7

Get in the Weight Room

Identify and Leverage Your Strengths

YOU KNOW THE ADVICE pretty well by now. If you want to get in phenomenal physical shape, you have to cross-train and work on all aspects of your fitness. It’s not enough to log five miles a day if you’re a runner; you also should be lifting weights and stretching to keep your body at peak performance levels. The same is true of your leadership development “work out.” If all you do is work on your developmental challenges, you’ll ignore the biggest asset you have as a leader: your strengths. If you want to take your game to a new level, you have to identify and leverage what you do best. Think of your strengths as your core—you need to keep it strong because it enables everything else you do. Call it cross-training in reverse; while working on your weaknesses, don’t forget to maximize your strengths.

Why is it so important to know and leverage your strengths? That’s an easy question, according to Peter Drucker, the godfather of modern management study. In his 1999 Harvard Business Review article entitled “Managing Oneself,” Drucker writes: “Most people think they know what they are good at; they are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at—and even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.” Drucker states the obvious in such eloquent terms: A person can perform only from strength. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If all you had were weaknesses, you wouldn’t be in a position to break out, move up, and take full advantage of your leadership skills.

So, it’s clear that you need to get into the leadership “weight room” and build on your strengths. But what exactly are your strengths? What is it that you do really well? Identify your core strengths by answering the five basic questions presented below.

Be Honest with Yourself

Identifying your strengths only works if you’re being absolutely honest with yourself. Although it’s true that no one knows you better than you know yourself, sometimes we all have a tendency to mislead ourselves about our best qualities. But let’s assume that you’re going to do a thorough assessment of your own skills, and start with the first question: “What are my best qualities as a leader?” Another way to think about this question is to ask, “What am I most proud of?” Is it your calming presence? Your ability to influence the boss? Communicating to large groups? Creating a vision and strategy?

Answer the question of what really defines you as a leader. Write down your best qualities, with a brief description of each one. Keep the list brief by capturing your top four or five qualities (e.g., creativity, patience, optimism, integrity, collaboration). Once you’ve identified your best qualities, the trick is to leverage them as often as possible. For example, if developing people is one of your best qualities, how can you do even more mentoring or coaching across the organization? Take the time you’re spending on unimportant tasks and spend that time teaching and nurturing emerging talent.

The second question is: “Which of my skills am I most confident in?” Think of skills as the building blocks for macro leadership qualities. What are your specific, go-to skills, and how do they enable you to achieve results? Are you good at creating presentations (which helps you articulate strategy)? Are you quick on your feet in front of an audience (which helps you as a communicator)? Break down your leadership into the component skills that enable you to demonstrate the right behaviors. The reason you’re so good at influencing is not magical; it’s a combination of specific skills. In this case, attention to detail, data analysis, interest in the industry, and political savvy. Get in touch with the skills you’re most confident in. Just as you know if you’re good at creating PowerPoint slides, you also know if planning, relationship building, and listening are among your most trusted skills. Once you define the specific skills (list your strongest six to eight), think about all the ways you could be combining these skills to maximize how you’re showing up as a leader. For example, if relationship building and coaching are your strengths, should you be mired in daylong progress update meetings? Should you be leading a detail-oriented, data-driven task force project? Know your skills, and put yourself in position to accentuate them. Literally, assess each situation with this question: “Does this task make the best use of my skill set?”

The third question is: “In what situations am I really comfortable?” Is it staff meetings with your team? Brainstorming sessions with your peers? Meetings with the boss? Walking the halls or the shop floor? Being out on sales calls? Public speaking engagements? Knowing where you’re at your best can be as important as knowing what you do best. Take the case of a musician who can play beautiful music—that’s his skill. But maybe he’s not at his best in all types of venues. Why is that? The skill hasn’t changed but the environment has; maybe he’s more comfortable with smaller audiences, or he doesn’t like playing outdoors. The key is to know your Comfort Zones and leverage them. Try to control the environment in which you can do your very best work.

Next, ask yourself the fourth question: “What can I teach others?” What do you know so well that you’d have instant credibility as a teacher or mentor? What are you an expert at? Would you be comfortable building a learning curriculum around this knowledge, skill, or behavior? Chances are if you can’t teach it, you don’t know it well enough or haven’t mastered it yourself.

Ask Others about Your Strengths

Don’t just take your own word on this; it’s important to also answer the fifth question: “What would others say are my strengths?” Ask your colleagues, particularly your boss, peers, and direct reports. You can do this in several ways, including a formal 360° feedback process (see Chapter 3) or an email campaign, but one of the easiest ways is just to ask them in a normal conversation. When you’re having lunch or a one-to-one meeting, simply say: “I’m trying to identify what I do really well. What would you say my core strengths are?” Do this with six to eight colleagues to get a well-rounded sense of how others see you. Listen carefully, and thank them for their input. Hopefully, it fits with how you see yourself, but there may be a hidden strength or a blind spot that emerges from these conversations (see Figure 2).

Whatever your strengths, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what they are and a plan for using them to drive results. We really do lead from our strengths; they form the basis for our daily actions and performance. As you focus on your developmental opportunities, don’t forget to leverage what you do well, too. After all, your strengths have gotten you this far—keep building on them!

Bootstrap Takeaways

Identify and Leverage Your Strengths

1. Make a list of your strengths—what you do really well. Be honest with yourself and hold a high bar for your definition of “strengths.”

2. See your strengths through the eyes of others; ask for feedback about what you do exceptionally well.

3. Look for opportunities to leverage your strengths; put yourself in situations where you can make the most of your skills.