Why You Should Do What You Love

July 9, 2010

Interview with Tom Rath, author of the book StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths

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Mike Carruthers:
If you do what you love and what you're good at, you'll have a lot more success. Yet many of us are in careers we don't love.

Tom Rath:
It's amazing how people kind of wind up in jobs and careers that follow what a parent had done or perhaps what they got slotted into in high school or college.

Tom Rath, author of the book StrengthsFinder 2.0, says we have a tendency to work on and try to improve our weaknesses rather than our strengths.

We asked this question in about seven or eight countries: "If your child shows up at home with the following grades: an "A", a "C" and an "F", which grade deserves the most time and attention?" And as you can probably guess in every single country we've studied - about 75% to 80% of parents say the "F" deserves the most attention. Of course if a student is failing a course it's a real problem but based on the research we've looked at, if the parents spend even more time focusing on the areas where the student already has an "A", that might result in a better return - twenty, thirty years down the road.

When you step back and think about it, why in the world would you try to get good at something you're not good at rather than trying to excel at something you love to do and have an aptitude for?

As we started to study human behavior thirty, forty years ago (my colleagues at the Gallup organization did), we found that people actually have a lot more potential for success and growth in the areas where they do have that natural talent instead of trying to create a kind of a well-rounded person essentially.