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Sep 25, 2011

"We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more." --Anne Sophie Swetchine

The Flip Side of Your Signature Strength

"As an executive coach interested in exploring what drives people to successes and failures, I have worked with hundreds of ambitious people including business executives, sports legends and Nobel laureates. One key discovery I made repeatedly over the last fifteen years is that there is a common driver to the successes and failures of the people I studied. I call this driver, the 'Signature Strength' and its downside, the 'Core Incompetence'. A signature strength forms in a person when a certain competence matures in a person due to his nature and/or nurture. I found that the initial successes produced by the signature strength make people mistake a particular manifestation of the strength for the strength itself. They then convert that manifestation as a success formula and apply it to all of their goals. When this behavior continues indiscriminately, it becomes a Core Incompetence."