Pragmatic and Practical Career Advice for Gifted Adults I Wish I’d Thought of

 

No one knows you like you know yourself and there is no such thing as a perfect job.  He did not coin either phrase but with these two, Marcus Buckingham hooked me.  Before reading his books, I had a vague awareness of Marcus Buckingham as the co-author of First, Break All The Rules: What The Worlds Greatest Managers Do Differently and as a coach.  I assumed that his message would be pie in the sky, simplistic and rah-rah.  Instead, I found Buckingham’s career advice contrary, pragmatic and practical and I think his approach is particularly relevant to gifted adults at work.

Overview of Marcus Buckingham’s Approach

1. Buckingham says we mistakenly fixate on overcoming our weaknesses rather than building on our strengths.  From the school to corporate ’performance management’, we live in a society that institutionalizes a focus on what we’re not good at.  Buckingham argues that this doesn’t work.  Instead, he says we should start with our strengths.  What about the satisfaction experienced by mastering something you are weak in?  Buckingham says you may achieve mastery in areas you are weak but you will never feel as good doing it and you will likely achieve greater mastery in areas of natural strength.
2. To Buckingham, a strength is not necessarily something you are good at but rather something you feel satisfied doing.  A strength is where you feel invigorated and energized.  A weakness is something that leaves you feeling drained and depleted.  Many of us have things we’re good at, may even be pigeon-holed into doing but you don’t enjoy.  If the majority of your work day is spent on tasks that are intrinsically energizing, work will be meaningful.  To Buckingham strengths and weaknesses have no value judgment nor are they determined by other people, they are simply what energizes you and drains you personally.
3. Everyone has their own unique composition of strengths and weaknesses.  If we really think about it, we know (and ultimately only we know) what energizes and depletes us.  Buckingham points out that other people in our life, often well meaning people who love us, who may think they know better what we should do with our career, what are strengths are.  However, at the end of the day, only you know how you feel and the person who has the most invested in your career (or anything else), is you, not your boss, your partner or your family.
4. Don’t know what energizes or drains you?  Or maybe you think you know.  But do you really know, specifically?  Buckingham recommends tracking how you feel relative to the different tasks for a week.  This will provide a roadmap of what energizes and drains you: your strengths and weaknesses.
5. Buckingham says there is no perfect job for you.  I say, that may be an overstatement but it’s highly unlikely you’re going to find a job description that matches your unique set of strengths and weaknesses.  Particularly if you’re a gifted adult.  You will need to carve out a job that serves your individual strengths and allows you to work within your weaknesses.

 

Why I Liked Marcus Buckingham’s Approach

1. It was grounded in the real world.  He didn’t suggest that there’s a perfect life or a perfect happiness, in fact, he explicitly says the opposite.  For the most part, Buckingham avoids jargon and abstract language.  Instead, he says, if you focus on what you feel good doing and move incrementally towards doing more of it, you will perform better and, in turn, have the opportunity to do more of what you enjoy doing.
2. Buckingham balances his recommendation to move towards your strengths by recognizing it’s equally important to understand your weaknesses. Focusing on your strengths and will likely mean you will deal with your weaknesses more effectively, however, your weaknesses will always be there.  Understanding and working within the limits of you weaknesses contributes to your success.
3. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is not as straightforward as it seems.  A friend of mine who has worked with a certified Marcus Buckingham coach and has attended Marcus Buckingham’s workshops clarified this for me.  Understanding your strengths and weaknesses requires some thought.  For example, I said to my friend, “Aha.  Meetings. I hate meetings. Meetings are my weakness.  I spend the vast majority of my time in meetings, they drain me and that is my problem with my job”.  And my friend said, “Are you sure it’s meetings you don’t like?  Is it all meetings?  Or conference calls?  Or large meetings?  Or meetings without a clear agenda?  Have you ever been to a meeting you liked?  What made that meeting different?”  So in working through your strengths and weaknesses, don’t throw the baby out with the bath, drill down and work it through – if you were to change one element of something that leaves you feeling lousy, could it then be energizing? 
4. I’m reluctant to use the cliche ‘it’s not about the destination but the journey’ but unfortunately, I’m unable to find an alternative because I think that’s Buckingham’s point.  We get so caught up in where we’re going, achievement, fixing what’s wrong, that we overlook the fact that, in the meantime, we’re not enjoying what we’re doing.

