what they are.
The same research indicates that most leaders find it unsettling to learn they must sometimes tamp down their biggest abilities. After all, their strengths got them where they are. Told to dial back their sharpest assets, many leaders react by saying, “I’m afraid I’ll lose my edge.” When well-grounded executives learn that they must occasionally turn down their personal flames, they accept that responsibility. As one intense executive explains, “I don’t have to give up my fastball. I just don’t have to throw it all the time.”
Sandy Koufax
Sandy Koufax was a Los Angeles Dodgers pitching ace with a blazing fastball. His career is a sound teaching metaphor for executives who over-rely on their strengths and must learn control. Koufax did not become truly great until he learned to mix up his pitches, adding “curves and change-ups.” Koufax had no-hitters in four consecutive seasons and a perfect game during the 1965 season – all because he changed his pitching style.
Most American managers dont know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare. (Peter Drucker)
Following Koufax’s example isn’t easy. Learning to modulate leadership behavior is hard work, particularly when it comes to inhibiting the strengths that are the foundation of your winning formula. It takes courage to be willing to change.
Yin-Yang Symbolism
The Chinese yin-yang symbol is an emblem for perfect leadership. The ancient symbol depicts two “black-and-white teardrop shapes” flowing into each other to form a circle. While each element of the symbol is the other’s opposite, they are inextricably linked. The symbol represents what the Chinese recognize as the eternal duality of life and nature – “sky and earth, day and night, water and fire, active and passive, male and female.”
Leaders often have trouble backing off an overused behavior because they see it is an all-or-nothing choice.
Executives should adopt this holistic way of thinking. Sadly, most see themselves fulfilling – of necessity – one side or other: “strategic or operational, visionary” or detail-oriented. They cannot conceive of uniting the yin and the yang of management. Most executives concentrate on building only one area of professional capability, while letting its opposite atrophy.
Leaders are five times more likely to overdo a strength than their other attributes.
“Two core dualities” apply to leadership – “the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of leading.” The challenge comes from balancing your style as a forceful leader with enabling your employees to grow; or making sure you use your strength in developing strategy while managing operational concerns. Strong executives are often poor enablers; weak leaders support their people, but don’t lead with sufficient vigor or rigor. Leaders will find the same inverse relationship between “strategic leadership and operational leadership.”
An iterative cycle of reflection and action is required to achieve lasting change: Insight begets action begets insight begets action.
Executives must not be lopsided; try to develop your strengths on both sides of these dualities. One executive explains, “You can’t just be one thing. You have to be big picture and little picture. You have to be a big power tool and sometimes a small screwdriver. You have to be able to zoom in and zoom out. And you can’t just use one extreme quality to solve the problem.”
The notion that one can try too hard is counterintuitive for many leaders.
This is not a formula for middle-of-the-road leadership. Take-charge executives must learn to be judicious. An empathetic leader must learn when to be assertive. The challenge is to eliminate “misplaced forcefulness or overdone empathy.” Strong leaders must become more versatile and expand their repertoire of complementary skills. Don’t infer by this emphasis on versatility that a leader should never lean on his or her ultimate strength. The effective leader does rely on his or her primary strength, but that strength cannot be the default solution in every situation.
A Matter of Mind-Set
Many leaders are so convinced that their success depends on only one strength that they abhor any opposite strength. One executive who takes pride in being visionary describes the execution side as “operational gruel.” Such extreme leaders often hurt themselves, their organizations and even their families. They suffer from limited or distorted thinking. The forceful executive may say, “I’ve always believed that being effective means...getting things done.” That declaration fails to acknowledge the need to collaborate with colleagues. Co-worker-feedback questionnaires often label such people as poor at relationships.
The only way to manage your strengths is to accept them.
Many leaders adopt either-or thinking, due to anxiety or other deep-seated psychological issues that trace back to their childhoods. Their mental “inner game” is off. Another destructive mind-set is the “more-is-better mentality.” The executive with this fixed idea arrives at the job before anyone else and stays until everyone leaves, without acknowledging that this behavior leads to burnout. Consider the leader who praises data and analysis, but falls into “analysis paralysis.”
Few leaders are able to combine opposite approaches in a holistic way.
Beware of the manager who takes pride in always being completely candid with everyone, while failing to recognize that many regard him or her as overly confrontational – or the executive who claims ethical superiority over everyone in the office, but doesn’t recognize that others view this as moralizing. Also beware of the executive who claims to be a superb work coach, although no one wants or needs his or her help.
For better or worse, who you are is how you lead.
Most leaders are not prepared to work on mind-set problems or underlying issues. Instead, they try to alter their behavior, which is never easy. To implement lasting change more smoothly, focus on root causes, the psychology behind lopsided behavior. The best approach is to tend to the “outer work” (behavior) and the “inner work” (mind-set) at the same time.
Dial It Back
For the highly intense executive with a Koufax-like, fastball approach, behavior change can mean, “Stop overwhelming people,” and mind-set change can mean, “Don’t retire the fastball. Just don’t throw it for every pitch.” This is “dialing it back.” Sometimes you must also dial it up.
In the beginning when the world was young there were truths and they were beautiful, and then people came along. The moment a person took a truth to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live by it, he became grotesque, and the truth became a falsehood. (Sherwood Anderson)
If your excessive strengths are a problem, use counterweights – in the form of “processes or support people” – to change your thinking and behavior. One executive with an overbearing personality explains how this works: “I need a couple of temperate souls on the team, and if they find my presence too intense and difficult to approach, they can safely let me know.” To become an effective leader, find a way to dial back your primary strengths so they don’t overwhelm you, endanger your career and harm your organization. This involves three essential steps:
“Accept yourself” – The leader you are is the person you are. Get in touch with that person. Step outside of yourself to see yourself as others see you. Internalize what others like about you. This requires courage. You can’t accept their plaudits until you first accept and come to terms with your fears and flaws.
“Test yourself” – True change takes time and hard work. Facing the challenge of personal transformation means resetting your thinking and behavior. Know that people can grow and change. “With 100 billion brain cells” apiece, human beings are remarkably plastic. New experiences change people anyway, so you know you can adapt and change.
“Offset yourself” – “When you chase perfection, you’re chasing something that doesn’t exist,” says tennis coach Brad Gilbert. Don’t expect or demand perfection. No matter how much you dial up or down, you can never become the perfect leader – that person doesn’t exist. Every leader needs good people nearby, to offset his or her weaknesses. “The difference between a good CEO and a great one is the ability to attract big people.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 18, 2019
I listened to the audio book and it was okay. I liked that it was short and to the point.
As the title suggests your strengths can turn into weaknesses when used too much or if you always default to your strength or always use your strength at 100% effort. There is a great story about MLB Sandy Koufax and how when he learned to vary his pitch menu and throw his fast ball at only 90% strength he was able to have more no hitters and perfect games in consecutive years.
I definitely recommend this book.
As the title suggests your strengths can turn into weaknesses when used too much or if you always default to your strength or always use your strength at 100% effort. There is a great story about MLB Sandy Koufax and how when he learned to vary his pitch menu and throw his fast ball at only 90% strength he was able to have more no hitters and perfect games in consecutive years.
I definitely recommend this book.
December 17, 2025
"Fear Your Strengths" by Kaplan and Kaiser warns leaders that overplaying strengths—like forceful drive or visionary strategy—creates lopsided failure, as in Enron's collapse. Using yin-yang balance and real examples like Sandy Koufax, it teaches modulation via mindset shifts and 360 feedback. Pros: Eye-opening, practical tools for self-awareness. Cons: Repetitive convincing, light on remedies. Valuable for educators seeking versatile leadership.
April 4, 2019
"You must stand in terror of your strenghts"
"Fear robs people of the abolty to deal with contradiction and reduces them to black and white thinking"
Book has great content very easy to read and understand. Offers practical ways to deal with streaghts that can end up overpowering therefore not working for you.
Great read for any person.
"Fear robs people of the abolty to deal with contradiction and reduces them to black and white thinking"
Book has great content very easy to read and understand. Offers practical ways to deal with streaghts that can end up overpowering therefore not working for you.
Great read for any person.
June 2, 2020
There was too much repetition and the book spent too much effort trying to "convince" me that balance in leadership is important, imbalance is not good. I believe that already. that is why i read the book. There were examples illustrating the imbalance, but no real guidance as to how to remedy it and gain greater balance. Well, there are tools and assessments to help, but not in the book.
April 17, 2017
Eye opening and thought provoking. At the same time enables you to think about micro change that would enable macro outcomes. Highly recommend
November 8, 2017
Concept is attractive and innovative but nothing substantial found. A bit of a letdown.
December 17, 2017
Excellent!
June 27, 2018
Very good. Good timing. Short and precise with much motivational spice.
October 30, 2022
solid read
November 27, 2022
I would not consider this book a must-read since most of the data here is common knowledge. Of course, if you overdo your strengths, it can negatively affect you.
July 25, 2013
This book sets up a four point leadership spectrum. Opposites are strategic and operational. Forceful and enabling. I think I muddle between strategic and operational, not being successful at either and too far along to the enabling side. The book compliments a leadership evaluation tool that the authors created that is round instead of linear. So if someone is over the top on one quality, there is a space to indicate that. The book then goes through different leader characters and showed how they made a change to their mindset or process. Lots of sports comparisons.
A quote I like: Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has famously referred to it as "flow," a condition in which "attention can be freely invested to achieve a person's goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat to the self to defend against." It is freedom from excessive self-concern, freedom from clamoring ego needs. Will Stoncraft was credited with this mental freedom by a colleague who said, "He is tuned into what people are doing and what is really going on in the room. He's not thinking, 'What are other people thinking about me?'"
A quote I like: Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has famously referred to it as "flow," a condition in which "attention can be freely invested to achieve a person's goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat to the self to defend against." It is freedom from excessive self-concern, freedom from clamoring ego needs. Will Stoncraft was credited with this mental freedom by a colleague who said, "He is tuned into what people are doing and what is really going on in the room. He's not thinking, 'What are other people thinking about me?'"
August 4, 2014
Desde Leader Summaries recomendamos la lectura del libro ¡Cuidado con tus virtudes!, de Robert E. Kaplan y Robert B. Kaiser.
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: liderazgo, características de un buen líder.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro ¡Cuidado con tus virtudes!, Aquello en lo que eres mejor puede ser tu mayor problema: ¡Cuidado con tus virtudes!
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: liderazgo, características de un buen líder.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro ¡Cuidado con tus virtudes!, Aquello en lo que eres mejor puede ser tu mayor problema: ¡Cuidado con tus virtudes!
March 14, 2016
Gerçekten güçlü yönlerimizin aynı zamanda bizi ne kadar zorlayabileceği ve başarımızı engelleyebileceği bu kitap sayesinde öğrendim. Liderlik yönünde ilerlemek ve başarı olmak isteyen herkes bu kitabı okumalıdır.
April 21, 2013
While at work we focus a lot about our strengths, this book highlights the danger in over applying them. Look for counterweights.
July 27, 2013
Paradoxical but true, our strengths often come from our fear of weaknesses and thus our strengths can become weaknesses. A Taoist balance is key.
December 18, 2014
Thought provoking
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2016
Μια επιστημονική προσέγγιση του (όχι και τόσο) αυτονόητου "παν μέτρον άριστον"
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