Insight #12:
Here’s a trap to avoid if you want to land a job or get a promotion.
Don’t build your strengths while ignoring your weaknesses. Even if a few populist life-skills coaches insist your employer pays you to use your strengths, not to work on your weaknesses.
If you build one or two strengths, then they will value you exactly for that and little else. We seldom credit specialists as team players or leadership material. And we often fear them for the power their special strengths give them.
But that’s not all. In a changing world, special strengths have a nasty tendency to become irrelevant.
Undoubtedly, your strengths might make you a superstar for a while in one special area. But those same strengths might make you a dysfunctional manager, parent, or spouse. Over time, we will value you more for being balanced and well-rounded.
Enough about you. How should you manage your subordinates? I agree it is tempting to have specialists to exploit to boost your (short-term) performance. Don’t. A big part of your job is to prepare and nurture well-rounded and balanced future leaders and executives.
But above all, remember this: Build your strengths. Ignore your weaknesses. Become dysfunctional.
Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.
. . .