Why Work With Strengths? What Trainers & Coaches Gain From a Strengths-Based Approach

Posted by

Mirna Šmidt

For trainers, facilitators & coaches wondering what advantages a strengths-based approach might offer your participants & clients, and a first look at how to start working with strengths in your own workshops & coaching

Too often, our participants and clients (and so do we) tend to struggle to keep focus on their strengths – it’s all too easy to focus on our weaknesses instead.

Just think of this scenario: you’ve just delivered a workshop. It went well. Really well.

Afterwards, a colleague finds you and says: “I loved it. So engaging, I learned a lot. The only thing I would change is that you rushed a bit at the end.”

Be honest: An hour later, which sentence are you still thinking about?

The rushing, right?

That’s negativity bias, tweaking your perception towards what is “wrong” instead of what is great. Our brains evolved to scan for what’s broken, to catch danger and threats, far more than to notice what’s already working well.

It also means that, left to our own devices, we spend far more time focusing on our weaknesses and what we need to improve than building on our strengths.

It is even more so because our strengths often come so naturally to us that we don’t even think of them as something special or valuable. They’re just… how we are.

Yet, here’s the frustrating part: the science of positive psychology shows there are immense benefits to actually engaging with our strengths more.

The research on this is abundant, and it uncovers many benefits of engaging more with our strengths.
Engaging with our strengths more is connected to more happiness, more resilience, a stronger sense of meaning, more energy and more positive emotions overall.

Yet, even when we know that, it changes surprisingly little in how we behave.

Today, let’s explore together:

what a strengths-based approach actually gives your participants (or coachees),
what a strength even is, and
how to start putting more focus on strengths in your own work.

What is actually a strength (and how is it different from a skill)?

It’s easy to assume a strength is simply anything you’re good at.

But there’s a little more to it.

A strength is something you’re good at, something you enjoy doing, and something that energises you.
For example, curiosity. Empathy. An eye for structure. Humour. Calm under pressure. A knack for connecting people.

When you use one of your real strengths, you tend to feel more alive & energised, and it feels like being really yourself.

And that’s the difference between a strength and a skill:
If you are really good at something that still leaves you flat by the end of the day, that’s a learned skill, not a true strength.

What we actually gain from a strengths-based approach

When we start working from our strengths instead of circling our weaknesses, a few things shift.

We feel happier and more energised.

Using the things we’re naturally good at and that light us up feeds our confidence and a sense of purpose.

It’s also where resilience comes from. Our strengths are what we lean on when things get hard.

Our confidence and our results climb together. We’re already good at our strengths, so we feel confident using them, and good outcomes come more easily. We’re building on what already works, rather than grinding away at what doesn’t.

We find the environment & goals that actually fit. In a setting that lets our strengths breathe, we feel authentic, at home, more ourselves. And we have room to grow into our full potential, instead of squeezing into a shape that was never ours. So strengths can also be a great indicator if we are in the right environment, one that is pulling the best from us.

Research on strengths (a significant portion of the science of positive psychology) shows it clearly: people who use their character strengths tend to lead happier, more engaged, more rewarding lives.

That’s quite a lot of gains for simply putting our strengths in the spotlight a little more!

Could this pull us towards toxic positivity?

A strengths-based approach is not about pretending that everything is great and ignoring what’s not working.

A great way to paint the picture of how we can work with strengths (without going “unreasonably positive”) is the sailboat metaphor.

Here is how it goes:

Picture yourself as a sailboat, moving through your life. The hull is the body of your boat, and every hull has a few leaks. Those leaks are your weaknesses. The sails are your strengths.

If a leak is big enough to sink you, of course you deal with it. You patch it up; you keep it under control enough to stay afloat.

But so many of us spend all our time staring into the hull. Looking for leaks. Patching leaks. Checking for new ones. And the sails sit there, neglected.

What a waste of potential! Because the sails are the thing that actually moves the boat – they’re what give us energy and joy, and truly propel us forward.

(I explore the whole metaphor in depth, and how to use it in workshops & coaching, in the podcast episode on it.)

(Yet it’s also true that a strengths-based approach can go too far. But that’s a whole different topic, one I explore in Strengths Overused: What to Do When a Strength Turns Into a Weakness (and in this podcast episode).)

So, how about we seek to manage the leaks just enough to stay afloat? And then put much more of our focus on the sails – and see how it feels to fly.

Where to start when working with a strengths-based approach?

When people stop pouring their energy into what’s wrong with them and start building on what’s right, the work gets more enjoyable, and the results get better.

That’s true for your participants, for your coachees, and for you, too.

So where do you start with putting this into practice?

I’ve put together a series of articles to help you explore the strengths-based approach in a practical way, made for trainers & coaches.

Start with this practical guide: Working With Strengths: A Practical Guide for Trainers & Coaches

And then click on the tag “strengths” on the bottom of this article, or on Positive Psychology category on top to explore other articles.

The strengths-based approach is exactly the kind of conversation we have in Trainers Conversations, small cozy community of trainers & facilitators hosted on Trainers Toolbox. It’s one of many practical & insightful conversations we have there.

And if you’d like to work with strengths in a deeper, more experiential way, I’m facilitating The Inner Journey in Italy, a three-day experience about learning to work with images in a deeper way, which dives right into working with your strengths. October 2027.

So, where in your work could a stronger focus on strengths change the conversation?