Focusing on Your Strengths Shane Lopez TEDxUCCS

good evening if give you list of your strengths and list of your weaknesses right now which would you focus on first okay just think about that question and want you to clap if you focus on your weaknesses first go ahead and clap alright if you focus on your strengths first go ahead and clap don't believe you what we found at Gallup we did survey of folks and we asked them that exact question and we found that 70 percent of Americans would focus on their weaknesses first thirty percent would focus on their strengths seventy percent on the weakness is thirty percent on the strengths now what that says to me is that in society we're focusing on the wrong things we're focusing on the wrong things we're focusing on weaknesses when we should be focusing on what we do best we're focusing on what's wrong with us when we're focused when instead when we should be focusing on what's strong in us want to talk to you about what's right with you want to talk to you about what you do best and how that promotes your flourishing believe that families businesses schools they're all at they're weak they're strongest when they're focused on what's right with us and investing in what's best with us now there are three reasons why we focus on weaknesses rather than strengths one you've already heard about bad is stronger than good bad is stronger than good as positive psychologist it pains me to say that bad is stronger than good but it's true in fact what we found out through psychological studies and behavioral economics is that negative information negative behavior negative emotions have deeper effect than positive information positive behaviors and positive emotions so if you lose $100 you're more devastated than if you find $100 if you have sadness that Trump's joy and if you experience someone who smirks at you that's more powerful than smile you also if you have bad flight that's better fodder for conversation than if you have great one and weaknesses are more salient than strengths the second reason that we are so fixated on weaknesses is that we have been educated out of focusing on our strengths by our parents and our teachers by us we've been educated out of focusing on what's right with us now let me give you another question to prove this point all right so imagine that you're kid again okay and you bring these grades home ready to A's and low grade such as or enough getting little nervous now all right what would your parents focus on first heard one definitely the A's and the rest of the FS all right 77% of Caring American parents said they would focus on the FS the or the first and only 7% of American parents said they would focus on the A's first now let me give you some more data we just polled about million students last year asking them them to what extent do you get to do what you do best every day at school 34% of fifth graders gave strongly agree to that item that they got to do what they do best every day at school only 17% of 10th graders gave strongly agree to that item with each passing year at school you're less likely to get to do what you do best every day now what think is that as teachers and parents we're too focused on remediation and prevention and not focused enough on excellence and promotion now there's third reason that we are hyper focused fixated is obsessed with weakness and that's because we are concerned that we're going to get too big of an ego by focusing on our strengths fortunately we have middle school high school cheerleaders and bosses to keep us focused on our weaknesses so that will never truly happen now talk about strengths want to tell you little bit about my strengths journey when was little kid thought had two superpowers one was the the power to climb walls like spider-man now was seven years old spider-man was on TV and live-action series and every every week I'd watch spider-man and every morning I've tried watch spider-man stand in the bathroom I'd lock the door stand in the bathroom run and jump against the tiled wall and flap and flail and try to climb the time wall tile wall like spider-man it never happened it never happened never got to the ceiling now tried year after year and got little higher little did realized was getting little taller but tried year after year and never could climb the wall like spider-man so eventually gave up on that superpower but had another superpower and that superpower was mental time travel could time travel so when was little kid me and my friends would think about us being bigger kids and would think about us riding bigger bikes and think about us playing baseball and tea ball instead of tea ball and think about us talking to girls and then as got older time travel stayed with me and thought about driving to school and thought about playing on bigger fields and talked thought about kissing girls this time-travel thing was awesome and as would time-travel would grow these develop these memories of the future these memories of the future that would help me to become better big kid and those memories served me well time and time again now of course you know we can all time travel we all have an imagination that sets us apart from other creatures and that imagination has served me well throughout my life and it has served you well throughout life but for me that was strength and it's one I'll talk about more but first want to talk about how we develop that strength we make believe as kids we play make-believe and we developed this this power of imagination and my son when he was about 5 years old asked him little bit about his future life asked him what do you want your life to be like in the future and he said well want to have four kids and wife and he's an only child so can understand he wanted more friends around and so he'll have them when he has wife he said would have four kids and wife said what did they look like he said they all have dark hair said the kids and the wife they all have dark hair and this caught me off guard because my son's mom parish's mom has blonde hair so said to him son your wife has dark hair but your mommy has blonde hair and he said to me what's smile does she really and his imagination served him well in lots of different ways as youngster but then when back to thinking about the future actually took test called the Clifton strengths finder don't know if you've ever taken it but my number-one strength on the Clifton strengths finder was futuristic so have the strength of futuristic and can think about the future little bit better than most and it serves me well in my life from from day in and day out and it makes me feel stronger and my mentor told me he said you could work your whole life on developing that one strength so I've done that and in one way I've done that is trying trying to be strength spotter for other people so found this this guy at work who was lot like me and he's developed this strength of futuristic lot like mine was and asked him said do you have futuristic he said yes do said tell me about how you got this job and his name is AJ and AJ said was sitting in