Why Talking to Executives About Their Strengths Can Be Difficult
We all know that managers can have trouble accepting the bad news about their leadership, but you might think that they would welcome the good news. In fact, it can be just as difficult for them to take in the good things about themselves. Sometimes people can’t get it through their heads that they have certain weaknesses. Surprisingly, the same can be true for strengths.
Everyone is familiar with the host of ways that people can explain away criticism. They can also be ingenious in rationalizing why they should not take affirmation seriously. I’ve heard things like:
The business is in trouble, and I’m focused on that.
I’m in too much pain because my boss is on my case [reminding himself of his strengths might be just the tonic he needed].
Weaknesses are always tied to strengths so let’s look at the weaknesses first.
I’m not that smart and the fact that I stand out is a function of the low level of talent in this company. I’m the queen of the sty.
People at the extremes in how they view me will converge toward the middle of the range [meaning the strong affirmation will be weaker the next time these people are interviewed].
I almost took it as an insult [when my boss said I was the smartest person on his staff]. When people say “he’s real smart,” they are implying that I’m not practical.
Some managers presented with a favorable view of themselves fight it outright. Avery Stout, described earlier, who was widely seen as very smart, would have none of it. When I told him what his colleagues had said about him regarding his strengths, I asked, “What is your reaction to these statements about being very bright?” Which incidentally, in Avery’s case, was the first thing out of people’s mouths when they responded. He shot back: “I say baloney! A lot of people on this list [of people interviewed] are a lot smarter than I am. I’d attribute these statements of brilliance to high energy and being lucky, which doesn’t hurt. But I think it’s hard work, and high energy is being mistaken for brilliance.” He knew what he thought of his intellectual ability, and he was not about to modify that evaluation.
Apart from actively resisting, many managers are not inclined to pay much attention to information about their strengths. In feedback sessions they tend to skip over the good news and focus on the problem areas. My colleagues and I cover strengths first, and as soon as we reach the end of that section, managers are immediately ready to turn the page to the weaknesses section. They are impatient to move to the things they feel they can do something about. It is the managerial attitude. One executive explained, “I’m more energized by the weaknesses because I’m anxious to improve.” He also said, in a later session as we turned to the summary of his leadership weaknesses, “This is where the gold is.” Another executive, who had to be gently restrained from immediately moving on, protested his innocence. He was, he claimed, interested in the positive feedback. His wife, a full participant in the session, gently countered, “Then why did you underline the heading to the weaknesses section and not the heading to the strengths section?”
Why do executives resist the good news about themselves? For a number of reasons. They may be uncomfortable with praise, as many of us are. They may worry about becoming arrogant. They may be afraid of getting complacent. They may be afraid they won’t be able to keep up the good work. We’ll look at these now.
They Are Uncomfortable with Praise
In truth, many executives’ eagerness to move to the weaknesses may stem not just from the attraction posed by an opportunity to improve but also from a certain discomfort with good news. It is not uncommon for people in general, not just executives, to be uncomfortable when they receive praise. They deflect it, make a self-deprecating comment, change the subject, squirm, or otherwise plainly display their discomfort.
One executive set aside a portion of his regular meeting with his team to go over his development plan. He passed around the one-page document and asked for reactions. The plan, which laid out the several changes he planned to make, was notable for the lack of any mention of his strengths. When we pointed this out, his direct reports spent a few minutes telling him what they valued about his leadership. It was a spontaneous heartfelt expression of appreciation. Choked up, he was unable to speak. He later told us he was taken aback by how emotional he became.
Why the emotion? Praise may hit a nerve. It may also touch a tender spot, the painful-to-the-touch underlying sense of inadequacy. Thus one reason that managers, who otherwise very much want recognition, dance away from it when it is offered to them face-to-face is that their sense of self-worth is a sore point. Praise simultaneously gratifies an aching need and also inevitably gets uncomfortably close to the pain associated with the feeling of inadequacy.
