Herbal Medicine or Sweet Lemon Honey Syrup?

It was year-end, and you were longing for the one-on-one conversation with your line manager. It was one of your excellent performing years. The session started so well. You achieved all the goals, every single key performing indicator, including the stretching targets. Your smile was bright and big with the congratulations by your boss. Your heart quickened a bit when she was finally moving to 360-degree feedbacks. There were some areas for improvement. Your colleagues said you had strong opinions, and sometimes others find it hard to give you their point of view; you were sensitive, taking small actions to make them bigger than they were, leading to over thinking and massive reactions; you need to improve your emotional resilience. 

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People say you are brave to learn the truth about yourself, but I am sure regardless of how courageous you are and how professional the truth is delivered, you get hurt or even get defensive when the ugly truth is uncovered. Have you ever asked yourself why?

When I was a child, my mom sometimes boiled and simmered various types of leaves, roots, stems, and barks for a few hours to prepare the herbal medicine. I couldn’t remember anything I hated more than its awfully lingering bitter taste. I always asked my dad to count from one to one hundred, so I could take the courage to take the bowl of that black liquid with my eyes completely closed, and my nose stopped breathing. I always hated it. I hated it from the look of the herbal packed in brown paper, the sound of the extraction simmering in the cooking pot, and the smell coming out from the kitchen even though I knew sickness would say goodbye to me a few days after. But when I got a cough, I happily waited for the moment my mom poured the lemon honey syrup on a spoon, enjoyed its yummy sweet taste slowly going through my throat.

Come to think of 360-degree feedbacks I can’t help but wonder what type of sweet can be used and how to sugar coat the bitter truth in performance review sessions with my team, so they happily receive and take actions? Being exposed to Gallup StrengthsFinder, I realized that good and bad behaviors or strengths and weakness are created by one type of ‘ingredient’ – your top talents! Your dominant talents can make you proud and can also cause problems when overused. Pretty much like cooking, a proper amount of salt will make a delicious dish, but a little more can destroy the excellent balanced taste.

People with high Self-Assurance may be given feedbacks of being arrogant, overconfident and stubborn. It is the ugly side of a beautiful Self-assurance who have their internal compass, who know they can take risks, to meet new challenges, to stake claims, and most importantly to instill confidence in others and show initiative in the midst of turbulence and uncertainty. People with high Restorative in their top talents love to solve problems. They enjoy fixing problems, identifying what is wrong, and finding the solution. They bring a solution-oriented mindset to daily issues. They are not intimidated by points of pain or dysfunction. They bring courage and creativity to problematic situations. And because they tend to focus on issues, they are perceived as negative and critical; only focusing on weakness in people and situations. More interestingly, they are the toughest critique of themselves and hence overly thinking things sometimes.

Being arrogant and over-confident or being negative and critical are blind spots or raw, immature side of those talents on their development spectrum. Those weaknesses are merely an overdose of people’s exceptional talents or the raw side of it. No one wants to stay at the immature side on their development journey; everyone wants to move forward to become top-performing employees, great business partners, or inspiring leaders. Pointing out the bad side of talent alone without appreciating the beautiful side of it is like making a patient drink the herbal medicine. They get hurt because their good intentions, their talents and strengths are not appreciated. Being understood is a need of everyone, being understood opens a whole anew for people to change, being understood changes the way people see their weakness and how to overcome it. It is your choice to offer your team either herbal medicine or sweet lemon honey syrup.

Written by:
Pham Thi Thanh Thao

References:
Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder. New York: Gallup Press.
CliftonStrengths Coaching blog

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The prison chef Knuckles

It was a sweaty Saturday afternoon, and a friend of mine suggested watching Paddington 2 to hide away from the heat. I was a big fan of happy ending cartoons, and this movie had everything to offer. The story was warm and truly happy for all characters but what struck me was not the cute little bear Paddington, not the touching friendships, but the prison short-tempered chef Knuckles.

