Fear Your Strengths, Robert D. Kaplan
Fear Your Strengths, Robert D. Kaplan
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Fear Your Strengths
What You Are Best at Could Be Your Biggest Problem

Author: Robert D. Kaplan, Robert B. Kaiser

Narrator: Derek Shetterly

Unabridged: 2 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 04/09/2013


Synopsis

Once you’ve discovered your strengths, you need to discover something else: your strengths can work against you.

Many leaders know this on some intuitive level, and they see it in others. But they don’t see it as clearly in themselves. Mainly, they think of leadership development as working on their weaknesses. No wonder. The tools used to assess managers are not equipped to pick up on overplayed strengths—when more is not better.

Nationally recognized leadership experts Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser have conducted thousands of assessments of senior executives designed to determine when their strengths serve them well—versus betray them. In this groundbreaking audiobook, they draw on their data and practical experience to identify four fundamental leadership qualities, each positive in and of itself but each of which, if overemphasized, can seriously compromise your effectiveness. Most leaders, they’ve found, are “lopsided”—they favor certain qualities to the exclusion of others without realizing it. The trick is to keep all four in balance.

Fear Your Strengths provides tools to help you become aware of your leadership leanings and excesses and provides insights for combatting the mindset that encourages them. It offers a practical psychology of leadership, a better way for leaders to calibrate their performance so that you can make sure your strengths don’t overpower you but rather move you—and your organization—forward.

About Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of over a dozen books on foreign affairs and travel, including Balkan Ghosts, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, and was recently the distinguished visiting professor in national security at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Robert is a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kat

Takeaways: Most leaders overplay their strengths, undermining their effectiveness. “Ahab beware of Ahab – there is something there!” Leaders beware of your actions. Taken to excess, personal strengths can destroy careers and companies. To avoid self-sabotage, identify your personal strengths. Learn to “m......more

Goodreads review by Chris

I listened to the audio book and it was okay. I liked that it was short and to the point. As the title suggests your strengths can turn into weaknesses when used too much or if you always default to your strength or always use your strength at 100% effort. There is a great story about MLB Sandy Kouf......more

Goodreads review by Leah

"You must stand in terror of your strenghts" "Fear robs people of the abolty to deal with contradiction and reduces them to black and white thinking" Book has great content very easy to read and understand. Offers practical ways to deal with streaghts that can end up overpowering therefore not working......more