Strengths, strengths overused, and lopsided leadership.

Riding the growth of positive psychology, strengths-based development has become a popular approach to helping managers become better leaders. This school of thought advises managers to maximize their natural talents rather than try to correct weaknesses. This article takes issue with this advice and considers how it can, ironically, lead managers to turn their strengths into weaknesses through overuse as well as cause them to neglect shortcomings that can degrade the performance of employees, teams, and organizations. Hypotheses are developed about the relationship between specific personal strengths and leadership behaviors as well as the joint tendencies to overdo behaviors related to one's strengths while underdoing opposing but complementary behaviors. Strong support was found for the tendency of managers to do too much of the behaviors related to their strengths and more modest support was found for the tendency of managers to do too little of opposing but complementary behaviors. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of future research needs and how to apply the strengths approach in a way that minimizes downside risk in developmental applications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)