With one executive, we encountered an interesting variation of the fear of praise. The assessment report showed clearly that he underestimated himself. Where his coworkers rated his effectiveness 8.25 on a 10-point scale, he rated himself a 7, more than a full point lower. Also, on one 360-degree instrument he indicated a definite need for improvement on fourteen (of ninety-eight) items on which his coworkers indicated a strength. On a second 360-degree instrument, he scored himself on six items quite a bit worse than other people did.
In the feedback session, after establishing these disparities, he and I had the following exchange.
R.E.K.: I suggest you write down in one place all of the positive feedback you’ve received, both the ratings and the verbal comments. Imagine you internalized that high praise. Bathed yourself in it.
Executive: See, I have trouble doing that.
R.E.K.: Why?
Executive: People would view me as egotistical. I don’t like people who are like that. Also, I worry that if I got to that point [of accepting these strengths], I might fail. So fear of failure.
R.E.K.: Have you known this was an issue, that you don’t recognize your strengths?
Executive: No. [Then, warming to the idea of a stronger sense of his strengths, getting into the hypothetical situation:] If I did this [felt better about myself], I think I’d be able to do better on these other things. If I do this, will these weaknesses go away?
R.E.K.: Money back guaranteed!
This manager was reluctant to take in the evidence of his strengths for fear that he would get a swelled head. He equated confidence with arrogance, a strong ego with a big ego. This anxiety-ridden confusion held him back. Underestimating himself, he shied away from asserting himself in several respects.
They Have a Fear of Complacency
Behind executives’ uneasiness about praise may lie a concern about complacency. If such executives allowed themselves to think more highly of themselves, they might become self-satisfied and stop working as hard. Avery told us, “I don’t want to adjust my view of my intelligence. I think that would be bad. The reason why is I think I play in an area with truly brilliant people, and if I viewed myself as equivalent, I might think I don’t have to work as hard. I might relax.” This attitude was actually a lifelong coping mechanism, as he explained. “Throughout my life a tool I’ve used is the idea that I’m handicapped. I always consider myself as at the lower end of the group I’m working with.”
Avery may have had multiple reasons for adopting this stance. He was young for his grade in school. His family moved a lot. He didn’t start getting good grades until high school. (“I think I may have been traumatized in school because I wasn’t a good student.”) A great debater, Avery clinched the argument by saying, “Why wouldn’t I devalue what I have and value more what I don’t have?”
Executives like Avery believe that the feeling of inadequacy has worked for them. They have convinced themselves that it is integral to what success they have enjoyed and for that reason they can be reluctant to change it.
They Feel Pressure to Keep Up the Good Work
Another of the various reasons why executives resist affirmation of their ability and performance is that they instantly feel the pressure to keep it up. A young, extremely effective manager with great potential confided in us that the reason he had trouble taking satisfaction in all the good things people said about him was that he worried whether he could continue to perform. A CEO who had just taken the helm held an off-site meeting with the two people who would report to him, individuals who had also been in competition for the top job. After a long series of discussions about business issues and personal issues, the two sector presidents told the CEO, in what was in its own way a sacred moment, that they were ready wholeheartedly to sign up on his team. The CEO said nothing. He did not seem to respond in any way, and the conversation moved on.
When one of us asked him a little later for a response to that highly significant moment, he said, “It felt great; fantastic. But I immediately felt the pressure of their expectations.” Later on, he told us privately of the “terror” of meeting expectations. As a child he had been burdened by his parents’ sky-high expectations (“You can be president of the United States”), and now as an adult he overburdened himself.
Another executive experienced positive reinforcement as pressure to raise the level still higher. Projecting how he expected to react to the data on his strengths in the upcoming feedback session, he said, “With mixed feelings. You want it but you get it and say, ‘They’re exaggerating,’ and ‘They don’t really mean it.’ And, ‘Uh-oh, now I have to do better than that if they’re mentioning it. Now it’s out in the open and not in some secret Swiss bank account.’ So with praise it’s like, ‘Wow, the only way I will get more praise from here on is to do better.’”
Saddled with a perfectionism that never allows them to be satisfied with themselves, managers resist positive feedback for the same reasons that they have labored for years with a discounted view of themselves. They formed that self-view early in their lives, and as painful as it may be, it has proved extremely durable, even in the face of contradictory evidence.