For decades educators have taught two important ideas about learning and development: 1) If you say that you believe in a student’s particular capability, and keep repeating it, after a while they will accept that belief as reality. 2) If you wish to get the best out of a student, find the best in a student.

Parents and classroom teachers have not taken these ideas to heart. Students, from a very young age, undergo “forced ranking” through the grading system, a competition which labels individuals as being at the top, middle or bottom of their class. (Enron raised the stakes with their “rank-and-yank” approach to firing underperformers which did wonders for long-term leadership development.) Not coincidentally, teachers habitually point out to students not what they do right but what they do wrong – over and over. Furthermore, they tend to focus their quality teaching time on those students who they perceive will answer a question correctly. As a result, students learn that the best way to succeed is to give the teacher what they want and not make waves. Even if you thought you were right, there’s no point in arguing with the person giving you your performance review, i.e. grades. It’s the rare and heroic teacher who breaks that pattern – check out Dead Poet’s Society, Finding Forester and Rudy for a few Hollywood examples.

Not surprisingly, when we get to the corporate world, we often discover that the leaders of organizations were people who flourished in the educational system of compliance. It’s natural for them to find faults in their reports and dwell on those faults until improvement is seen or the person goes away. The same applies with selection and promotion. Internal competition for the best jobs is based on who provides the right answers according to the boss rather than a good answer the boss may not have considered before. Similarly, organizations look to hire the person who graduated top in their class, not realizing that the person in the middle may in fact be the most innovative or driven.

Come performance review time, we see the way this impacts the bottom line. Performance management involves seeking out the areas where an employee has not had success. In our multirater data, we focus on the lowest results, and do training needs analysis and development activities to fill that gap. We fail to realize that the strengths a person has – if enhanced – will raise their performance to a higher level in a way that will be much more productive. We mistakenly think there is more value in taking a person from a 2 to a 3.5 on a 5 point scale, rather than helping them improve their 4.25 to a 4.75.

I once told a manager, “Stop trying to teach a bird to bark and a dog to sing. It only annoys the animals and frustrates the teacher.” Asking a person to work on the thing they have the least aptitude for is counter productive to development. It’s like putting an obstacle in front of a blind person. The message, reinforced continually, is “I don’t perform well.” The energy spent on filling those gaps draws from the energy that could be multiplied by excelling at strengths. The organization fails to benefit as well. By using a resource inefficiently, it is unintentionally hamstringing itself in the competitive marketplace. Better to focus on filling those gaps through complementary resources or different ones. Consider also that people who excel at their jobs are happier, more innovative and customer-focused; while adequate managers who build their strengths can become good or even excellent managers, multiplying their positive impact.

Most of us are conditioned to expect criticism during performance reviews – or we get bland assertions of positive but unhelpful data. Whenever I do feedback sessions with people seeking a behavior to work on, I suggest that they focus on one of their strongest and most frequently demonstrated behaviors. The reaction is like a deer in the headlights. “What are you talking about? I already do that well!” Yes, I answer, but what would the impact on your work be if you were to make incremental improvements that led to even stronger results? Imagine the excitement for your projects, goals and strategies if you were even better at what you do well now. Instead of struggling unsuccessfully with a weakness, I explain, you could focus on building and refining a strength. The lights begin to shine brighter because what I am saying actually makes sense.

Corporate performance improvement occurs only when people performance improves. For years, however, we’ve been stubbornly “herding cats” by forcing people who are unmotivated to change to adopt new behaviors. At a recent Linkage conference on Leadership Development,  speaker after speaker raised this message. As Jack Zenger put it, leadership development is in its infancy because we have not yet focused on what makes the most dramatic difference in performance: improving our strengths. There were nods around the room, but also a lot of “deer in the headlights” expressions. When it comes to changing our cultural bias towards working on weaknesses, we still have a lot of work to do.

Here are some suggestions for managers and HR professionals to build strengths in others:

1. Eliminate packaged program development suggestions for low scores.
2. Focus on what people do well and can improve – in line with business objectives. As much as possible, employees should discover those areas themselves. Don’t provide suggestions just because you think you have to!
3. Provide positive feedback whenever possible based on constructive observations. Put the suggestions in the light of current behavior not the desired actions.
4. Confront inappropriate behaviors and set out clear action steps without losing sight of the positive.
5. If inappropriate behaviors violate cultural values, don’t hesitate to remove that person. The negative effect on others is higher than the effect of losing one employee, no matter how well they perform.

David Cohen is president of Strategic Action Group and the author of Inside the Box: Leading with Corporate Values to Drive Sustained Business Success and The Talent Edge: A Behavioral Approach to Hiring, Developing, and Keeping Top Performers.