The Perils of Accentuating the Positive

In less than a decade positive psychology has grown from an inspired idea on the bank of mainstream psychology to a conceptual sea change in how we think about human development. In many ways this is a welcomed addition. Positive psychology helps round out and balance our approach to individual learning and development. A fair assessment of the first 100 years of the field of psychology is that the emphasis has been on anxiety, illness, and pathology. But critics have pointed out that the good life is about more than the absence of pathology-the things that make life worth living concern growth, flourishing, and fulfillment.

There is much to like about a positive psychology. The founders of the field, Martin Seligman and his colleagues, have presented compelling experimental evidence showing that simple adjustments in your daily life can increase your quality of life in terms of better moods and improved general well-being.9 Barbara Frederickson has some interesting ideas based on evolutionary theory that explain the good that feeling good can do. Her “broaden-and-build” theory describes how positive emotions widen our perspective and open us up to new knowledge, relationships, and experiences that build intellectual and social capital. As these assets accumulate, we become better able to deal with stiff challenges and complex problems. And more than just an American idea, positive psychology is catching on in Europe through the efforts of thought leaders like Alex Linley and his colleagues at the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology who study people at their best to harvest insights about optimal human functioning.

Strengths-based Development

The contributions of positive psychology, however, stand alongside legitimate questions about how it is being applied in the workplace. Of particular concern is an application known as strengths-based development. It was introduced around the turn of the century by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton2 in their book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, and has caught on like wildfire. There are a few companies with a significant commercial interest in strengths-based development and they have large marketing machines promoting it to the business world. Their advertising campaigns are effective and have a long reach, as indicated by the flood of strengths-based books in bookstores and on the management best-seller lists.

The central message of the more vocal companies selling the strengths approach is that traditional methods of management training and development are wrong. They claim that a focus on fixing weaknesses is a mistake and a misallocation of time and energy. According to advocates of the strengths movement, to help people become the best they can be, we need to focus on the positives by identifying their natural inclinations and nurturing those talents. A favorite piece of rhetoric is that fixing weaknesses might get you from a “D” to a “C” but will never get you an “A” because the only way to get an “A” is to maximize your innate gifts. Consider how this message has infiltrated the business press and popular press and influenced conventional wisdom, as exemplified by the following quotes:

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Excerpted from The Perils of Accentuating the Positive by Robert B. Kaiser. Excerpted by permission. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Hogan Assessment Systems, Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Robert B. Kaiser

Rob Kaiser began his career at the Center for Creative Leadership. He joined Kaplan DeVries in 1997 to expand the firm's research and development capabilities. He was named partner in the summer of 2005.

Rob's work on leadership development has been featured in Harvard Business Review and MIT's Sloan Management Review, where his 2003 piece with Bob Kaplan, "Developing Versatile Leadership," won runner-up for article of the year.

"The Perils of Accentuating the Positive skewers the simplistic 'play to your strengths' argument and explains what success is really about. Too bad there is no FDA for human development to ban fads like the strengths movement. Until then, this book will have to do."

Michael M. Lombardo, Ed.D.
Co-founder (retired)
Lominger Limited, Inc.

"Focusing only on strengths will leave you flying blind. GE's culture of development helped our pilots understand their strengths but also their weaknesses, which could literally be deadly. The balanced advice in The Perils of Accentuating the Positive is exactly how we ensure our corporate pilots are always at their best for safety, comfort, and reliability from takeoff to touchdown."

John A. Joyce
Former Chief Pilot
General Electric Company

"It is rare to find a work that approaches a complex topic in a nuanced and insightful way, yet manages to come across as so clear, logical, and useful. This book truly advances the current state of thinking and practice in leadership development."

David B. Peterson, PhD.
Senior Vice President
Personnel Decisions International

"Consultants rarely have answers to management's simplest questions, such as, should we develop people by building on strengths or by fixing weaknessess? Perils may provide the only definitive, serious answer grounded in data and reality rather than psycho-dross. It's not a marketing vehicle in book form. This impressive first imprint from HoganPress is well edited with strong authorship, keen psychological insight, bold attitudes, and an implementation focus." Click here to read the full review.  

Theodore L. Hayes
Personnel Research Psychologist
U.S. Office of Personnel Management

THEODORE L. HAYES
Personnel Research Psychologist
US Office of Personnel Management
Washington, D.C.

BOOK REVIEW
Robert B. Kaiser (ed.). (2009). The Perils of Accentuating the Positive. Tulsa, OK: HoganPress, 170 pages, $29.95.

