ABSTRACT
Towards strengths-based thinking This chapter really gets to the essence of the second edition. It is about describing, explaining and justifying a new kind of reflective practice – one that explicitly emphasizes reflecting on strengths so as to identify them, play to them and develop new ones. This is a pretty tough task, as many of us are programmed to reflect upon problems and weaknesses rather than strengths and successes. A major message in the second edition of this book is that reflection that only focuses on fixing weaknesses is a mistake and a misallocation of time and energy. I am suggesting that, to help people become the best they can be, we also need to reflect on the positives, and use reflection and its practices to identify, develop and amplify their gifts, talents and strengths. The point of this chapter is simple. It is about balance. I am not advocating replacing a one-sided perspective of reflection being a solution looking for a problem, – an obsession with what is wrong – with another one-sided perspective – an exclusive focus on what is right. This is misguided and simplistic. I am trying to go beyond this swinging pendulum kind of reflective practice by advocating an approach to individual growth which recognizes that both strengths and weaknesses have an appropriate place in learning and development. A focus on reflection for strength-building takes us into some new, interesting and humanly significant areas, such as those to do with
CHAPTER
excellence, creativity, resilience and optimal functioning. When people are performing in roles in which they play to their strengths, studies show that performance and satisfaction increase, productivity improves and they have a greater chance of achieving their full potential (Buckingham and Clifton, 2001). This is a radical departure from the long-held view that to enable someone to perform at his or her best, you work as hard as you can at trying to overcome their weaknesses. This view is evidenced by the fact that only 20 per cent of employees in companies across the globe feel their strengths are in play on a daily basis (Buckingham and Clifton, 2001). So my argument here is that it is a great investment, in time and other resources, to use reflective practices to develop strengths and to build workplaces where these strengths can be used for the majority of our time, each day. So how might this turn itself into a set of suggestions for using reflective practices? In Figure 4.1, I set out four such practical purposes. How might we begin to reflect on strengths? Here are some starting suggestions.