So What Does Marcus Buckingham Have to Do with Gifted Adults?

1. This approach makes sense for people like myself who have always been completely stymied by the standard guidance counsellor/performance management question: where do you see yourself in 5 years? I’ve never had a clue – the only answer I’ve had is: something different than I’m doing now.  Buckingham has an example of a woman who, through trial and error, ultimately would up in a job she enjoyed as talent agent.  She didn’t enjoy all the jobs she had getting there but there was a growing sense of clarity and fundamental confidence in her direction as she worked towards doing what energized her.  She didn’t have a plan or a goal but through trial and error moved towards incorporating less of her weaknesses and more of her strengths.  Buckingham’s approach doesn’t require a goal or plan which is relief to someone like me with many, many interests and total  lack of interest in traditional career paths.
2. The talents, interests and capabilities of the gifted adults I know defy any job description I’ve ever seen.  Buckingham provides a method of creating your own job description, specific to your unique talents, interests and capabilities.
3. Some gifted adults, like myself on a bad day, get overwhelmed by what many other people find tolerable.  I have the potential to find bureaucracy, inefficiency, task repetition, workplace immorality truly soul sucking.  While I may never eliminate any of these from my life, Buckingham’s concepts provide a roadmap for me to prevent reaching the point of feeling totally hollowed out.
4. Gifted adults may have talents that are not readily recognized or appreciated in the workplace.  Receiving negative or conflicting feedback, a gifted adult may lose confidence in which direction to head.  Using this approach, the compass is your intrinsic strengths and weaknesses, as a result, you can filter the external feedback appropriately.
5. For gifted stay at home moms, Buckingham’s ideas provide a basis for integrating more intellectual satisfaction, whether it’s toward the eventual return to paid work or simply a more satisfying life.  At the very least, it hedges against that emptied out, “I’ve given until I’ve got nothing left and my brain has completely atrophied’ feeling.
6. Buckingham suggests that you can try as hard as you want to contort yourself into a job that doesn’t align with your strengths but ultimately ‘the truth will out’. If, fundamentally, how you spend your time, at work or otherwise, drains you rather than energizes you, there will be a price, whether you wind up burning yourself out and sabotaging yourself in the workplace or inducing stress related illness or simply sleepwalking through work (and maybe your life), For a gifted adult at work who pretends to be less than they are, knows less and cares less than they do, will feel drained and depleted and Buckingham suggests that in the end, this cannot be sustained.  Something will give.

It seems so obvious: understand what is intrinsically satisfying to you and what is not.  Know that only you can know what energizes you and drains you.  What energizes and drains you personally is different than anyone elses strengths and weaknesses.  Hold tight to this in your life even in the face of other people telling you otherwise because only you know what that is for you.  But take the time to REALLY understand what your personal strengths and weaknesses are and don’t ‘throw the baby out with the bath’.  By the way, Buckingham provides more practical methods for integrating your personal strengths at work whether it’s within your existing job or making a career change than I’ve provided here.  It may seem simple but it is completely the opposite of what most of us have been taught all of our lives: school, our personal lives and work are often based on ‘fixing the problem’ focused on what a person is missing rather than what they have. 

My knowledge of Marcus Buckingham, while enthusiastic, is limited.  I have a lot of questions that I will ask of someone who has worked with Marcus Buckingham for the past 10 years.  If you have any questions, you would like asked, please add a comment and I will be sure to include them as well and post the answers back to the site, regardless of whether your questions are skeptical or enthusiastic.

Tagged as: adult, career, gifted, job, Marcus Buckingham, personality traits, Work