Before You Tell Someone They Over-Used Their Strengths, Read This
Why the "over-used strengths" conversation may be pointing in a wrong direction and an alternative place to look.
There's a moment in many CliftonStrengths coaching conversations that I've come to recognise. A leader describes a situation that went sideways and usually the situation revolves around some kind of interpersonal conflict, a team conflict, or an under-performer. And the explanation: "I think person X over-used his Responsibility." Or Command. Or Empathy. As if the talent was a dial the person had accidentally cranked too high.
It sounds like a weakness. And it probably feels like it is. But there's something in the framing that I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with, something that I feel if left unexamined, actually limits a person’s growth or possibly, misrepresents the idea of a Strengths-based approach.
This article is about that something.
How we got here: from balcony and basement to help and hinder
Gallup's original language for this idea was balcony and basement, evocative metaphors for the productive and unproductive expressions of a CliftonStrengths talent theme. A talent operating from the balcony is elevated, purposeful, visible in the best way. A talent in the basement is reactive, unmanaged, or misapplied and potentially causing damage.
This framework offered something genuinely useful: the recognition that talent themes are not inherently virtuous, and that how we deploy them matters.
Gallup then released the significantly expanded CliftonStrengths 34 report. The shift in language in the report was notable, from Balcony and Basement to "watch out for blind spots” or “How This Theme Could Get in the Way of Your Success”. Today the vocabulary has shifted toward the cleaner pairing of “help and hinder”, from a frame of architecture to perception. This is a meaningful evolution.
My Personal View:
As an executive coach who integrates CliftonStrengths and Ontological coaching, I want to offer a different perspective. My view is that both the “Balcony-Basement” and “Help-Hinder” frameworks share a hidden assumption - a person, by making specific adjustments in his action, can bring a new set of results. The focus of both the frameworks is on the doing and changing the actions.
Perhaps we can go one layer deeper.
I propose that when a person is said to be over-using his talents (reactive, unmanaged, or misapplied and potentially causing damage), more than often, the problem is too narrow an observer.
What is an observer, and why does it matter?
In ontological coaching, the concept of the observer is foundational. An observer is not just someone who watches. It's the particular way a person sees, interprets, and makes meaning of the world. Every observer has a horizon: the edge of what they can perceive from where they stand.
An observer is shaped by three interconnected dimensions which are present in every human being, regardless of race, gender, culture. These three dimensions are the language we use (the stories, beliefs, mindsets and interpretations available to us), the emotions and moods we are living in, and the state of our body (posture, flexibility, breath patterns, nervous system's alert level).
When any one of these is adjusted, an observer literally see different things.
As an Ontological and CliftonStrengths coach, I believe this matters enormously for how we understand CliftonStrengths. Every talent theme is, at its core, a specific orientation of the observer. Strategic sees patterns and options others miss. Empathy perceives emotional currents in a room before anyone names them. Maximizer spots the gap between good and excellent. These aren't switches we turn on and off. They are the lenses through which a person's observer engages with reality.
THIS IS A KEY DISTINCTION I OFFER.
A talent is not a dial. It's a lens.
Dials can be turned up or down. Lenses shape what you see and what remains invisible. The question is never how much talent you're using, and if one should turn it up or down. It’s whether the observer sees widely enough to know what the situation or context is actually asking for.
Why "over-use" may be an unhelpful frame
Here is what I observe when a leader says person X "over-used" his talent. In nearly every case, one of three things was happening and none of them suggest that the talent in itself is the problem. I am calling out this unhelpful frame because I have observed enough leaders being biased about particular talent themes, perceiving them as "problematic". The bias is evident from responses whenever they see certain talents in reports and immediately form judgements.
The below three things is derived from the ontological “Observer-Action-Results” framework,
Firstly, person X was in a mood or emotional state that narrowed his observer. Anxiety, urgency, a quiet need to prove something. These emotional states do not turn up the intensity on a talent. What happens is the emotional state constrict the observer's field of vision, making it harder to read contextual cues that would naturally inform how the talent gets expressed. Simply, under certain emotional states, we tend to exhibit behaviours that might be socially unacceptable. This is especially common when a person is under duress or feels under threat. I've written separately about what it means to have a commitment to a mood and why it matters more than most leaders realise.
As an Activator, when I am in a mood of anxiety or anger, I don’t overuse or underuse my Activator. I simply use it without seeing the full picture, because my mood has closed off parts of the horizon. I have no idea if my actions are helping or hindering others. Even if I know, I might not be able to adjust because when my horizon is narrowed, I do not see appropriate actions to take.
Secondly, person X might be committed to a story in his head. Language is not just how we communicate. It's also how we construct our inner world where we then act from. The stories and beliefs we hold don't just limit what we think, they shape what we can see before we even act. When someone is living in a particular story - this team is all over the place, my boss doesn't trust me, we're running out of time, his observer is already shaped before any action begins. What happens is that the talent executes faithfully within the story's logic to create the (damaging) outcomes. The problem is the story, not the talent theme.
Thirdly, person X hadn't yet developed the situational or adaptive intelligence to read what the moment was asking for. This type of adaptive intelligence contains two essential skills:
mindfulness - the ability to return to a present-moment state of awareness with acceptance. In the ontological world, the language often used is centering.
Context-reading, knowing when a situation calls for a talent to step forward and when it calls to step back. It requires an expanded or wider observer, one that has been stretched through reflection, feedback, and practice.
In summary, my assessment is:
Calling a talent "over-use" is like blaming a camera for not switching lenses on its own. The lens is doing exactly what it does. The photographer needs to choose differently.
The deeper problem with the weakness framing
Whenever we frame a talent “over-use” as a weakness, we create several problems that compound over time.
First, it pathologises identity. A person's top CliftonStrengths themes are not incidental preferences. They are close descriptions of how their mind is wired, patterns of thought, feeling, and behaviour that are genuinely theirs. Telling someone their talent is a weakness, even contextually, lands in the body as something closer to shame than insight.
I have watched high-performers shrink the moment their natural talents are framed as liabilities. That shrinking doesn't produce growth. It produces self-editing. Many leaders use CliftonStrengths as a weapon (though I believe they use it unconsciously). They might not have done that intentionally but the damage is definitely felt. This is especially true in Asia, where leaders operate within a largely weakness-driven, shame-based society. In my assessment, the Balcony-Basement concept was probably the most “latched on” concept by many leaders and practitioners, including myself when I first started coaching. We turned StrengthsFinder (what the assessment was known previously) into WeaknessFinder.
Second, it ignores coherence. What we often forget is that humans are deeply emotional beings and our body, emotions and language are deeply integrated. When I am in a fight, flight or freeze mode, my body contracts, my lens becomes narrower and I simply cannot see actions or solutions that I can take. When we frame a talent “over-use” as a weakness, we often zoomed into the doing, and fail to see the being. When we do that, we fail to see what that human actually needs and why the person feels threatened.
I have observed in the past that whenever I felt misunderstood because of my Command talent theme, resentment builds up, my body contracts and I'm in fight mode. I end up "retaliating", a classic behaviour when Command is "over-used". The resentment builds up further and the vicious cycle continues. This vicious cycle is often a result of this weakness or "over-used" frame.
Third, it gives people a rule to follow instead of a capacity to develop. "Don't over-use your Ideation" is a rule. But rules are applied to situations by the same observer that created the problem in the first place. The alternative to this and what actually produces growth is a more expansive observer, one who can skilfully return to a mindful or centred state, read more of the situation, hold more of the complexity, and choose more deliberately how to engage.
A NEW FRAME I PROPOSE: Observer and Horizon
If Gallup gave us Balcony and Basement, and later Help and Hinder, I want to propose a third frame: Observer and Horizon.
The question is not whether we are using too much of our talent. The question is: how wide can our observer see in that moment and what is it unable to see from where it currently stands?
This reframe opens up three genuinely developmental questions:
1.THE BLIND SPOT QUESTION
What is this talent unable to see from where it stands? Every lens has a focal length. Achiever can see all the tasks that are yet to be completed and miss the fact that others are emotionally worn out from the overwhelming tasks that lay ahead. Strategic can see intuitively the best path to move forward and miss the fact that others are still processing the information to decide what to do next. Empathy can feel and absorb all the different negative emotions present in the room and miss seeing that their being has already been entangled and intertwined with the emotions. The objective lens that might be required has been lost. All of the examples do not show flaws. It is the nature of the particular way of seeing. Naming the blind spot is not criticism. It's expanding the map.
2. THE MOOD AND BODY QUESTION
What emotional state or physical state is shaping how this talent is being expressed right now? A Harmony operating from a mood of frustration will see things very differently than the same Harmony in a mood of genuine curiosity. The talent is the same. The observer is different. This question puts the person back into developing mindfulness and context-reading skills so they can choose consciously rather than habitually.
3. THE STORY QUESTION
What narrative is active right now and are there others that might be available? Language constructs the world before we act in it. When we become aware of the story we're living inside, we create the possibility of living inside a different one. Asking this question also allows us to ask ourselves if other talents might see differently and what might be other possibilities. When we can become more curious and open, we can recover authorship.
These three questions share a common quality: they are respectful of the person's talent and honest about the reality. They don't suggest the talent is too intense or too much. They invite the person to expand as an observer - one who can see more, hold more, and therefore choose more.
What this means in practice
In coaching, this shift changes the quality of conversation considerably. When a leader comes in describing a situation where their Significance "got them in trouble," I no longer begin with the talent. I begin with the observer.
What story were you in? What mood were you carrying into that room? What were you committed to proving, protecting, or achieving? What would you have needed in that moment to see clearly and act differently?
My belief is that the talent naturally dial up or down in intensity because of the state we are in. Human beings when feeling threatened, naturally respond to the danger. When the observer shifts, the actions shift.
And so the change needed is not about restraining the talents that create energy in us. It’s about becoming the kind of observer who can wield what's most alive in us with genuine skill.
“Strengths development is not the management of our best selves. It is the expansion of the person who gets to express them.”
CLOSING
The next time you find yourself in a conversation about over-used strengths, whether as a coach, a leader, or someone doing the hard work of developing another, try shifting the question after giving the observation about the unproductive behaviour.
From “Why did you overuse your Activator or Achiever? to “What made you unable to see the appropriate response?
It's a small move in language. It opens an entirely different horizon.
Continue Reading — The CliftonStrengths & Ontological Coaching Series:
If this article resonated and you'd like to explore what your observer might not be seeing, I work with leaders individually through 1-1 coaching — integrating CliftonStrengths and Ontological Coaching to expand what you can see, and how you lead from there. Connect with me here.
Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command
