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When it comes to making major mistakes, it's not your weaknesses that will get you in trouble, it's your strengths. Most successful people are aware of their weaknesses. For example, I figured out in ninth grade that math wasn't my strong suit. So during my sophomore year I arranged to sit at the same study table as a math whiz, and that friendship got me through high school. In college, I did some wheeling and dealing with the department chair, who allowed me to substitute some independent research for some of the tougher math courses.
Later, when I ran businesses, I made sure to build an especially close relationship with my CFOs because I would need to lean on them. The point here is that we usually figure out early what our weaknesses are, and we develop effective coping mechanisms to keep them from hurting us. But we are often clueless when it comes to figuring out our strengths and how they can actually undermine us.
TAKE THE TEST. To understand how strength can become weakness, we need to look at how stress affects people. We know from more than 30 years of research on high performers in athletics, the military, and business that as stress increases, people tend to overuse their strengths. Under stress the range of people's behavioral responses tend to narrow and they become less flexible and less adaptive to the situation at hand.
It's easy to understand why. When a lot is at stake, people will rely on what has gotten them out of a jam in the past. They don't stop to evaluate whether that particular strength is appropriate for a given situation -- they simply react. And that's where they get into trouble.
So to predict the kinds of mistakes a person is likely to make under stress, we first have to understand his strengths. The best way I know to do that is the Test of Attentional & Interpersonal Style (TAIS). This test was developed to help Olympic athletes find and exploit a mental edge in performance. It's now also being used widely in military and business settings.
I recently administered the TAIS to 250 CEOs of Inc. 500 companies. I found that the strengths that make the nation's growth CEOs so successful are the same ones that can sabotage them as pressure mounts.
1. They want to win at all costs. The relentless drive that fuels growth-company CEOs can also cause them to derail. Under normal circumstances, most CEOs are able to keep this drive under control and effectively pick their battles. But as the pressure increases, they may become so focused on winning that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Under high levels of pressure they may become less likely to listen, seek to control people and situations, and lose the very adaptability that made them successful in the first place.
2. They want to juggle a lot of balls. Leading entrepreneurs are great at multitasking. Otherwise they would be unable to cope with the demands inherent to the fast-growth environment. As stress increases they're likely to continue to take on projects and responsibilities up to the point at which their effectiveness declines. They may also overestimate their organization's ability to absorb all of their ideas and initiatives -- resulting in a decrease in quality of service or execution.
3. They want to take care of people. When I began my study, I believed that great entrepreneurs led by articulating a new and exciting vision. While many are great visionaries, I learned in my study that most lead by developing strong and supportive bonds with those around them. They are loyal to their people, and the people reward that with exceptional commitment. But when times get tough, loyalty can become a liability. Too often, leading entrepreneurs are slow to recognize when the company has outgrown a long-time employee and slower still to deal with the situation.
To lead his company past the entrepreneurial stage of development, the entrepreneur must gain insight into his own behavior. The attributes that produced success in the entrepreneurial stage may be the very ones that sabotage him later on. As the old adage goes, to a person who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
McFarland, a two-time technology CEO, is the founder of McFarland Strategy Partners in Sandy, Utah. His clients include House of Blues, Vans, and other entrepreneurial companies. His upcoming book is Breakthrough: Secrets of America's Best Growth Companies (Random House/Crown).
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