Work On Your Strengths

Two weekends ago I went away for a long weekend to meet with other Inner Circle Facilitators to work on our businesses and play golf. I have a few takeaways from the meetings that I want to share:

--I need to work on my chipping and putting. Really bad. Only broke 90 once. Mostly because I chipped to the wrong places on the greens and then couldn't put away the downhill putt. Not that you are concerned about this.....

--Everyone spends too much time working on fixing what is wrong instead of working on improving what is going well. I know this seems fairly obvious, but we all fall into this trap regularly. We get so much feedback about what we do wrong that it's hard to avoid. It seems as though everyone is picking at our faults so that they get magnified so much that they become obstacles that seem insurmountable.

--The next time I get feeling this way, and it will happen, I'm going to try to follow the following steps to map out my next few weeks. This process is called "Appreciative Inquiry"
1. DISCOVER or rediscover my strengths and the things my organization does well (maybe just remind myself that these are my advantages
2. DREAM about what my business would look like if I was able to leverage those strengths to the max. (If I was really good at doing these things, what would a great day look like?)
3. DESIGN a plan to make sure you get to do the things you do well.
4. Execute the plan so that it becomes my DESTINY.

--I know that this seems awfully touchy feely for me. But I've been researching this since the symposium and I've been finding solid data that supports that organizations that work this way do much better than all the rest. I'm finding all kind of connections between this process and Jim Collins, book Good to Great which I am already a believer in. Marcus Buckingham seems to be the guru on this subject. I'm going to be working my way through his books over the next several months. Those books are: First, Break All The Rules; Now, Discover Your Strengths; and The One Thing You Need to Know. The reason I'm looking into this is that all of his books are based on solid research done by the Gallup organization, not just his own high falutin ideas.

--At the same time, we do have to look at our real obstacles, like competition and market condition, etc. But look to our strengths as the way to overcome them.

--That being said, I was a driving machine in Palm Springs. On my final two rounds, I was hitting every fairway off the tee, 220-250 yards. Building on that strength, should I be putting and chipping with my driver? ;-)