Just came back from meeting May Ann and Mei Si’s teachers.

As always with these meetings, we learned about the child’s performance that has both good and bad. We ended up discussing about the poor results, carelessness, concerns and how to fix them.

What Marcus Buckingham shares in this video resonate with us.

Marcus Buckingham believe that…

“People don’t change that much.
Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out.
Try to draw out what was left in.
That is hard enough. “

The bad doesn’t improve by us focusing our total energy to fix it. It has a better chance when there’s acknowledgement of the person’s strength and letting the person develop confidence to overcome their own weakenesses.

In other words, we have a better chance doing the following for our kids

Step 1: Celebrating the kid’s strength (always!!!)
Step 2: Acknowledge their weaknesses and facilitate practically
Step 3: Helping kids believe and have the confidence they can overcome their weakness.

Don’t get me wrong, what we are doing naturally to be concern and to want to solve the problem is correct, just need to reorder the balance a bit to be “ strength rather than weakness based”.