Knuckles appeared a fierce prison chef, punishing anyone who dared to utter a subtle complaint about his foods. At mealtimes, the inmates all eat in silence, trying to consume awful dishes till the date Paddington arrived. Everyone was shocked at the sight of Paddington telling Knuckles how bad his foods was, triggering Knuckles’ volcanic eruption. When Knuckles was about to punch Paddington, the little bear accidentally slapped his marmalade sandwich in Knuckles’ face, mesmerizing him by its delicious taste. Instantly Knuckles recruited Paddington to learn the magical recipe for the next meal. The moment the sandwich was served, Knuckles sat quietly, face crumpled up, silently cursing himself for risking the new dish. He did not dare to come near the serving hatch until Paddington urged him on. Knuckles was speechless and incredibly touched by the sincere appreciation of everyone, and it was the moment stuck in my mind. It unfolds a beautiful Knuckles who had a burning wish of serving delicious meals but struggling for the how. It was not a Knuckles who intentionally wanted to torture other prisoners by making them eat yucky foods every day.

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In our daily life, we constantly make judgments. We assess everyone and anyone, whether they are our colleagues, teammates, bosses, friends, significant others or strangers. We seem to be assessment machines, producing assessments at every turn. Funny we tend to assess ourselves based on our intention, but very often we judge people based on their behaviors, or even worse making negative assumptions about other intents.

Easily for us to jump to the conclusion that a manager was bullying his team at the sight of him losing his temper and shouting at his subordinates. We feel annoyed, irritated and hurt when someone fires a bunch of ‘prove-it-to-me’ questions at us. We label that person rude, short, and harsh. The assessment doesn’t stop there, the moment it is stuck in our mind, everything we can see is bullying behavior or cruel manner of the person we judged. We automatically filter out all good behaviors, easily and quickly blame them for conflicts where there is nothing to do with them. We are trying to prove that our conclusion is correct, that we are right.

However, what we don’t know and can’t see is that the short-tempered manager may have Discipline in his top talent themes. Discipline is a beautiful talent, allowing Discipline people to bring a high level of organization, order, and stability of the projects and groups they work. Working with them, we are worry-free about project delivery as they always plan, they bring precision and detail orientation, and they derive satisfaction from delivering projects even before the deadline. But they hate chaos and confusion, and they are impatient with errors. Losing temper when others create unnecessary chaos is unavoidable in some situations.

The person, we label rude, short, and harsh, may have Analytical in her dominant talents. High Analytical people are logical and rigorous. They can quickly identify patterns and root issues. They love data and figures. The moment they are into a topic, they can’t help but ask endless questions to ensure the theories are sound. Making people hurt or being rude and short is not their intention.

Those people may not be aware of their behaviors which are obvious to others. Simply because those talents are their natural behaviors, thinking, and feelings. Some are aware but not able to get out of it, like Knuckles having a strong desire of cooking good foods but can’t help himself. After all, it is not their intention of bullying or being rude to others; they are keen to either bring the precision, highly effective and efficient project delivery or logical, objective and rigorous approach to the business.

Many conflicts arise from ungrounded assessments where misunderstanding about others’ behaviors occurs, being suppressed or escalated. Understanding others intention is vital in building and strengthening relationships but first of all, do we have enough understanding about talents & strengths of our team members, our business partners – the way they naturally behave, think and feel with good intentions – to have fair and grounded judgments about them? More importantly, are we helping others to become a better version of who they are or holding them back to the ugly version of Knuckles?

Written by
Pham Thi Thanh Thao

References:
Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder. New York: Gallup Press.
Chalmers Brothers. (2005). Language and the pursuit of Happiness. New Possibilities Press.
CliftonStrengths Coaching blog

What to do now:

  1. Do you like my post? Please like or share with your network.
  2. Please follow my LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/thao-pham-thi-thanh-404bb828/
  3. Join our Overflowing Buckets Community https://www.facebook.com/overflowingbucketscommunity/?pnref=lhc

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