MITIGATION

For years I have believed the concept that working from your strengths was wise. Marcus Buckingham wrote a best-selling business book titled “Now, Discover Your Strengths” that jump-started a strengths movement based on a simple premise. That premise was that we spend too much time repairing our flaws or weaknesses and too little time building on or developing our strengths. He followed that book with one titled “Go put your strengths to work” suggesting that we do not learn from our mistakes, so don’t pay any attention to them. Employers hire for strengths, and retain for strengths based on teams. The idea is that other employees in a work team will always have balancing strengths to your flaws.

Mitigation is defined as: to reduce exposure to risk; to moderate a quality or condition. I have recognized the need for mitigation of my belief and the premise Marcus Buckingham made in his books. Having to terminate the employment of several friends who did not learn from their mistakes or mitigate their weaknesses was my cruel lesson that working from strengths alone is insufficient. It is wise to add a mitigation strategy to moderate your negative flaws, while building on the positive strengths. The October 2009 edition of this blog featured a section on risk assessment. Employers actually retain for results. While the work team utopia sounds nice, personal responsibility for mitigation remains.

In any aspect of life an honest self-evaluation will show you areas that fall into the two buckets of strengths and weaknesses. Building on your strengths is the right thing to do and often even feels good. However, Hebrews 12:11 says “All discipline for the moment seems to not be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness”. James 3:17 says “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy”. Mitigating your weaknesses is the other side of the coin from the efforts of building on your strengths and can’t be ignored.

Techniques can include enlisting specific team members in an active mitigation, to actually working on improving the flaws you found in your self-evaluation. Results are the measurement that determines success. Many colleges now have group assignments where students work through these very issues for a collective grade. Businesses report profits based upon all the efforts of the employees and management of the business. The cultural shift from individual responsibility to collective sharing of overall results throughout modern society has contributed to this situation. Understand that the ownership of your mitigation strategy remains with you in all circumstances.