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How the Failure to Recognize Strengths Affects Executive Performance

Not fully recognizing one’s strengths, far from being a mere curiosity about managerial high achievers, is actually at the root of many performance problems. Not appreciating that they are already strong in a certain area—not knowing their own strength, as it were—managers tend to overuse it or they tend to overinvest in developing it.

This link between performance problems and managers’ relation to their strengths is critical. One senior manager, understanding this connection, said about the top person in his company, “If he internalized his strengths, a lot of his weaknesses would go away. It’s because he doesn’t accept his strengths that these weaknesses exist.” Seeing that link can help executives and their coaches alike avoid working away on the presenting symptoms while failing to get at the nonobvious root cause.

There is one attribute, more frequently than any other specific skill or trait, that our executive clients underestimate in themselves. Of all the many things that executives, the majority of them “overachieving perfectionists” (as one of their number called them), must do or be to meet the diverse, continually changing demands placed on them, what could that one thing be? Is it presentation skills, conflict management, sensitivity to people, long-range planning, leadership ability? No, it is intelligence. The tendency to underestimate one’s intelligence can turn out to be responsible for an executive’s performance problem.

It is striking when those individuals viewed as clearly above average intellectually see themselves as merely average compared to their cohorts, as nothing special. One exceptionally smart executive, whose trademark in his company was intellectual leadership, told us, “I always had the feeling that people around me were brighter.” He went on to say, “I was fortunate to be fairly bright.”

Another executive, let us call him Avery Stout, was described by fifteen or twenty of his coworkers responding to a open-ended question about his strengths as very intelligent. The fact that three-quarters of this group volunteered this characteristic completely unprompted was a statement in itself. On top of that, many used superlatives. A superior: “He’s highly intelligent; very, very bright; I’m sure he has a very high IQ; I think he is a very bright light-bulb.” A peer: “He is clearly very, very smart.” Another peer: “First of all, he’s brilliant.” A third peer: “I think his greatest strength is his intelligence.” A subordinate: “I think he is very intelligent, extremely intelligent.” Another subordinate: “I’d say his major strength is his intelligence.” A third subordinate: “I would say his greatest strengths are that he is very bright and quick on his feet.”

Although Avery himself cited “above-average intellect” as one of his strengths, he responded in the feedback session to the entire section of strengths by saying, “I am surprised at the comments about brilliance and being very, very smart. I rank myself as [only] above average.”

He actually carried on a running debate with some of his subordinates and peers about how smart he was. He told us, “I don’t think of myself as that smart. It’s a core belief. I do have a good enough understanding most of the time, but that’s not brilliance. It’s personality and tricks.”

How did this disparity in perceptions of a strength turn into a liability? Being unaware of the extent of his intellectual ability, Avery was not able to take into account its impact on his dealings with people. He had a habit of being impatient and critical in meetings with his management team. How did this rough treatment of his subordinates correspond with his inability to see how smart he was? His attitude was, “I’m not that smart and I get it right away, what’s wrong with you?” He did not make allowances for how quick he was when judging how smart other people were.

Permit me to speculate briefly as to why a population of obviously smart people would look upon themselves as not especially strong in this respect. First, when you look into their histories, many of them had bad experiences in school or in their families that left them feeling inadequate intellectually. They didn’t get good grades. They had trouble with a specific skill like computation that they equated with being smart. They were made to feel dumb by teachers or classmates or parents. They got off on the wrong foot in school. They had a learning disability that went undiagnosed for years. They didn’t test well; their SAT scores weren’t high. They took an IQ test once and didn’t get what in their mind would be a high score. They didn’t go to college or didn’t finish college or went to a lesser college, and privately regard that as a stigma. They had an older sister or brother who was an outstanding student, and they never measured up to that standard.

The educational system lets people down. In addition to the obvious casualties, the dropouts or low performers who never learn the basic skills and therefore leave feeling like complete failures, there are the people who go on to be successful in life but nevertheless harbor feelings of intellectual inadequacy because of bad associations with school.

A second possible reason why it is common for executives to feel inferior intellectually is that the United States is fixated on intelligence, IQ-type intelligence in particular. And as a result, smart people worry about not being smart enough and have trouble being objective in assessing their level of ability. We have had people who graduated first in their class in college or law school or business school argue that they were not exceptionally bright because really bright people become nuclear physicists or win Nobel Prizes.

