Play to Your Strengths
When you think about planning your personal development for the coming year, what are the first skills you think about developing? If you’re like most people, you think about your weak skills. From an early age, we have been programmed to focus our attention on overcoming our weaknesses.
There has been an unwritten code of expectation that we need to be good at everything – and great at some things. Clearly this is an unreasonable expectation. And over the last several years, personal development theory has begun to recognize that fact.
In their groundbreaking book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, authors Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton say that across all ages and cultures, people are more concerned about their weaknesses than their strengths. We believe that our weaknesses matter more in holding us back than our strengths matter in advancing us.
Buckingham and Clifton disagree with that commonly held belief. In their provocative theory, they suggest that the better strategy is to play to your strengths, building upon your core talents, and work around your weaknesses. You can work to add skills and knowledge to increase your performance in any area, but unless you are building upon one of your innate talents, your efforts won’t produce exceptional results—some results, yes, but not dramatic improvement.
“Unless you have the necessary talent, your improvements will be modest,” write Buckingham and Clifton. “You will be diverting most of your energy toward damage control and very little toward real development.”
They do agree that there is a need to minimize some of your weaknesses—specifically those areas where your lack of talent actually get in the way of your performance.
“Managing Around” a Weakness
Instead of trying to overcome your weaknesses by brute force—and at the expense of diverting that energy away from growing your strengths—they offer five strategies for what they call “managing around” a weakness:
Get a little better at it. In some cases, your weakness is only moderately impeding your peak performance in other areas. While it may never contribute to your success, by improving the weakness a little, it may no longer be an active detriment.
Develop a support system. This is the proverbial string tied around the finger to remind you of something. If you can automate or systematize the tasks you underperform at, you can side step any harm the weakness could potentially cause.
Study your prospects. Most tasks can be approached from different angels. When you know your strengths, you can tackle tasks that are in your areas of weakness from the perspective of your strength. For example, if your skills tend toward the analytical and you are facing a task that requires strong people skills, start by analyzing the best way to connect with the people’s interests and map out a systematic way to address them.
Find a partner. This may be the best approach for small business people and “solo” practitioners. Go into partnership discussions with a clear-eyed understanding of the strengths you bring, and the strengths you need from your partner. Don’t be shy about your strengths—the whole point of this is to create a world in which you get to do what you are really good at. And be open-minded about what a partnership looks like. For some solo practitioners, a virtual assistant or a marketing consultant could be all the partnering you need.
Just (Don’t) Do It. The last option, say Buckingham and Clifton, is just don’t do the things you are weak at. In a corporate setting you might get away with this, particularly if you are a high-performer in the areas of your strengths. If you’re a small business owner and your organizational chart tends to have “me” written in most every box, not doing something may not seem like much of a choice. But keep it as a goal and continue to work toward the day when you can contribute to your business exclusively from the place of your highest strengths.
Remember, the point is to capitalize on and continue to build your strengths while minimizing the impact of your weaknesses. Here’s to your growing success!
I invite you to share your thoughts and perspective on this article. What are your strengths? How do you manage your weaknesses? To join the discussion, simply leave a comment.
Creating Systems for Success
Most of us run our lives on a handful of systems. Between our cell phones, our daily planners and our e-mail inboxes, we organize ourselves and our time. Systems reduce the time it takes to accomplish a task, minimize the effort required, and increase the ease with which we can accomplish our goals. Given such benefits, it is advisable to periodically examine your work and your personal life for opportunities to add systems.
Systems are simply ways of automating or structuring processes so that they can occur without much thought or attention. Systems allow the task to be done by more than just one person, so that the required activity will get done even if you take a vacation or, for whatever reason, are unable or unwilling to do it yourself.
Figuring Out What to Systematize
For most of us, there are dozens of similar repetitive tasks, large and small, in our businesses, our jobs and our personal lives that could be systematized. To identify where you can apply systems, step back from your activities and try to look at the big picture objectively. Ask yourself the following questions:
Where are your frustrations? This is an important test for two reasons. First, you are more likely to be frustrated if you are redoing tasks that bring no particular satisfaction. Second, you are going to be frustrated if you have to relearn a task or “recreate the wheel” every time a specific need comes up.