Consultants rarely have answers to management's simplest questions, such as: should we develop people by building on strengths or by fixing weaknesses? Perils may provide the only definitive, serious answer grounded in data and reality rather than psycho-dross. It's not a marketing vehicle in book form. This impressive first imprint from HoganPress is well-edited with strong authorship, keen psychological insight, bold attitudes, and an implementation focus.

Perils is an expanded version of a 2007 SIOP symposium. Both the symposium and book were coordinated by Rob Kaiser in reaction to what he describes (p. 3) as "large marketing machines" promoting development via strengths alone. In Perils he writes that strengths-only development is insufficient. Furthermore, according to Kaiser (p. 4) and Leslie & Chandrasekar (p. 35), advising clients not to rehabilitate personal or competency-based limitations is willfully misleading because this advice makes the personal experiences of the individual manager more important than the requirements of the position and the needs of the people he/she manages.

All Perils authors are against strengths-only development. Several strengths proponents declined the invitation to submit chapters forPerils (R. Kaiser, personal communication, 13 February 2009). Since proponents chose not to contribute, descriptions of strengths in this review are based upon their portrayal in Perils and materials published elsewhere.

First, some background. Psychologists and consultants prefer measuring variables to explaining how people flourish amidst life's vicissitudes. Daily functioning became viewed as a Sisyphean struggle with disorders and despair (Gable & Haidt, 2005). Several authors in Perils acknowledge that the pendulum had swung too far in that direction. Theory and research on the pragmatic value of hedonic positivity grew and cemented the foundation of the positive psychology movement (Fredrickson, 2001; Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). Positive psychology's founders deduced "strengths" and "virtues" as labels for hedonic experiential phenomena, which in turn led to development of strengths assessments. Reinforcement of virtues and strengths quickly became the product and process of development.

According to Perils, strengths as popularly conceived and marketed are generalized personality traits or emotional states encompassing habitual action/learning styles. Hogan & Benson (p. 118) call these intrapsychic "hidden secrets" that are sought out to provide individual insight and make people whole. Typical strengths assessments measure hedonic phenomena (strengths/virtues/archetypes) and provide a ranking or ordering of within-person intensity (a.k.a. ipsativity). But as Eichinger, Dai, & Tang write (p. 16ff), having an intrapsychic strength doesn't mean you're strong in an absolute or relative sense. Intrapsychic, ipsative, common-place strengths are meaningless to anyone but the individual who has them, say Eichinger et al.

In contrast to generalized personality traits, Perils authors identify interpersonal competency-based strengths as a significant focus of one's development. These attributes have value organizationally, can be refined, and help one distinguish oneself relative to others. Eichinger et al. state (p. 16) that "strengths might be those talents, skills, and competencies you personally do best." There may be five to seven of these strengths per person, but the exact number is arbitrary. Whatever their number, strengths only matter to the extent that they are intense relative to others' strengths (i.e. are competitive) and are aligned with success criteria (Eichinger et al., p. 20ff).

Remember: organizations don't value limitations, they select against them (Collins & Porras, 1994; Schneider, 1987). Therefore, one's weaknesses must be remedied or at least carefully managed. A significant contribution of Perils is its authors' careful evaluation of developmental needs -- call them limitations or weaknesses -- in addition to strengths. Rather than defining weaknesses as underdeveloped strengths awaiting invigoration, Perils distinguishes between weaknesses as flaws and weaknesses as overuse. Flaws are dysfunctional personality attributes such as passive-aggression and paranoia reflecting maladaptive or destructive behavior leading to derailment. Gentry & Chappelow, Davies, and Berglas emphasize that it's the behavioral pattern that matters in derailment. A high score on a derailment indicator doesn't mean one is doomed (Davies, p. 139ff). One can turn the counter-productive pattern toward a productive goal by intentionally rehabilitating the self-defeating tendency through coaching or feedback. In comparison, overused strengths become weaknesses through contemptuously asserting them due to "an excessive need to be 'Me'" (Goldsmith, 2007, p. 96ff; Kaiser & Kaplan, p. 65ff).

Perils concerns itself with the development of leaders and managers. In contrast, the strengths movement articulated a humanistic vision that everyone has strengths/virtues and everyone can flourish (e.g., Seligman, 2002). Perils authors criticize this vision, yet excepting one chapter their real argument appears to be with applying the same ipsative, generalized personality-based hedonic measures to everyone world-wide at nearly all ages and from all walks of life. In short, they might say, development really is about improving one's capacity to live amongst and compete with others; these imperatives are not limited to bureaucracies and boardrooms. Although Perilsdoes not start from a humanistic perspective, anyone could try to develop using Hogan & Benson's (p. 72ff) elegant competency-oriented reality-testing approach: use feedback, strengths, and weakness-awareness to outline activities to stop doing, start doing, and/or keep doing. How important is this process? As White (p. 161) notes, "only the self-aware, not the strong, survive."

