You may have noticed that nowhere in this list does it say to focus on your innate gifts, talents, blessings, past, or strengths. That’s because no matter how great a personality you have, how many supposed innate strengths you possess, how much money you have, how beautiful you are, how creative you are, what talents you’ve cultivated, or how brilliantly you’ve succeeded in the past—none of these things would mean much on their own. They wouldn’t matter if you didn’t know what you wanted and how to go get it (clarity), felt too wiped out to perform (energy), didn’t have a sense of drive or any pressure to get things done (necessity), couldn’t focus and create the outputs that matter most (productivity), lacked the people skills to get others to believe in you or support you (influence), or failed to take risks or speak up for yourself and others (courage). Without the HP6, even the most gifted person would be lost, tired, unmotivated, unproductivity, alone, or fearful.
Effectiveness in life does not come from focusing on what is automatic, easy, or natural for us. Rather, it is the result of how we consciously strive to meet life’s harder challenges, grow beyond our comforts, and deliberately work to overcome our biases and preferences, so that we may understand, love, serve, and lead others.
When I (Brendon Burchard) make this argument, people often balk due to the popularity of the “strengths” movement. Personally, I’m a fan of any tools that help people learn more about themselves. I also greatly admire Gallup, the organization that has led the strengths-based revolution. But I don’t recommend that people use the strengths assumption to lead others or to seek the next level of success in their own lives. The strengths movement is based on the idea that we have “innate” strengths—talents that we are born with. It assumes we are “naturally” good at some things from birth, and that we might as well focus on those things. Without question, that’s a feel-good formula, and it’s certainly better than obsessing about our weaknesses all the time.
My main reservation about the strengths movement is that in a complex and rapidly changing world, reaching the top doesn’t come naturally to anyone. Regardless of what you are naturally good at, to rise higher you must go beyond what came naturally to you at birth or in your teen years, right? That’s why the innate argument doesn’t hold up so well. To reach exceptional performance and win over the long term, you will be required to develop well beyond what is easy or natural to you, because the real world is full of uncertainty and ever-increasing demands for growth. Your “natural” birth strengths will not be enough. If you have great ambitions to contribute extraordinary things, you’ll have to grow and stretch far beyond what’s natural to you. To rise to high performance, you’ll have to work on the weaknesses, develop entirely new skill sets beyond what you find easy or what you “like to do.” It should be common sense: If you really want to make your mark, you’ll have to grow more to give more, and that won’t feel easy or natural.
In the end, even if you don’t agree with my thinking process here, knowing your personality type or supposed innate strengths just isn’t all that useful in helping you achieve your next big goal in uncertain environments. Knowing your label or strength and just trying to be “more of that” is like telling a bear that’s trying to get honey out of a nest high on an unexplored cliff, “Just try being more of a bear.”
To my friends and colleagues running companies: Let’s stop spending all this money on expensive strength and personality assessments in vain attempts to categorize people, and instead focus on training our people in proven habits that anyone can use to up their performance.
The good news is, no one “innately” lacks any of the high performance habits. High performers are not lucky stiffs loaded with a great big bag of strengths at birth. They simply deploy the habits we’ve discussed, and do it more consistently than their peers. That’s it. That’s the difference.
So it doesn’t matter whether you are an extrovert or an introvert, an INTJ or an ESFP, a Christian or an atheist, a Spaniard or a Singaporean, an artist or an engineer, a manager or a CEO, an achiever or an analyzer, a mom or a Martian—the six high performance habits each have the power to make a dramatic impact on the areas that matter most to you. Together, they have the power to revolutionize your performance across every meaningful domain in your life. You are not supposed to be innately good at the HP6. You have to work at them all the time. Whenever you hope to succeed at a new goal, project, or dream, you have to bust out the HP6. Every time you find yourself performing below your full potential, bring the HP6 to bear. If you ever wonder why you’re failing at something, just go take the HPI and identify which habits you’re scoring low in. Then improve that area and you’ll be back on track.
This deliberate focus is an important distinction, especially because it frees us from the myth that success comes more “naturally” to some than to others. Looking across my decade serving so many elite-level achievers as well as all our surveys and professional assessments, we just haven’t seen high performance consistently correlate strongly with personality, IQ, innate talent, creativity, years of experience, gender, race, culture, or compensation. In the past two decades of research in neuroscience and positive psychology, researchers have begun to notice the same and flip the old model on its head. What we do with what we have tends to be far more important than what we have in the first place. What you’re innately good at is less important than how you choose to see the world, develop yourself, lead others, and remain persistent through difficulty.
We all know someone who has all the cards stacked in their favor—blessed upbringing, great personality, creative mind—but who still doesn’t get off the couch or succeed. Lots of people are highly paid but not high performing. Anyone in an organization who has had their team take a strengths assessment can surely attest that plenty of their peers know their strengths, and even do work related to their strengths, but still fail to deliver great work. And in any given great company culture, there are always high performers and low performers. Why? Because high performance is not about a specific type of person. It’s not about winning the genetic lottery, how long you’ve worked, the shade of your skin, how many people are supporting you, or what you’re getting paid. It’s about your performance habits—which you have complete control over.
This finding is worth hammering home, because too many people use these factors to explain their poor performance. Just think how often you hear things such as:
- “I just don’t have the personality to get ahead. I’m just not [extroverted, intuitive, charismatic, open, conscientious].”
- “I’m just not the smartest person in the room.”
- “I’m just not naturally gifted like they are. I wasn’t born good at that. I don’t have the right mix of strengths.”
- “I’m not a right-brained person.”
- “I don’t have enough experience.”
- “I’m a [woman, black man, Latino, middle-aged white guy, immigrant], and that’s why I’m not succeeding.”
- “My company culture doesn’t support me.”
- “I’d be a lot better if they paid me what I’m really worth.”
It’s time we all recognized these reasons for what they are: lame excuses for suboptimal performance, especially over the long term.
This is not to say intrinsic factors don’t matter at all. There is strong evidence that they are important, especially in childhood development, and many of these factors can dramatically influence your mood, behavior, choices, health, and relationships as an adult.
Leaders should take note: Focusing on any of the factors I mentioned in that list won’t get you very far in helping your people improve performance. Those factors are just not that easy to define, manage, or improve. For example, imagine you’re working on a project with a few teammates. You have one person in particular who is not performing well. Imagine how ridiculous it would be for you to walk over to that person and say:
“If you could just improve your personality for us…”
“If you could just up your IQ for us…”
“If you could just change how you were innately gifted…”
“If you could just be more right-brained…”
“If you could just have five more years’ experience under your belt here…”
“If you could just be more [Asian, black, white, male, female]…”
“If you could just improve the culture here real quick…”
“If you could just pay yourself the perfect amount to be more productive…”
You get the point. These are simply not useful categories to focus on.
The bottom line is that if you’re going to focus on anything to improve your or your team’s performance, start with the HP6.
* Source: High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard