How to Play to Your Strengths

How to Play to Your Strengths

A four-step process to capitalize fully on your talents.

Author(s): Laura Morgan Roberts, Gretchen Spreitzer, Jane Dutton, Robert Quinn, Emily Heaphy, Brianna Barker

Publisher: Harvard Business Review,

Date of publication: 2005.

See this article on the publisher’s site [Harvard Business Review]

Summary

This article proposes an approach to help individuals capitalize fully on their talents. The initial postulate of the authors is that people can enhance their performance just as well by taking advantage of their strengths as by fixing their weaknesses. They describe a four-step process to do this, called Reflected Best Self, which aims at becoming aware of the circumstances in which people naturally give their best, then trying to recreate these circumstances. A highly instructive article, not only for its practical side, but also for the light it sheds on the value of taking fuller advantage of strong suits.