Several of my clients love the book Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. This book uses as it’s premise that it is more important to focus on doing more of what you do well than to put time into trying to get better at your “weaknesses”.

I love that idea. But in my experience, many executives reach a point where their success depends on having to re-discover (or re-own) a skill or characteristic they have learned NOT to use.

For instance, once of my clients is analytical, detail-oriented and technically very highly skilled. When he is in a tough spot, he resorts to working hard to find and resolve the problem. However, he recently moved into the leadership role of a group who is facing the need to cut staff and still deliver on some very challenging projects. His instinct is to teach them all how to work hard while he uses his own technical skills to try to identify and be proactive about particular problem areas.

Sounds good, huh? Except that is has not been working. In talking with this client, I discovered that his own ability to work hard is driven by his passion for the impact he wants his work to have. When I ask him if he shares THIS part of himself with his team, he quickly shuts down and says “we don’t have time for this”.

Upon further exploration, I find that as a child my client was chastised for “having his head in the clouds”, for being passionate about things. He was told that only hard work and suffering would make him successful. And, to him, this has seemed to be true — his hard work has been rewarded.

So….hard choice for him. He can continue to draw on his ability to work hard, exhausting himself and building a significant resentment against his team for not joining him in his exhaustion…or he can try to prove those voices from his childhood wrong. He can bring his passion to his team and see if he can share with them his vision for why working hard and getting through this hard time is worthwhile.

It may feel risky. Especially when times are hard, we would all like to do more of what we feel comfortable with, more of what we think we can count on to succeed. We do NOT want to add to our anxiety by doing something new, something that hasn’t been appreciated in the past, something we were told had no value.

But what if they were wrong? What if, as with most executives, you have gotten as much mileage as you can from the tools you already know…and your ability to go the next step depends on taking the risk of “re-owning” a talent you began hiding a long time ago? Wouldn’t it be worth the risk? And wouldn’t it be nice to get to reclaim that part of yourself?