the hotel lobby when our boss walked in and he sat across from me and introduced myself said hi my name is AJ and then our boss named Jim said hi my name is Jim and AJ said Jim what do you do and Jim said I'm head of consulting company and AJ said well do you have job for guy like me and Jim kind of laughed and said well AJ these days you have to go online and apply for job you have to take an assessment and then you have to interview for the job and AJ boldly said but Jim you know me we've been hanging out how about we skip over all the informal stuff and go straight to the interview sure enough AJ convinced Jim to do formal interview of him at the office so time-pass AJ showed up at the appointed time and date and just rocked the interview he knew everything about the company where the company was going where the company had been and he really impressed Jim and Jim said I'm gonna get in trouble with HR for doing this but you're hired now just go finish middle school high school in college and come back and the job is yours AJ was 12 years old when he approached Jim in that hotel lobby and he had the futuristic frame of mind to pursue what was next in his life and he was able to conjure up this image of the future and put together plan to make it happen today and that's his strength now you know AJ strength you know my strengths what are your strengths what do you do best what are the things that make you feel strong that's what wish could sit with each of you and talk to you about what your strengths are but we just don't have the time but think about what are the things that make you feel strong but what can do is can teach you how to be strength spotter so you can be strength spotter just like me so starting today you can do these three things to help you be strength spotter number one you can develop strengths mindset no that's not about wearing rose-colored glasses or seeing the glasses half half-full it's all about believing that each and ever person you encounter has strengths that you can name nurturer number two it's all about catching people in moments of excellence catching people in moments of excellence so when you catch people doing extraordinary things in ordinary times it's having second and saying what you just did is extraordinary last night had dinner with friend and he's so kind and so generous in so many ways but at one point he went to our waiter and said James you've provided the best service for us tonight thank you so much catching people doing extraordinary things in ordinary times and then finally is naming and nurturing the strength that that person had to achieve the extraordinary those are the three steps to being strength spotter and think all of you can can do those steps and become better at making sure that your name ring naming and nurturing the strengths of others want to end with parable and it's parable it's an old parable about little rabbit it's called let the rabbits run have you heard the parable before all right let the rabbits run it's about little rabbit in his friends the squirrel the duck in the fish and the eagle and they decide they want to be smart like American school kids so they're going to build school and what do you need to have school well you need faculty and you need curriculum so they got grown-up animals to come together and be on their faculty and then they they established curriculum and the curriculum was to have running swimming tree climbing and assorted activities and that one of those was flying and running swimming tree climbing and flying and the rabbit you could tell if this is not gonna go well for the rabbit right all right so the rabbit wakes up the first day of school and it's just so excited and he combs his ears and he hops to school and he's just so excited because the first class he's attending is running and running he just goes lights out he's just fantastic runner he got up the hill and back and just does great and he says school is wonderful place this is place where can do my very best and then the next class is swimming and he sees the water and he just gets really nervous and he tells the instructor rabbits don't swim wait wait rabbits don't swim and the instructor said well today we're covering the history of swimming so don't worry about it but tomorrow you have to do you have to go into the pool Robert was pretty concerned about this but he went on with his day next was tree climbing which was pretty easy because they climbed up tree that had fallen since it was the first day of class and then finally they had flying and the rabbit was put in remedial flying and which was jumping off the top of rock and flapping his arms as hard as he could but he was encouraged because his teacher said if he tried hard enough that one day he would fly so he goes home he's not sure what to make of things he's really fixated on this swimming class so he's concerned he's bothered the next morning he wakes up he's not as peppy as he was the day before he drags himself to school he's at school he runs up the mountain up the hill and back he laps everybody but it's just not happy about it at all because he knows what's next it's swimming he goes to swimming class and the instructor says today we jump into the pool and the rabbit said no no my parents never learned how to swim and the instructor with all the wisdom said this will bother you and hurt you now but in five years you'll be glad you did this and the rat the instructor said you jump in or you flunk so the rabbit jumped in jumped into the pool and sunk and came up and sunk again and came up and then the instructor grabbed him by the ears and pulled him out and then there he was if you've ever seen wet rabbit all scrawny and nasty looking and all the other all the other animals teased him and laughed at him so the rabbit slinks away and hides but he makes it back for the next class which is tree climbing there climbing up that broken tree and he makes it to the top but then he gets to flying and he just can't go anymore so the instructor sends him to the counselor's office the wise old owl is the counselor the rabbit explains his problem to the counselor and says just can't handle this anymore want to quit school the counselor says know what your problem is you're doing really well and running but you just don't like swimming so here's what we'll do we'll get you out of running and we'll give you two sections of swimming and the rabbit just threw up he was done with school and he walked away from the counselor's office and walked home and he wondered wouldn't it be great if there was place where rabbits could run and fish could swim and birds could fly wouldn't that be wonderful place indeed wouldn't it be great if you find place in school or work where you can use your strengths wouldn't it be great if schools tested as rigorously our talents as they test our content knowledge wouldn't it be great if businesses built teams that were strengths based to exploit the best in each of us wouldn't it be great if someone found you exceptional and said why and wouldn't it be great if you did the same thank you so much