Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence: Best Practices, Case Studies, and Strategies

4.4. HOW TO REPAIR WEAKENED STRENGTHS

Enhanced strengths that really reflect an ineffective complementary skill are addressed by enhancing that complementary skill through coaching. This results in a more robust primary skill; in the case of Optimism, leading to what has been called "grounded optimism," which is based on evidence rather than reflecting "blind unrealism."

With Neil, whose enhanced impulse control was really a reflection of a weakness in problem solving and implementation, coaching focused on his underlying fear that unless he could guarantee 100 percent success, then he was 100 percent doomed to failure. In Neil's early coaching sessions, the focus was not so much on the enhanced impulse control, but on the underlying fears of ...