Finding Balance Within Strengths

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Bob Bertsch: Much of the conversation around character strengths focuses on their positive aspects, but there are some contexts in which character strengths can lead to negative outcomes. It’s all in how we use them.

Hi, everyone. This is Bob Bertsch. Welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection Practicast where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your life and work. In today’s episode, we’re continuing our conversation about character strengths, a strengths-based approach to identifying the positive traits behind our thinking, feeling, and behavior. Today, we’ll talk about how character strengths can lead to negative coping strategies and emotional states. My Practicing Connection co-host, Jessica Beckendorf, will be guiding us through a practice to help us avoid using our strengths in ways that lead to negative outcomes in a few minutes. First, let’s learn more about what might lead us to those outcomes.

Hi, Jessica. We’re mostly thinking of our strengths as being positive, but as much as we might not want to be negative, let’s talk about how they might lead to negative outcomes.

Jessica Beckendorf: Yes, I hate being negative. No negativity. Because the goal is to express the most appropriate combination of strengths to the most appropriate degree at the most appropriate times, there’s some room there for our strengths to lead to negative outcomes. I know that this sounds complex, but it really isn’t. You are in charge of how you use your strengths and you can decide when to express them and the level of intensity. That’s why becoming more aware of strengths and how they show up in us is really important to being able to decide anything at all about your strengths.

The level of intensity is one way that our strengths can lead to negative outcomes. What happens is we may find ourselves overusing or underusing our strengths. Either one of those can produce consequences in our personal and professional lives and relationships.

For example, overusing the strength of forgiveness can cause us to be overly tolerant when we’ve been wronged, allowing people to walk all over us and possibly building up resentment toward them over time. Underusing forgiveness can cause us to be rigid with others. We can also underuse forgiveness toward ourselves, so becoming overly self-critical and perfectionistic about our mistakes.

Another way that strengths can lead to negative outcomes is when our strengths get activated as hot buttons. Our character strengths are part of who we are. When it feels as though a strength we are very high in is being assaulted, it can feel like a personal attack on something we value very much.

We all engage in overusing and underusing our strengths from time to time. The more mindful we are about how and when we tend to overuse and underuse our strengths, the more adept we’re going to get at calibrating our strengths to adjust to particular situations. I think the challenges are to use the concept of overuse and underuse as a reframing tool for negativism, self-judgment, and perfectionism, to accept that you might have a preference to overuse and underuse particular strengths at particular times, and to keep the pursuit of balance as your purpose for reflecting on your over and underuse rather than striving for perfection. Keep a growth mindset, in other words, which is something we’ve talked about on more than one occasion on this podcast.

Bob: This is really resonating with me. I’m thinking not even necessarily of character strengths but of other strengths-based assessments and some of the strengths that I scored highly in or whatever, there’s times when I’m overusing them maybe in the wrong context, and things like that. Can we dig into that a little bit more? Can you provide maybe some more examples of how we might underuse or overuse our strengths?

Jessica: Yes, of course. Each strength has its own mix of what overuse and underuse looks like, and it’s not a scientific mix, it’s really each individual will overuse and underuse a little bit differently. I’ll just cover a few examples for each, but let’s start with underuse. Underuse just to remind you is when we are on autopilot. We’re largely unaware, just going through our life or in many cases, rushing through our life on autopilot.

There are a number of ways that we can engage in underuse. I haven’t yet seen an all-inclusive list, so I’m going to start by sharing just a few. We might engage in underuse through oversight. This is when we neglect to think of using our strengths in a certain situation or in a context.

For example, realizing that your strengths of hope and humor are applicable not just in your personal life but also at work. We might have lost a strength or we might be slowly losing it over time, and so this is when you’ve lost touch with a strength that you used to use, or maybe it’s faded to the background. A common example of this is creativity. Many adults feel as though they’re not as creative as they were when they were younger.

Another way that we underuse is that we undervalue a strength. Many people undervalue their strengths usually because they don’t view their character strengths as strengths. They almost always will underuse them when that’s the case. This can also come from a fear of being judged for showing up authentically as well. You might undervalue the strength because you think everyone around you will undervalue it.

Finally, for the underuse, when it’s a lesser strength, it takes more thought and energy to use the strengths that are lower on our list. If you took the VIA classification, those that are the bottom four or five, we might completely ignore them. We might just be like, “Well, I’m just not going to ever tap into that strength.” Just because a strength isn’t one of our top strengths doesn’t mean that we can’t still underuse it.