What evidence exists outside the strengths or Perils camps to evaluate competing claims? No true experimental research has compared programs with different developmental orientations. The best published evidence (Smither, London, & Reilly, 2005) shows that those who improve after receiving multisource feedback (e.g., 360-ratings; see Leslie & Chandrasekar, Kaiser & Kaplan) have a "discrepancy production" orientation: they use structured feedback to help themselves change behavior in order to attain higher performance. In one ofHarvard Business Review's "Ten must-read articles," Drucker (1999) wrote that while strengths are important, proudly ignoring one's non-strengths is "self-defeating": "It is equally essential to remedy your bad habits - the things you do or fail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and performance." Drucker also distinguished between personality-based strengths and competency-based strengths (a.k.a. performance). Collins (2001) described the "Stockdale Paradox": Vietnam War POWs who survived years of captivity were optimistic but also confronted "the brutal facts of their reality."

McCall (p. 54) gets the final word: "Developing leaders with the breadth and experience to handle the complexity of organizations in today's global world simply requires an investment in helping those with talent shed what no longer serves them (both strengths and weaknesses) and continually acquire the new skills that they need."

Organizations are becoming savvier development consumers. They are demanding more from their coaches: thorough explanation of the goals of the assessment and the strengths and limitations of the assessment tools; regular recertification; ethics training; delineating boundaries between coaching and therapy; and so on (Coutu & Kauffman, 2009; Silzer & Jeanneret, 1998). Consultants who fail to adopt best practices and processes may be liable when confidential data are disclosed, promotions are not made after development, etc. Managing these risks could lead to a two-tiered system where rigorous "real" development (strengths, weaknesses, multisource feedback, coaching) is provided for key personnel and the rest of us get strengths workbooks.

The strengths-only approach was revolutionary 20 years ago when the psychology of development and the nature of business were less sophisticated. Kudos to the strengths pioneers. Coaching changed too from "fixing toxic behaviors" 10 years ago to developing interpersonal competencies aligned with business needs today (Coutu & Kauffman, 2009; McCauley & Hezlett, 2001). Kudos to thePerils authors for advancing professional practice beyond outdated all-or-nothing marketing claims. After Perils, consulting's "best practice" answer for management is, build competencies and rehabilitate weaknesses, as neither approach alone suffices. Perils is necessary reading to align the consulting process, the actual "truth about you," and business and personal goals. Change is difficult, success more elusive still. Only those committed to self-awareness, rehabilitation, and building will continue along that path toward what they seek. Others will go put their strengths to work after watching Oprah.

References

• Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. New York: HarperCollins.
• Collins, J., & Porras, J. (1994). Built to last. New York: HarperBusiness.
• Coutu, D., & Kauffman, C. (2009, January). What can coaches do for you? Harvard Business Review, 91-97.
• Drucker, P.F. (1999, March/April). Managing oneself. Harvard Business Review, 64-74.
• Fredrickson, B.L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.
• Gable, S.L., & Haidt, J. (2005). What (and why) is positive psychology? Review of General Psychology, 9, 103-110.
• Goldsmith, M. (2007). What got you here won't get you there. New York: Hyperion.
• McCauley, C.D., & Hezlett, S.A. (2001). Individual development in the workplace. In N. Anderson, D.S. Ones, H.K. Sinangil, & C. Viswesvaran (Eds.), Handbook of industrial, work and organizational psychology, vol. 1: Personnel psychology (pp. 313-335). London: Sage.
  • Schneider, B. (1987). The people make the place. Personnel Psychology, 40, 437-453.
  • Seligman, M.E.P. (2002). Authentic happiness. New York: Free Press.
  • Seligman, M.E.P., Steen, T.A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical evaluation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.
• Silzer, R., & Jeanneret, R. (1998). Anticipating the future: Assessment strategies for tomorrow. In R. Jeanneret and R. Silzer (Eds.),Individual psychological assessment: Predicting behavior in organizational settings (pp. 445-477). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Smither, J.W., London, M., & Reilly, R.R. (2005). Does performance improve following multisource feedback? A theoretical model, meta-analysis, and review of empirical findings. Personnel Psychology, 58, 33-66.