Summary
When hiring team members, you very likely take a long look at the strengths and weaknesses they bring to the table. You want to know where they can help you reach new heights and where they have weaknesses that you may want to work on. But are you applying the same scrutiny to yourself?
You are, after all, the most important partner you’ll have in any new venture. It’s critical that you take a full inventory to know what you bring to the table as well. So how do you best take stock of your strengths? Should you be focusing on them – or placing more emphasis on improving your weak areas?
Read on to learn more on how to better know yourself to create the future vision you have in mind.
Transcript
You would want to know just about everything about a prospective business partner before going in on a new venture together. Strengths, weaknesses, skill set – you would take careful inventory of it all.
But have you done the same for your most important partner of all – yourself?
Having a blind spot for where you still have work to do in developing your skills can be fatal. You must apply a clear-eyed view to where you are likely to fall into trouble – be it in marketing, operations, hiring, or elsewhere – and identify how your plan for remedying the weakness. It might involve some training and hands-on coaching to bring you up to speed in this area. It might involve a deliberate decision to delegate more responsibilities in this area to others. But you absolutely must have some type of strategy and plan in place to deal with it.
It Is A Strength To Know Your Weaknesses
There is no shame to be had in being weak in some areas, especially in the sprawling and complex world of entrepreneurship and business. It should be considered strength to be able to take an honest look at your shortcomings and commit to doing something about them. Having a clear understanding of what you bring to the table can help you determine appropriate goals for yourself and how you can plan to attain them. Rather than use up all of your time and energy trying to be a Jack of All Trades, why not focus on a few core capabilities that you can be truly great at?
Spend some time considering what you enjoy doing even when it isn’t required or forced upon you. Think of what you would want to continue to do even if you were not being paid for it. What comes naturally to you that others may struggle with? Some of us are natural writers and can easily spend away hours of our leisure time on writing – for others it is an excruciating process that we can’t wait to tear ourselves away from. These activities, which bring you intrinsic enjoyment regardless of whether or not you are being asked to do them, are most likely your core strengths. You will always be able to get far better at something you truly enjoy because you will think nothing of investing the countless hours that it can take to get superior at something.
The corollary, of course, is that the things that you put off, that you spend hours dreading, represent your weaknesses. You might even have some natural ability at them, but if you don’t enjoy them – they most definitely represent your weak side of the coin.
You may even want to devote some time during planning sessions to write out lists of the activities or skills you have identified as your strengths and weaknesses. Or you can even turn to someone who will likely have no problem with telling you what your weaknesses are – your friends and family! In truth, knowing yourself fully can also include getting a holistic perspective on how you come off to others.
How To Approach Your Weaknesses
Knowing which duties and attributes fall into which bucket can help you plan how to deal with roadblocks and challenges long in advance. We are often advised that we should be remedying our weaknesses, improving ourselves. This is true in some cases, but our time is also finite. You may have arrived at a point in life when it makes far more sense to focus on extracting the greatest utility possible from your strengths rather than trying to change into something that you fundamentally are not. This is especially true today when you can easily hire an expert anywhere in the world for coding, or copy writing, or whatever skills that you may not be as strong in.
Keep in mind that there also ways in which you can use your weaknesses as strengths. For example, you might be impatient or have a short temper with others. While you should likely surely work on how you interact with team members and colleagues, these traits can also help ensure that you get much of your work done quickly and efficiently. Or if you tend to take longer on tasks, you may be well suited to longer-term and strategic “big picture” analysis of problems.
If you are lazy, you may be able to easily spot more streamlined and simple ways to do things. There’s even an expression for this – “If you want to get something done quickly, have a lazy person do it.” The point is that you shouldn’t necessarily see some attributes as negatives if they will be assets in other ways. A reason why many businesses or people fail is that they fail to be able to “let go” of responsibilities and tasks. They are uncomfortable with assigning tasks to others or don’t fully trust the abilities of the team they have assembled. So instead of spreading the work around, they attempt to do everything themselves – including weak areas and mundane logistical tasks that should most likely be given to someone else rather than them spending valuable time on unimportant matters. When you think about it, this overextension is a reason why so many people are harried and pressed for time. They are attempting to do it all themselves – everything from their work duties to family responsibilities to mundane chores. This is surely a recipe to set yourself up for failure.
Delegate Where It Makes Sense
It’s true that many of us would be hard pressed to afford more help for regular tasks. Many people, however, overlook the cost of their time. They prefer to save money by doing everything themselves, but ultimately are completely depleting their balance of time – an account which can never be replenished. This is a reason why financial independence should be a goal in the first place – the very wealthy are freed up with more options on hiring others to assist them with the various daily tasks in life. They are able to buy tax help, errands help, transportation help – the list goes on. The beauty of being a boss or working for yourself is that you set directives and can have others help you out with tasks to free you up to focus on the type of work that brought you into the business to begin with.
Being able to reflect and fully determine what your strengths and weaknesses are will require that you are comfortable with spending some time in solitude. Many successful people – even with very busy schedules – swear by the restorative effects of meditating. Even if you aren’t quite comfortable with the concept of meditation, you can still get the same basic effect of quiet reflection just by taking some time to yourself – time to walk, read, or just look ahead to where you would like to see your business head in the future.
How have you taken stock of your strengths and weaknesses? How have you been able to leverage them to the greatest effect?
You can also learn more by visiting my website: tonyneumeyer.com and registering to receive free trainings articles and more. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Facebook. You can get your copy of The 7 Minute Millionaire and check out my other books here: https://tonyneumeyer.com/books/.
