And there's somebody that you work with who's done something really effective and
you want to praise that person.
And let's imagine that that other person has humility as one of his
top character strengths, he's a deeply humble person.
And so you see this person do something well, and because of your gratitude
you want to thank him, and because of your zest you don't just want to thank them,
you want to sing it from the rooftops.
You're like, go barreling across the office, shinning the light on this person,
naming all of the wonderful things he's done and why that matters, full
of all of your zest, and what effect does that have on this deeply humble person?
This person who has humility as his top character strength.
Well, maybe it shuts him down.
He feels uncomfortable and awkward and embarrassed rather than valued.
So that's an example of one person's dominant strength being
misattuned at least in how you're expressing them to another person.
Now, I want to be clear I'm not saying we should be hiding the best of who we are,
Imean, that's no good either.
But perhaps what we need to think about at times is, how do I modulate
the best of me so that I'm also helping to bring out the best of someone else?
And so, maybe my zest and gratitude has to be expressed differently with
a person who's deeply humble versus a person who also is deeply zestful,
and these are the questions we want you to think about.
Modulation and attunement, okay, those are two ways in which
our character strength can sometimes cause us some difficulty.
There's another, another shadow side, is when we value
our own character strengths to a degree that sometimes we inadvertently
are judgemental of other people who don't share the same character strengths.
And, again, you could see how this would happen,
I mean, you view the world through who you are, right?
So, your top strengths are comfortable for you, they're natural to you.
And so, let's imagine that one of your top character strengths is creativity,
that's dominant in you.
When you're in a meeting, you're always generating new ideas of how to handle
a situation when there's a problem.
You're the first to think outside the box and
come up with many different ways of how that problem can be solved.
And imagine that someone on your team doesn't have a lot of creative ideas.
And so you're sitting there with all these different ways of approaching, and
then you look over and this person isn't saying much, and
maybe internally you're thinking, man, what's his deal?
Come on, get in on this.
Like, what's wrong with you?
Why aren't you participating?
And so, you're being judgemental because that other person perhaps doesn't have
creativity as a dominant strength, and they add value to the team in other ways.
But while you're creative, that person is not particularly creative, and so
it's much harder for them to engage at the same level that you're engaging,.if
that comes out of us as judgement, then other people can feel put down.
Whereas, perhaps what we want is to learn how to engage
people through whatever their dominant strengths are.
So that's another way in which our dominant strengths can create a shadow,
can get us into trouble.
Now there's one last one that I want to talk with you about.
And for me, in some ways, this is the most curious of all of these shadow sides.