The one excuse strengths coaches never think to question.
I've heard a version of the same excuse in different rooms over the past couple of months. Each time it sounded reasonable. Each time it was doing something else.
One leader, new to a role that required more strategic thinking than technical execution, kept finding reasons to stay close to the hands-on work. It's what she knows. It's where she's fast, confident, visibly competent. Why spend the day fumbling through something unfamiliar when she could spend it excelling at what got her promoted in the first place. Meanwhile, the parts of the role that felt administrative or low status kept sliding onto other people's desks, always framed the same way: "that's not really where I add value."
Another person, a long-serving team member everyone had come to rely on, kept saying yes to the work he was known for. When I asked why he hadn't handed some of it off, he said the team needed him, and he didn't want to be the reason something dropped. It sounded like commitment. It might have been. It also meant he never had to sit in the discomfort of being new at something, in front of people used to seeing him excel.
Both would tell you they're playing to their strengths. On paper, that's good advice. Play to what energises you, don't grind on what drains you. I've built a career telling people exactly that.
But strengths language has a blind spot. It's one of the few excuses for avoidance that nobody questions, because it sounds like self-awareness instead of avoidance. Nobody challenges "I'm just focusing on what I'm good at." It sounds mature. It sounds like the coaching worked.
Except sometimes it isn't focus. It's a cover story.
To be clear, delegating your weaknesses isn't the problem. It's often the right call, and it's something I actively coach people to do. The test isn't whether you handed something off. It's why. Did you hand it off because someone else was genuinely better placed to own it, or because it was uncomfortable and you wanted it gone. One is good strengths practice. The other just borrows its language.
The leader was promoted to think differently, not to keep doing what she'd already mastered. Retreating to competence doesn't help the team that now needs her judgement, it just keeps the job she was hired for undone while she feels productive doing something else.
The unglamorous work still needs doing. Someone still has to do it. "It's not my strength" doesn't make it disappear, it just moves it onto someone else's desk, usually without an honest conversation about whether that's fair.
And the person who keeps saying yes to familiar work isn't always protecting the team. Sometimes he's protecting himself from the discomfort of being a beginner again, in front of people used to relying on him.
None of this means strengths theory is wrong. It means it can be misused, quietly and with good intentions, by people smart enough to describe their avoidance in language that sounds like insight.
So here's a harder question than "what are you good at."
Was it the right person for the job, or was it just not you? And what have you recently justified as "this is where I add the most value," that might actually be "this is what I don't want to do"?
Dan Kuss is the founder of Strengths Academy, an Adelaide-based leadership development consultancy specialising in strengths-based leadership development and team performance. The "In The Room" series shares observations from inside real rooms and leadership conversations.
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