I read Gallup’s Strengths Based Parenting book by Mary Reckmeyer about four months ago.  Every month since then I find myself referring back to it time and time again as I study how to unlock potential.

The premise of the book is simple. Children do their best when you empower them to do what they’re best at.  In addition, parents, teachers, and coaches spend far to much time trying to “fix” a child’s weaknesses.  Decades of Gallup research on strengths psychology shows the following:

Strengths are not the opposite of weaknesses, and you can’t turn your weaknesses into strengths.

What’s more, a Gallup study showed:

77% of U.S. parents say that the subjects in which a child get the worst grades deserve the most time and attention.

If you are in that 77%, as the saying goes — If you keep doing what you’re doing you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting.  There is a better way.

The Key to Strengths Based Parenting – Develop Strengths Manage Weaknesses

The key to strengths based parenting is to stop believing in the well-rounded myth.  An article published in the Washington Post titled The myth of the well-rounded student? It’s better to be ‘T-shaped’ explains this point well:

Teachers and counselors have long encouraged students to be “well-rounded.” But the problem with well-rounded students is that they usually don’t focus on any one thing for a prolonged period of time. Too often they seem to participate in activities just to check off a series of boxes, instead of showing the deep and sustained involvement, passion, and dedication that employers seek. Their résumés are filled with what some recruiters refer to as “sign-up clubs.”

Well-rounded students typically turn into generalists on the job. While jack-of-all-trades were useful in previous generations, these days students need to be what is known as “T-shaped.”

The idea of the T-shaped individual first emerged in the early 1990s as a kind of “Renaissance Man.” The vertical bar of the T represents a person’s deep understanding of one subject matter — history, for example — as well as one industry, perhaps energy or health care. The horizontal stroke of T-shaped people is the ability to work across a variety of complex subject areas with ease and confidence.

Strengths based parenting is all about developing your child’s innate talents to form that vertical bar of the T.

Chapter two of Strengths Based Parenting provides several eye opening examples of this, especially their example of Steven Spielberg’s upbringing.  Later on in chapter six the recounting of “The Animal School” fable by George Reavis, also reiterates this point.

Below is a short video reenactment of the fable:

The First Step to Strengths Based Parenting

The first step to start practicing strengths based parenting is to work on your ability to spot strengths.  Of course in parallel there are a variety of other steps you should take.  For example:

• Taking the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment to understand your own strengths.
• Having your child ages 10-14  take the youth version and those older than 15 take the same assessment as adults.
• Read the Strengths Based Parenting book.

However, even as you consider the steps above, you can immediately start working on strengths spotting.  Strengths spotting starts with your ability to observe clues of your child’s talents.  These clues appear in four ways:

1. Yearning: What activities or environments is your child repeatedly drawn to or eager to try?
2. Rapid learning: What new skills or activities does your child pick up quickly and easily?
3. Satisfaction: When is your child most enthusiastic and fulfilled?  Which activities is he or she excited about doing again and again?
4. Timelessness: When does your child become so engrossed that he or she seems to lose track of time?

Once you get an idea of these talents through your observations, you then apply this simple formula shared in chapter 1 of the book:

Talent x Investment = Strength

• Talent – Your child’s natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving
• Investment – Time spent practicing and developing skills and building a knowledge base
• Strength – The ability to consistently provide near perfect performance

This magic formula is the secret sauce to strengths based parenting.