Your Strengths – Have They Gone Wild?

Knowing your strengths is abundantly beneficial both personally and professionally. If you’ve not already identified yours strengths, I encourage you to do that!

It’s easy to gloss over your strengths – they are often skills that come so naturally to you that you don’t even realize that they are strengths! Unfortunately, leaning into your strengths and allowing them to work for you is impossible unless you know what they are.

Your weaknesses, on the other hand, get your attention. The temptation is to put your energy into improving your weaknesses. Since what you focus on grows, and you don’t want your weaknesses to grow, there has to be a better way!

Another way to view your strengths is in relationship to your personality, but before I go on, I want to make it clear – you are 100% unique. There is no one else like you! No one fits exactly into any of the four personality quadrants, but rather you are a unique combination of those quadrants, with one or two of those quadrants being stronger than the rest most likely.

Did you know that the weaknesses associated with each of the four personality types are actually strengths gone wild; lived out to the extreme? It’s true! Another way of looking at weaknesses is that when you operate in the Spirit, you will live out your strengths, and when you operate in the flesh, you will live out of your weaknesses.

Your Fear Monster can also cause a strength to shift into a weakness.

“Too much of a good thing is a bad thing” or so that saying goes. There are plenty of examples:

• Food – you need it for health and energy, but too much adds unwanted weight and becomes a health risk.
• Sun – it’s actually your friend and there are tons of health benefits – you can learn more about those here. Too much sun – that can be risky!
• Water – rain is a necessity, but when it floods it’s destructive
• Exercise – incredibly beneficial to your health and well-being in so many ways, but too much can take its toll on you and become negative!
• Plastic surgery – amazing when it comes to helping those with birth defects or repairing injuries – not so good when people take it to the extreme, if you know what I mean!

The same thing holds true for the strengths associated with your personality. Let’s take a closer look at just a few of the many strengths of each of the four DISC personality types, and the weaknesses they can lead to when those strengths go wild:

Who doesn’t like to be in charge? We all do! We just do it in different ways!

When D’s & I’s take charge, they actively take control – it’s no mystery! When their natural bent for leadership goes wild, they can be overly aggressive and damage trust. (Aggressive)

When S’s & C’s take charge they are more subtle. Their downside: when their stubbornness and procrastination kick in. (Passive)

The first step to managing your strengths and weaknesses is to know what they are! To identify your strengths in general, check out Now, Discover Your Strengths. It contains a code for an online Strengths Finders Test so make sure you purchase the book new!

To explore your personality strengths, contact me for a DiSC assessment & debrief. Let’s explore how to make your strengths serve you well so you can thrive both personally and professionally!

Your strengths – have they gone wild?