This discussion of the implications of downplaying or not recognizing a particular strength shows us that not recognizing strengths can result in executives’ distorting their performance. They do this in three basic ways: They overdo what they underestimate in an effort to compensate, they underdo the thing they underestimate because they inhibit themselves, and they make up for a perceived deficit by making extra effort in other areas. Let’s look at these now.

They Overdo What They Underestimate

Failing to realize that they are more than adequate in an area that is very important to them, executives therefore overdo it in that arena. Some executives, for example, put a premium on being responsible and as a result err on the side of taking too much responsibility. In meetings they do the lion’s share of the problem solving and are too quick to take over when their subordinates run into problems.

Other executives don’t know their own power. And not realizing how powerful they are and in fact worried about not being powerful enough, they overwhelm people. Their personal power is immediately evident. And they possess knowledge and skills that add impressively to their inherent power. Yet, if the truth were known, they are forever on the alert to the danger of losing power. Not being able to see straight about how powerful they are, ironically they undermine their effectiveness by overpowering people. And their fear of eroding their power prevents them from doing things that would make them less overpowering, less intimidating. They can’t admit a mistake or acknowledge to people that they need to improve. The idea that to admit a weakness is a sign of strength is counterintuitive.

For a long time one executive we worked with did not know that he overdid the forceful side of leadership: “I don’t see myself as being tough or powerful.” After working his way through the extensive assessment report we gave him, he opened his eyes to how powerful he was and to the underlying assumption that drove it: “I didn’t see until now how brute force was adversely affecting my relationships with my people. I probably thought the opposite: brute force, being on top of things, giving people insights, would lead them to hold me up [in high esteem], lead them to follow me. But I see now they also want me to ease up and let them in.”

In another case, one executive’s assiduous efforts to prepare for presentations actually undercuts his effectiveness. Not trusting himself to think on his feet, he uses numerous overhead transparencies as well as detailed notes. Tied to his props and notes, he restricts his freedom to think and to connect to the people to whom he is presenting. His overpreparation and the anxiety that spurs it make him less smart than he is. Feeling inadequate, he overprepares. Overprepared, he hampers his intellectual ability: “I have to prepare. I’m not fast on my feet so I have to know the material down pat. I work hard to make up for not being intelligent enough.” It is not the lack of intelligence that is the problem. It is the anxiety about not being intelligent enough. If he could stop worrying so much about not being smart, he would be smarter.

In cases like these, executives come by their anxiety honestly. Early on in life they had bad experiences that burned these lessons into their consciousness.

They Underdo What They Underestimate

The flip side of the behavior discussed in the previous section is that many executives, not recognizing a strength, doubt themselves in that area and therefore shy away from managerial functions that include activities related to it. They hold back. One instance of this that we have seen repeatedly is the executive who is skilled with people but, not seeing the extent of his or her interpersonal assets, inhibits himself or herself interpersonally.

One executive was completely taken aback that others described him as attractive as a person. Not knowing that he had this going for him, he hung back in relationships, even at work. Another executive at pains to treat people well trod lightly, to the point of hampering his effectiveness. His matrixed role required him at times to push his function’s initiatives hard, but wanting, as he said, “peace in the valley,” he was reluctant to be aggressive.

An executive who had great relationships and was effective in many ways hurt his performance and hurt himself by failing to take sufficient control. What kept him from being more forceful? “Fear and wanting to please,” he said. His manner, if you paid attention, gave away his uneasiness. His voice quavered ever so slightly, and there was a smooth niceness to his manner of speaking that seemed to suggest a nonthreatening individual. Although pleasant, his way of presenting himself lacked an edge to it. He was almost compulsively modest, almost afraid to take credit even when it was manifestly due him, as was evident in this exchange with his direct reports: “My team said, after the good year we just had, ‘You should feel good about the results.’ I told them, ‘No, it’s really you guys who do the work.’ And they said, ‘No, you focused us. We needed you to lead us.’” He explained to us what lay behind the stance he took. “They feel like peers to me. I used to be in awe of these guys.” When we pointed out that he had once held the same job, he said, “Sometimes I forget. ‘Forget’ may be the wrong word. ‘Underappreciate’ is [the word]. It’s hard to remember how far you’ve come.”