Freak Management

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  1

  drendall

  04/15/08 | Report as spam

  Minimizing Impact of Weaknesses

  Michael,
  
  Thanks for the article. You did a great job of summarizing the key ideas from The Freak Factor. I could have used your help when I was writing the overview.
  
  You made an important point at the end. "I don't want to dwell on my weaknesses, but I do want to minimize their impact on my professional life. I guess I'm not ready to have a freaky day."
  
  As the author, my goal is to help people to have a freaky day. Let me see if this helps . . .
  
  The best way to minimize the impact of our weaknesses is to find the right fit, to find situations that rewards our strengths and make the corresponding weaknesses irrelevant.
  
  Each strength/weakness combination is always present. However, it is the situation that determines whether our characteristics are perceived positively or negatively. For example, if Einstein had been an administrative assistant, his lack of organization would have been a fatal flaw. That situation/job would have been a bad fit.
  
  The key is to having a freaky day is to change the focus from fixing weaknesses to making them irrelevant. We do this by finding situations that reward us for who we are and avoiding situations that put a spotlight on our flaws. When do your weaknesses cause problems? How can you decrease the time spent in those situations or avoid them completely?
  
  This is where the idea of flaunting our weaknesses comes in. If our job/career makes our weaknesses irrelevant, then we don't have to be ashamed of them. We don't have to apologize for them. We can embrace them. We can flaunt them as the natural flip-side of our greatest strengths.
  
  For example, Einstein could joke about his cluttered desk because it had no impact on his success. He could flaunt his weakness because he had minimized the impact by finding the right fit.
  
  David Rendall

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  2

  Michael Fitzgerald

  04/17/08 | Report as spam

  impact

  Hi David,
  
  Thanks for your comment. There's obvious strength to part of your argument -- of course we should try to find the right fit for our skills, and that will likely make us happier in our jobs, and our lives. I have observed that the most successful people I know, and the happiest in their jobs, focus on what they do well, and don't dwell too much on the things they don't.
  
  Looking at Einstein is not convincing to me. Yes, he could be brilliant and cluttered. But he was Einstein. Perhaps more like the rest of us was the addict you wrote about, who took his weakness and made it a strength, by becoming a dedicated athlete and starting an organization to help other addicts. Only he has shifted his addiction, and as you note it again has cost him much grief and pain.
  
  It seems to me therein lies the problem: freak management has a flip side: our strengths can also be our weaknesses.
  
  How do you manage that?
  
  Michael

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  3

  drendall

  04/18/08 | Report as spam

  Dark Side

  Michael,
  
  Good point. It does go both ways. Strengths have a downside and weaknesses have an upside. How do we handle that? I've got a few ideas besides just finding the right fit.
  
  Before I do that, I'd like to discuss Einstein again. It is quite possible that his rejection of all other pursuits, his willingness to flaunt his weak areas, was exactly what helped him to achieve such phenomenal success. Maybe we would have more Einsteins if people stopped trying to be normal or well-rounded. That is the core of The Freak Factor argument. Success comes from accepting and exploiting the strong aspects of ourselves, along with the accompanying flaws.
  
  Be that as it may, you have a good question. Here are some additional strategies.
  
  1. Find people that complement your weaknesses. One way to negative the downside of our characteristics is to develop relationships with people who are strong where we are weak. This can be difficult because we often fail to acknowledge the value of people who are different than we are. For example, people who are great with details often criticize people for being too focused on the big picture. Similarly, creative "idea" people often criticize detail-oriented folks for being small minded.
  
  Taking this step requires us to see the upside of others' characteristics, just as we would like them to do for us.
  
  2. Use existing strengths to address weaknesses that can't be avoided. For example, I am a poor listener. However, one of my strengths is that I love to learn. I have started to reframe listening to others as an opportunity to learn and this has helped me to improve.
  
  3. My theory is that we all have a limited amount of self-control. Successful people don't have more, they just use it more effectively. As you implied, it isn't always possible to avoid situations that put a spotlight on our flaws. In those cases, it requires significant psychological and emotional effort to get the job done. If we spend the majority of our time in our areas of strength, we will have the necessary energy reserves to handle these situations. If not, we will find ourselves overwhelmed.
  
  The key is to consistently increase the time spent using our strengths so that we can "gut it out" when absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, this is the default choice for a lot of people most of the time. Unfortunately, this strategy is only effective if used sparingly. If we try to force ourselves to fit in to bad situations too often, we burn out and break down.
  
  4. If we can agree with the theory of corresponding strengths and weaknesses, then eliminating weakness really becomes impossible. This is because, as you said, every strength also has an accompanying weakness. So, even if we removed one weakness and replaced it with a strength, that strength would also have it's own corresponding weakness.
  
  I think that reflects reality, especially since others tend to find the weak aspects of our strengths. Bosses, spouses and co-workers are very good at this. If we recognize that there is no such thing as perfection, we can stop seeking it and simply do our best with what we have. I don't think that is fatalistic. I think it is actually tremendously liberating. We become free to be who we are and can stop chasing the illusion of perfection.
  
  Thanks for asking the tough questions. Ideas aren't valuable unless they can be used to improve our lives. I hope this message illustrates some other ways to manage ourselves and others with The Freak Factor.
  
  David Rendall
  www.daverendall.typepad.com

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  4

  Michael Fitzgerald

  04/23/08 | Report as spam

  take two

  Hi David,
  
  It's an interesting perspective you offer. Some of it makes good sense to me, like finding people who complement our skills, and focusing on our strengths so that we have energy to put into our weaknesses when we have to. Reframing is a longstanding idea in decision making and I think a powerful one.
  
  I still balk at not addressing weaknesses. Still, I think you've offered something to continue chewing on. Would love to hear from someone else (but I guess that isn't going to happen until I call you names or something).
  
  Michael