Your Strength Got You Here, but Doing The Opposite Will Take You Farther

Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I’m Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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Let’s say that we randomly met. You mention that you’d like some career advice. My first question to get to know you? “What is your superpower at work?” I might literally use the phrase superpower, because it’s fun and nerdy.

We all have some version of a superpower and frequently a corresponding weakness.

• I like making decisions quickly. This means that my organizations aren’t slowed down by bureaucracy. It also means I tend to make more mistakes by moving too quickly.

• I love learning new things. This means I’m happy solving unique problems, particularly ones that no one has figured out yet. I also hate routine and execution, which means I’m inconsistent with managing processes.

• I worked with some engineers who loved deep, complex work and tried to build it to perfection. Frequently those engineers also completed their tasks more slowly. You usually wouldn’t want to assign one of these perfection engineers to a quick prototype project.

In the right situation, your natural behavior rewards you. It is indeed your superpower. It differentiates you from others and helps you succeed. When your superpower lines up with the right type of work, you’re the right person for the job.

However! At other times, your natural behavior in a situation is wrong. Your superpower becomes your Achilles heel. This limits your ability to be successful.

Going back to my examples above, imagine I was asked to carefully decide on a one-way door for a massively complex project. If I follow my natural inclination (and preference), I might shoot myself in the foot by moving too quickly.

The key to long term career success is to know when your natural behavior will reward you, and when it won’t work.

What are your options if it won’t work?

1. Avoid the work - If someone says, “Hey Dave, I need someone to run this complex and detailed project plan for the next 6 months!” - I would likely say, “Oh man, no way. That’s not for me.”

2. Delegate the work - But if it needed to get done by my organization, I would try my darndest to delegate that task. Because I know I have people on my teams who love complex and detailed execution work. Delegating would be best for all involved.

But what if it does indeed need to be done, and I can’t delegate it?

The final answer is to figure out how to swing your behavior to the opposite spectrum. If you can learn how to (at least occasionally) act the opposite of your natural tendencies, it’s like creating a complementary set of superpowers. Imagine if Dave is the guy you always pull in for quick decisions, but he also can be the cautious and detail-oriented one-way door decider? That feels like an option worth investigating.

When does your natural behavior not work?

You should know what your superpower is. This is where you’re not “normal”, but more extreme than your peers. Perhaps you like detailed work more than others. Or you’re an engineer that happens to love UX design. Or you’re a project manager with a love of deep complexity.

Regardless, as GI Joe said, “Knowing is half the battle.”

In my early career years, I just did what I thought was best. But what I thought was best is clearly tainted by my default behaviors. So as you grow in experience, it allows you to become mindful of not just how you should be acting, but also what your default behaviors are.

We don’t usually question our default behaviors. But as we grow out of childhood, we start to realize that we can throttle ourselves a bit. For example, imagine that you tend to talk loudly, and you walk into a library. If you instead recognize that your default loud voice won’t work well in a library, you have an opportunity to act differently. You might love your loud and exuberant voice, but I bet you’re smart enough to figure out how to whisper.

In more complex work situations, the first key is to recognize your most extreme behaviors. Average behaviors have average impacts and tend to create average results. Our extreme behaviors are our biggest strengths, and generally related to our biggest weaknesses.

Imagine someone at work is asked about how you work. What would they call out? If you think about your largest strengths or weaknesses, what would you identify?

Now, here’s the key I wanted to hit on. When would doing the opposite of your strength be valuable?

Imagine you’re working on a highly critical and fragile project with a key customer. Is this the right time to move quickly or move carefully?

In my experience, many people continue with their natural behaviors, blindly ignoring the situation. “This is how I am!” — as if we’re mindless robots, completely incapable of changing ourselves.

But we can indeed change ourselves. And not just a little...