play to your strengths Archives - Libby Kiszner-Your Magnetic Story

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” –Helen Keller

A couple of years ago, my father shared with me Steven Pressfield’s books, The War of Art and Turning Pro. They’re inspirational, funny and succinct little books about defeating “Resistance” – that small voice in the back of your head that keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do.

From starting a dream business venture, to writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece, Resistance will convince you of anything to keep you from doing your work.

My version of Resistance sought refuge in the form of what business, technology and marketing consultants have all referred to as the ‘‘bright, shiny objects syndrome’’.

Underestimating Resistance’s cunning, I failed to realize that my determination to do it all myself – from website building to graphic design, was the ultimate distracter. It kept me safely hidden behind my computer, immersed in taking course after course, so that I wouldn’t do the one thing that made my soul sing: sharing my gift of writing with those who were looking for it.

“Turning pro is free”, Steven writes, “but it’s not easy. You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind. What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and…we become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.”

Indeed, a paradigm shift is happening in entrepreneurship today, one in which founders are building companies completely aligned with who they are, what they’re naturally gifted at and what they love doing so much it doesn’t feel like work. And one of the best and most effective ways we’ve found to accomplish this entails discovering your unique “zone of genius.”

Once you’ve found your zone of genius – your passion based on your unique talents, strengths and purpose – the next step is to assemble a team of talent that complements it.

Lone Ranger Anyone?

See if you identify with any of these statements:

“I can do it better myself.”
“The more people involved, the less control I’ll have.”
“I like MY ideas and MY way of doing things.”

The truth is, going it alone can lead to overwork and burnout for you, and can create unnecessary stress and tension in your workplace. It can breed competition, fear, dishonesty, tunnel vision and inefficiency.

So before you limit your chance for success, why not open the door to other people’s skills and experience? Collaboration is a win-win solution that allows each person’s genius to come to the fore and get to:

Do what you love. Everyone has a unique set of passion triggers, the things you love doing because they fire up your interest and you do them well. There are also, of course, the things you struggle with doing. By collaborating, you can divide up the tasks so that all involved get to do what they love.

More ideas. Brainstorming with a partner or team will inevitably lead to more ideas than one person can think up on his or her own. There’s also an incredible opportunity for innovation as people build on the ideas of others.

Belonging. It’s human nature to value the feeling of belonging, being part of something bigger and better than you are alone.

Relationships. Success in business, success at work, success in life, they’re all contingent on success in relationships. Collaboration is a place to learn, stretch and grow into more effective and healthy ways of interacting with others. Collaboration can be challenging—and it’s worth it!

How to Be a Good Collaborator

Trust. Assume the best about people, and trust them with your head full of ideas. Have faith and remember that your collaborators want to do their best and feel good about their work at the end of the day. And trust the collaborative process, even when people do things differently than you would, and you can’t quite see how it will all come together. It will.
Be trustworthy. Ghandi said that we need to BE the change we want to see in the world. So if you want to trust people, be someone they can trust. Act with integrity, do what you say you’re going to do, and be open and honest in your communication.
Choose wisely. For each task that challenges you, there is someone who loves it and does it well. Build a team of experts.

Successful collaboration is a balancing act of personality types, work habits, communication styles and skills. To the lone ranger, that might seem like too much trouble. But if you’re looking to improve your performance and seal your success, collaboration is an opportunity you don’t want to pass up.

Have you ever invested in a personal development class to try to improve something you felt you were not good at?

Perhaps it was writing, public speaking, marketing, sales or graphic design.

As it turns out, the majority of people around the world feel this way.

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.

That’s nonsense, say the authors—widely held nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. The better strategy, they suggest, is to play to your strengths, building upon your core talents, and work around your weaknesses. You can 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.”

The expression “damage control” is their term for trying to minimize your weaknesses—the 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 putting the same energy into 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. If so, then maybe damage control is the right solution.

Develop a support system. This is the proverbial string tied around the finger to remind you of something. Whether it is time management systems for those with a talent for adaptability but not discipline, or a scheduled walk in the park for disciplined folks who neglect self-care, you can often blunt the effects of your weaknesses through these kinds of structured inputs.

Study your prospects. If your skills tend toward the analytical and away from such talents as wooing clients or dealing directly with confrontation, then you probably ought not be spending a lot of time in sales. But when you do have to sell something—such as one of your ideas—approach the problem analytically. Rather than agonize over your lack of salesmanship, study your prospects, dig into what makes them tick and what ideas they’ve accepted in the past, and let your enthusiasm for your ideas do the talking.

Find a partner. This may be the best approach for small business people and solopreneurs. 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 solopreneurs, an administrative 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.

The Genius Business Model: Collaboration

Play to Your Strengths