What is limiting your business and personal success? What are the choke points? What activities – if you did more of them or did them more often – would lead to increased business and personal success? By strategically focusing in this way, you are more likely to spot high-value opportunities for systemization.
What causes you stress? If you are responsible for doing certain activities that you find overly difficult, unpleasant, demeaning, or painful, they could be causing you a significant amount of stress. Even if you know the steps by heart, systematizing at least part of these stress-inducing activities could yield big benefits to you and your well-being.
Start by Writing It Down
The first step in systematizing a process is to write it down. What exactly is the process you go through to complete the task? If you’re struggling to get all the steps down, try the “backwards” approach. Start with the end result and then determine what you did right before that, and so on, for each step. To make this even easier, record the steps required to complete a task as you’re doing them.
Another valuable exercise is to document what everyone in your organization or home does. Forget job descriptions: You want to know what they actually do. This may highlight high-value opportunities to build systems that can be leveraged throughout the organization or by all members of the family.
Often, the documentation you create in this process is all the system you require. The next time the task comes up, you can pull out the file and save the relearning. It also becomes the core of a training manual for new employees or family members who are growing into new responsibilities. Imagine referring your teenager to the step-by-step instructions of how to wash a load of laundry next time they get home from day one of a two-day soccer tournament.
Do the Cost-Benefit Math
Here are some guidelines for figuring out which of the myriad choices are worth the effort of creating a system:
What are the odds you will be doing this again? How often? Both tasks that need to be done frequently and tasks that are done only once in a while are good candidates for a system. Automating the frequent tasks can save you time daily or weekly while systematizing the infrequent tasks will avoid the need for relearning the process and reduce the risk of mistakes.
How hard is it to automate? Creating paper checklists is easy; programming Outlook to sync your phone contacts and automatically generate follow up emails isn’t so easy. However, don’t give up if one approach is too expensive or complicated. Just look for a simpler system.
How critical is the task? And how critical is failing to execute it well? High-value tasks (such as annual trade-shows) and tasks with a high cost of not doing them (like missing a bill payment) are good candidates for setting up systems in order to ensure the benefits of doing them well and reduce the risks of leaving them undone.
Can you hire it out? In some cases, the best system is to hand the documentation for the process to a junior employee or an external service provider. In particular, those stress-inducing tasks you noted above can be partially off-loaded. But you will need to do the work up front of carefully recording the steps involved, and how to achieve and measure the necessary outcomes.
Get Out of the Box
As you go through this analysis, don’t be afraid to start with the question: Why do we do this process in the first place? For every process you find that could be automated with a new system, you may find another that can be eliminated altogether. Systematically reviewing your business and home activities this way may be the most valuable system of all.
I invite you to share your perspective on this article. What new systems have you added to your work and personal life? To join the discussion, simply leave a comment.
Time Is More Than Money - It’s Your Life!
Yeesh! It’s 8 p.m. and you’re still in front of your computer answering emails…again. It seems as though every day is spent digging out of an avalanche of email, phone messages and urgent requests that don’t leave any time for you-know-who (hint: YOU!) or the priorities that really matter. By the time Friday rolls around, it’s easy to feel your week went careening out of control like some movie-of-the-week car chase.
Do me a favour. Take a moment right now to do a little activity with me. Take out a piece of paper and write down four statements that describe how you feel or think about time. For example you might say, “Time flies,” or “There is never enough time.” Write your statements down now.
Next, read over what you have written. In each statement, replace the word “time” with the word “life.” The examples above become “Life flies,” and “There is never enough life.”
Wow! Point taken. How you spend your time is how you spend your life. If you don’t like the sound of your revised statements, it is time to recreate the relationship you have with time.
The solution isn’t in another day-planner system or another priority checklist. Until you change your relationship to time, your life will continue to speed away from you—at enormous cost to your health and to the detriment of yourself and the world around you.
