There’s a BIG difference between a strength and a skill.  As a coach, knowing the difference between strengths and skills can help you be a far better coach and help your clients experience greater success and fewer headaches.

What is a strength?  Each person is born with certain strengths.  These are the natural aptitudes, talents, and interests specific to each person.  For example, some people are born with a strength for music – they have an ear for it, a talent for being able to hear and replicate musical scores.  For the rest of us (the non-musicians), what they do seems a bit like magic.  Musical strength is easy to understand.  So is athletic strength.  What’s more challenging to see are the less apparent strengths, such as those related to problem solving or interpersonal connection.  For example, I have a friend who can remember names and faces without even trying.  It just comes natural for him and he makes it look easy.  He’s been good at it his whole life and has only gotten better at it as he’s gotten older.

What is a skill?  A skill is a learned ability, or an acquired set of knowledge.  While strengths are natural, skills are nurtured.  Skills can be learned, even if you don’t have a natural strength.  Anyone can learn to dribble a basketball.  Pretty much anyone can learn to play the piano (at least at a very low level).  I know this because I have almost zero musical strength and I have learned to play Yankee Doodle on our family piano.  With (a lot!) more time and effort, I could probably develop more skill and learn to play more sophisticated tunes.

When it comes to strengths and skills, we need to keep four points in mind:

1. Skills want to build on strengths. Left to our own devices, each of us prefers to develop skills that build on our strengths.  As a child, I was never drawn to or interested in music.  I never wanted to learn to play an instrument or train my voice to make anything resembling a joyful noise.  Instead, I was drawn to skills that tapped into my strengths for problem solving, creating things, and learning.  Each of us is drawn to skills that make use of our strengths and we tend to shy away from skills that are unsupported by strength.
2. Strengths are useless without skills. Strengths are all about potential.  Meanwhile, it takes skills to turn potential into performance.  Even the most talented musician must develop the skills needed to play an instrument.  Those skills might come easily because the musician has a natural strength, but the strength without the skill will result in musical ability.  Similarly, my natural strength for learning would have remained untapped potential had I not developed the skills of reading, researching, and writing.
3. Unsupported skills are necessary, but also problematic. Because humans are flexible, adaptable, and pretty darn amazing, we can develop skills even where we do not have a strength.  And life requires us to develop and use some of these unsupported skills.  For example, I have zero strength for remembering names and faces, but I have developed the skills for connecting a few names with faces in order to navigate my world effectively.  I don’t usually call family members, friends, or close associates by the wrong name.  However, were I in a job that required me to use my names/faces skill in challenging situations, I would get stressed and likely fail miserably.  So, while I need to use the names/faces skill once in a while in low-challenge situations, I’d do well to avoid taking a job that required me to use those skills regularly and/or in challenging situations.
4. Our greatest potential lies in using skills supported by strengths. Developing skills supported by strengths is easier, quicker, and more fun than developing unsupported skills.  Not only that, but we can develop far greater skills when we build on top of our strengths.  For example, my ability to play basketball topped out as a backup on my 9^th grade school team.  Even with unlimited practice and skill development, I never would have developed the skills needed to be even a high school starter, let alone a college or professional player.  On the other hand, my natural strengths have allowed me to develop very high-level coaching skills.

What does all of this have to do with coaching?  Three things.

First, coaching requires you to develop some skills.  I see too many so-called coaches who rely on their natural strengths without developing any real coaching skills.  While these coaches may have talent for engaging in conversation, problem-solving and/or showing empathy, they have not put in the work necessary to develop real coaching skills.  Coaching skills such as direct communication, active listening, powerful questioning, designing actions, etc. are not natural strengths – they are learned skills.  You have to practice, get feedback, and work to develop these skills to a high level, otherwise your coaching sounds a lot like me playing Yankee Doodle on the piano.

Second, without natural strength, you can still coach.  The strengths that support great coaching include: interest in other people, capacity for both objective and subjective perception, aptitude for problem-solving, and the cognitive ability to track complex issues.  That’s not a complete list, but it’s a start.  Someone who lacks these natural strengths can still learn the skills of coaching, but they will be somewhat limited in their ability to coach complex or challenging situations.  If you lack the natural strengths for coaching, you might consider using coaching skills in your day job and avoid trying to become a professional coach.

Third, your client’s greatest success will come when they live out of strength-supported skills.  The strengths vs. skills distinction is incredibly important to keep in mind as you coach.  One of the main sources of stress, frustration and failure for coaching clients is the temptation to develop and live out of skills that are not supported by strengths.  On the other hand, research shows that one of the greatest sources of life satisfaction and well-being comes from being engaged in activities that allow us to use high-level skills in challenging situations.