I've been reading a bunch of posts about how we should focus on or strengths, and not our weaknesses.
I admit, this is an attractive argument to me. It's much more motivating to think about improving the things I'm already good at, than spending time on the painful things I kind of suck at.
But this got me thinking about a concept a professor shared with my class when I was studying management:
Generalists are limited by their weakest skill.
Specialists are limited by their strongest skill.
For example
Picture a CFA working at a big corporation. It doesn’t matter how good they are at marketing, or sales, or how much they really know about the product. If they don’t excel at their strongest skill - finance - they’ll be limited in how much of an impact they can have.
Now picture a hot dog vendor. Or the founder of a startup - someone who has to fulfill many functions in their business. If that person doesn’t understand marketing, or their sales process, or their financials… well, they’re screwed. If any of these areas are weak, that person will be limiting the success of their firm.
Leaders tend to be generalists
Leaders within companies also become more generalist as they move up the chain of command.
They have to manage multiple employees handling very specific aspects of the business, and understand how those fit in with the rest of the business, so they can provide guidance to their teams
They have to set a cohesive strategy for those areas to reach broader business goals.
And leaders have to communicate with internal and external stakeholders to achieve alignment
If a leader is weak in one of these areas, they'll create a bottleneck
Ignoring weaknesses is one way that the Peter Principle comes about - The idea that employees in hierarchy rise to their level of their respective incompetence.
4 ways that leaders can improve their weaknesses
Map out core business functions and processes that require your leadership
Ask for feedback from leaders and colleagues to understand where you need to improve.
Gauge where the team's strengths are, and where they can fill in for some of your weak points. This is a critical balance to get right. We'll never be strong at everything - so it's important to hire and train to build a team who is collectively strong. But, it's not sustainable to expect team members to make up for your shortcomings, because as a leader, ultimately you have to take ownership for your business function.
Set aside time to work on weaknesses. This could mean practicing thoughtful communication, or spending time with someone in operations to understand their processes better, or taking a course in marketing.
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