For example, when you’re working on a shared project, you will need to draw on the strength of teamwork, even if it’s not something that comes easily to you. I often have to call on perseverance, which is very low for me, but knowing that actually helps me to prepare myself to do it.

Overuse can be harder to pinpoint. This is where we might be able to ask others what they’re seeing in us, and we can ask people that we trust, of course, what they see in us. We can use that to help us determine are we overusing or not. This is when we experience a loss of perspective, which is why sometimes asking others will help us. We experience a loss of perspective. We can’t see the bigger picture. We get lost in the strength, and we can’t adjust the intensity to suit the moment.

There’s several ways that we can engage in overuse. I’m just going to give a couple of common examples that hopefully you’ll recognize and will help you to recognize it in the future. One way is forcing it. If it feels like you might be acting before you’re ready, you might be forcing it. You might feel like you’re not being genuine. For example, using the strength of forgiveness before you’re ready to use it is a pretty common one.

Another is being impulsive, acting without thinking, which is different than being on autopilot. This is almost like allowing a strength to hijack your actions before you’ve had a chance to take a moment to assess the situation or your own readiness. A common example of this might be with the strength of humor. Being impulsive with this strength in certain situations can be downright hurtful to others, damaging the relationship overall.

Another common example is to be full of the strength of zest for a particular project. The project’s really exciting to us. What happens? We say yes to everything and we end up overwhelmed and unable to contribute at a high level.

Bob: Those are really helpful. Thanks for those examples. How can we avoid this? How can we avoid underusing and overusing our strengths?

Jessica: I would say it’s a combination of being mindful of your strengths and choosing to act according to the situation. I think it can be helpful as you’re on this journey to understanding your strengths, it can be really helpful to watch for clues that you might be overusing or underusing your strengths. Things like perfectionism, judgment, or beating yourself up for something, for a decision you made or for something you said, and a lack of self-compassion.

Keep a growth mindset. That is so important. I know I mentioned it already in this episode, but the growth mindset is really important. Seek feedback from others. This is particularly helpful with overuse because it’s easier for other people to lend you a perspective on what they’re seeing regarding overuse. Some people might be astute enough to also help you with your underuse.

The number one thing I want people to know here, and one of the reasons I’m not spending a lot of time here is because this is all an exploration. I don’t want you to get caught in the trap of overdoing the exploration of your overuse and underuse, and just only focusing on those two things as it relates to strengths. This is a strengths-based model, and the research behind it has pointed to the benefits of leaning into our strengths and using our strengths, and what’s right about us versus leaning into judging what we judge to be wrong about us.

Bob: You have a practice for us and I’m anxious to hear more about it.

Jessica: Yes. I have a reflection activity. I got this activity from Character Strengths Interventions: A Field Guide for Practitioners by Ryan Niemiec. We’ll provide a link to this book in the show notes in case you’re interested. The purpose is to help you begin to understand where you might be overusing or underusing some of your strengths.

For overuse, you’re going to describe a situation in which you overused one of your strengths. If you don’t know a lot about overuse, don’t worry about it. Trust your instincts. Describe that situation in which you overuse one of your strengths and think about and journal about how might you temper the overuse or build in another strength to better balance yourself. Again, I want you to trust your instincts on this. It’s not like you’re working with a coach who can suss that out with you. Trust your instinct.

Last question, what does it look like and feel like to express the strength in a balanced way according to you, not according to the research or anything? For you, what does it look like and feel like to express the strength in a balanced way?

As a bonus, you can consider a problem you’re struggling with and examine it through the lens of strengths overused. What strength might you be bringing forth too strongly, even a little bit, that could be contributing to the problem?

Now we’ll move on to underuse. The reflection for underuse begins with you describing a situation in which you underused one of your strengths. Again, trust your instincts, explore situations that you’ve been in where maybe you were feeling a little bit like you weren’t acting yourself, and ask yourself whether underuse could have been present.

Describe that situation and then ask yourself, what might you do to become more mindful of this strength in the future? In what situations might you use it more? What does it look like and feel like to express the strength in a balanced way? Again, trust your instincts. This is according to you. What does it look like and feel like to express the strength in a balanced way?

As a bonus for you, keep a log of strengths used during the week. This will help you become more mindful of underused and under-acknowledged strengths in the future.

Bob: Thanks so much for sharing that with us, Jessica.

Jessica: You’re welcome.

Bob: That’s it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app and share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for being present with your strengths. Until then, keep practicing.

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Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military and Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.

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