Everyone has strengths and everyone has weaknesses. Each one of us has a limited amount of
time to focus on a limited amount of things. So an important question you have to answer when growing as
a leader is this: Do you want to
try to turn your weaknesses into strengths, or improve on what you are doing well already? Here are my three
arguments that’ll make you want to stop wasting time on things you aren’t (and
probably never will be) good at.
1. Surround
Yourself with Smart People.
A leader is only as good as the people he has around him, so
surround yourself with smart people. If you can’t find all the right answers, at least you can
start asking the right questions. Some
leaders cringe at that idea because they are afraid that someone on their team
will be smarter or have better ideas than them. Here’s some advice: get over your middle school self-esteem
issues and realize that the vision of the organization supersedes your feelings
getting hurt or your ego being challenged. Why spend your time on things that you are bad at when you
could surround yourself with people whose strengths are your weaknesses?
2. You Aren’t Superman.
Some leaders think that they have to do everything, or at
least have their hand in everything going on in the organization. They try to form their personality,
passions, and gift sets to fit every role that needs to be filled. That’s a huge mistake. Having the wrong
person in the wrong place is like trying to jam a square peg in a round role:
it damages the peg and the hole.
You are actually slowing progress down by trying to do it all
yourself. An important role of a
leader is to make sure things get done, but not necessarily doing them all personally.
Another leadership misconception is that you have to know everything. It’s not the leaders job to have all the answers. Leaders have an innate way of finding
all the great ideas (mining them from their team) rather that having the
pressure of coming up with all the great ideas on their own. Why try to come up with the best ideas and solve all the problems on your own when you can be surrounded by creative, talented, smart, driven
individuals that have incredible ideas ready to be mined and developed?
3. You are ALWAYS Going to Have Weaknesses.
Part of being a leader is knowing yourself, who you
are, where you get your energy from, what drains you, what you are good at,
what you are bad at, and then leveraging all of those things to accomplish the
vision. As a leader, if you are
the best performer in every aspect of your organization, then one or possibly
all three of these things is true:
A. You are leading a small organization where
growth is going to be stifled by your over-involvement (No Leadership
Development),
B. Your organization really isn’t that good at most
of the things it does (a Jack of all trades, but Master of none), or
C. You are being incredibly generous with your
personal assessment and probably no one else thinks you are as good at what you
do as you do (Pride issues)
Why waste time working on things you are terrible at when you could spend it honing the skill set of strengths you already have?
Those are just my thoughts and personal approach. What say you?
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