Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Discovering The Strength With in Artical Part Three - Chandramowly
Discovering The Strength With in Artical Part Three - Chandramowly
Discovering The Strength With in Artical Part Three - Chandramowly
A
coach of a Chinese table ed to name the strengths they have behaviour had made a huge impact on
tennis team who long perceived in him along with support- others.
use to build your career and there are held the Olympics gold ive examples of specific action / mo-
A self-portrait
proven ways that help one to discover medal was asked by a re- ments, weaknesses or the areas where
porter, ‘Tell us about your there is scope for improvement. To Shashank was then guided to de-
that hidden treasure – team’s daily training regime’. ‘We make it easier to process and to en- scribe the five areas identified as his
writes M R Chandramowly practice eight hours a day perfecting
our strengths.’ ‘ Could you be a little
sure accurate feedback, he requested
the raters to mail their feedback di-
strength and started designing his
self-portrait to make it a good psycho-
more specific?’ ‘ rectly to Prashanth who would sum- logical and cognitive profile. He
marise the feedback. looked at it. The profile reflected all
Discovering your strength There was a good response and al- his previous achievements and sug-
Here is our philosophy: If you de- most 90 per cent sent in their feedback gested a possible portrait of the fu-
velop your strengths to the maximum, and Prashanth passed on the summa- ture. Scripting a portrait takes in
the strength becomes so great it over- ry to Shashank. Looking at the feed- some effort to identify strong areas,
whelms the weaknesses. Our willing back, Shashank was deeply moved by He wrote “ I am at my best when I
player, you see, plays only his fore- the strong points that were attributed firmly stand on my values and logic
hand. Even though he cannot play to him, which he was not in the know which makes others to understand
backhand which his competitors are of. Few of the areas, which he thought the importance of what I am doing. I
aware of, his forehand is so invincible were his weaknesses did not appear at can work intensely and untiringly
that it cannot be beaten’ – This is the all in that list. Where as some areas with passion to the work…” Looking
strength theory in a nutshell as pre- under the title ‘opportunities for im- at his portrait he felt extremely confi-
sented by Donald O Clifton of provement’ was identified as dent and happy.
Gallup Group. How can one discov- strengths in his self rating. He had Now he knew why he failed to per-
er strength? Is there a process? more strength than he knew. form his work as Manager—Hard-
Shashank’s name appeared in ware. His strengths of teamwork,
the list. He was all excited about the
Pointers from feedback courage or communication did not
MBA campus selection, walking Shashank, as guided by Prashanth find a place in routine system mainte-
ahead of his mates in interview drew out a common observation from nance. Having located his strength ar-
scores and GD. A year after he all the responses including his own eas Shashank re-wrote his job script
joined ‘Topsofteck’ as a manage- self-rating, and categorised the items to build on what he is good at. He had
ment trainee he was confirmed as under appropriate groups. He looked to make a better job fit between his
Sr Engineer – Systems. only at the uniformity of the message work and his best self.
As time elapsed he found a ca- on his strong points as perceived by He made some changes in his
reer block. He could not move fur- most of the raters. working style and team inter-
ther and stayed on in the same posi- The comments from his fam- action. He began sched-
tion year after year. Frustrated and ily members were similar to uling meetings with
disheartened, Shashank got those of his college bud- system designers
stressed up over his lifeless working dies and work colleagues. and engineers who
state. His performance feedback in- Everyone highlighted had trouble in get-
dicated very low ratings. He was Shashank’s courage, per- ting information be-
not displaying competencies that severance, adaptability tween their groups
are required by his position. He had and perseverance. and maintenance
good a academic record, people Shashank realised that teams. He brain-
liked him as a person and still he even a small and stormed with teams to
did not succeed. Standing in the unconscious find better ways to
crossroads of career path, he did
not know what to do and where to
go.
Steps to ‘self-discovery’
Prashanth, who is a Sr Vice-
President, also a family friend of
Shashank came to his rescue. He
had several one-on-one’s with
Shashank and finally put him on to
a self-discovery path to find out
what he likes and what he does best.
Shashank, as a last endeavour,
agreed to follow the process. As a
first step Shashank listed out his in-
dividual feedback providers who
knew him well. Two from his fami-
ly; his elder sister and his brother-
in-law, two friends, one from MBA
and one from engineering, two exec-
utives from his own depart-
ment, one from HR and
four others.
Feedback from
sources
With the help
of Prashant, he
prepared a simple
one-page feedback
form and mailed
that to his select-
ed feedback
providers with a request
to share their perceptions
about him. The raters were request-