I’ve been reading Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, and while I agree with the idea that we should focus on what we do well rather than trying to fix all our weaknesses, there are some key points where I think he misses the mark.

For one, he lumps together different concepts—personality traits, attitudes, and behaviors—and calls them all strengths. More importantly, he argues that talents are innate and unchangeable, which contradicts much of what we now understand about human potential.

Just because a survey—no matter how thorough, even one backed by Gallup—categorizes an individual’s talents in a particular way doesn’t mean those results are set in stone. People evolve, and so do their abilities.

While it’s true that changing deeply ingrained behaviors, attitudes, or identity-level traits through traditional training has a low success rate, that doesn’t mean change is impossible. In fact, research into brain plasticity, such as the studies highlighted in The Brain That Changes Itself, supports what NLP has long asserted—our brains are far more adaptable than we once believed. However, simply deciding to change a behavior on a conscious level doesn’t mean the unconscious mind will immediately cooperate.

One of NLP’s biggest strengths is that it focuses on the structure of behavior rather than just its outward appearance. If you want to develop empathy, for example, you need to understand how it functions at a cognitive level. Empathy requires the ability to take another person’s perspective—a second position shift. It’s not something you can master just by learning about its benefits or how it can enhance productivity and persuasion.

True skill development requires more than copying surface-level behaviors. Traditional training often focuses on what people say or do—the content—but neglects to ask, What is happening internally when someone successfully applies this skill? What images do they see? What sounds or sensations do they associate with certain thoughts? How do the qualities of these mental experiences (submodalities) influence their ability to perform a task?

Take spelling, for instance. Strong spellers don’t just sound words out phonetically—they visualize them. Typically, they see the word in a specific part of their visual memory (often the upper left). If the word is spelled correctly, they get a positive feeling; if it’s incorrect, they sense something is off. Teaching this strategy allows others to develop the skill, though they still need to build their word bank. Simply having students repeat words mechanically or break them into phonetic chunks won’t create skilled spellers.

The problem with Buckingham’s conclusions about skill training isn’t that training doesn’t work—it’s that the structure of skills hasn’t been analyzed and taught correctly. Instead of assuming that some people are just naturally talented while others aren’t, we should be looking at how people achieve success and replicating those processes.

That said, playing to our strengths is valuable—it’s certainly a better approach than the education system’s tendency to focus on “fixing” our weaknesses. But sometimes, what holds us back isn’t a lack of talent or ability—it’s something that’s preventing us from moving forward, like having a foot on the brake while trying to accelerate. The real skill lies in knowing when a missing ability is a genuine obstacle and when we can work around it.