Gaining control over your time is nothing short of gaining control of your life. The good news is you do have a choice. From CEO to business owner to file clerk, reclaiming control over your time is a powerful act of self-mastery.
To help refill your time reservoir, try some or all of the following suggestions.
Pause. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han suggests a deep breath before answering the phone. Stacey Mayo of the Center for Balanced Living recommends doing a one-minute meditation every hour throughout your day.
Remember the airplane instructions. Put your own “oxygen mask” on first. To take care of others, you must care for yourself first. Put your needs at the top of your priority list.
Carve out idle time alone. Greek philosopher Aristotle noted that “nature requires us not only to be able to work well but also to idle well.” Recognize and honour your body and mind’s need for rest. If you find it difficult to do “nothing,” consider it a necessary skill and work on strengthening it.
Schedule time every week that excludes interruptions. Turn off your cell phone and your desk phone. Grant yourself uninterrupted time to focus your energy and attention.
Toss your schedule whenever you can. If that is too daunting at first, schedule spontaneous time and then surprise yourself. To keep your creativity and joy revved up, include times when you improvise and act impulsively.
Examine why you are busy. What emotions would you experience if you weren’t so busy? Are you running from your heart? Many people use busyness as a way to sidestep the real challenges of life or to avoid taking responsibility for their own happiness. If you examine their comments, what they are really saying is, “Oh, I couldn’t possible improve my life, I am far too busy.”
Play. Sing, wrestle, paint, hike—whatever. It helps you step outside of ordinary time. Play and fun bring balance to your life. They give you a reason to commit to personal time in your schedule.
Create time retreats. At least once a year, choose to do something for a week that allows you to just “be.” Reserve this time for recharging your internal batteries, not for catching up on chores.
Spend time in nature. You can’t help but slow down in nature’s unhurried pace. Watching a soaring bird or examining a flower can seem to stretch a minute into an hour. Soak up the pure, life-affirming energy that nature has to offer.
You can learn to experience time more purposefully and meaningfully—so that it’s not an enemy robbing you of the joy of life. You needn’t be at time’s mercy. When you change your awareness, you can actually experience the gifts of time. The choice is yours.
I invite you to share your thoughts and perspective on the article. To join the discussion, comment on this blog!
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheila Betker is founder of Freedom to Dream, a company dedicated to connecting women with their true life’s purpose and helping them build the life of their dreams. To sign up for a free 10-part ecourse entitled, Living Your Dream Life: Step By Step Guide to Living Your Life on Purpose, visit: http://freedom-to-dream.com
The Changing of the Seasons
With the turning of the leaves from green to brilliant reds, oranges and yellows, I can’t help but think of the changing seasons. It’s such a great metaphor for so many aspects of our lives. Just about everything has a cycle or rhythm to it. I try hard to remember that during the down turns.
When you are working towards your goals, there will be times full energy and productivity and times of slothfulness with little or no progress. This cycle exists on many levels. Some months yield huge leaps ahead while other months seem to have been spent in stasis. During any given week, there will be days when you jump out of bed energized and ready to get busy and other days when the snooze button gets a workout and you never quite get revved up. Even within a day, you will have waves of productivity and rest.
Accepting these natural cycles goes a long way to enjoying both the highs and the lows. It will help you capitalize on and be grateful for the productive times, while moving through the down times with grace and ease. I used to spend a lot of time and energy fighting against the low times or scolding myself for lack of focus and miniscule progress. Not surprisingly, that just made the lows even lower and last longer.
These days I remind myself that slow times are part of the cycle. I look at the bigger picture beyond the ‘wasted afternoon’ or ‘unproductive day’. I recognize that my body and soul need time for rest. I take an honest look inside to see if there is a bigger block that needs to be cared for, but more often than not, these times are simply a natural slowing of the rhythm. By accepting that, and welcoming it with gratitude, the funniest thing happens. While staying in the slow rhythm, beautiful creations unfold.
I invite you to welcome in the slow rhythms with grace and observe the magic that appears. Then come back here and tell us about it. I love hearing your stories.
