"One should waste as little as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more work to improve from incompetence to average than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence." ~ Peter Drucker
One of the key distinctions between a "leadership" and a "management" bias in running an organization is that leaders focus on developing and exploiting the strengths of their people and their company, while managers spend too much time focusing on and trying to improve the weaknesses of their people and company. Which is your strategy? Consider the ramifications with the following points:
1. If you focus on developing the strengths of your people and organization you will become exceptional in certain areas. When you focus on improving your weaknesses, you're always playing "catch-up."
2. It takes less time and energy for your managers to coach their people to go from being good to becoming excellent than it does if they spend their time trying to get their team to go from being miserable to mediocre. Coach to develop strengths and manage around weaknesses.
3. If you don't identify and develop the strengths of your people and organization they will atrophy.
4. Developing strengths affords you the chance to attain a real competitive advantage and causes others to play "catch up."
5. When you can develop your strengths and then pit them against your competitor's weaknesses, your advantage becomes even greater.
6. Do not ignore your people's or organization's weaknesses. Instead, distribute your time to spend 80% of your time on strengths and 20% on weaknesses.
7. As strengths develop, they often minimize and neutralize the effects of the weaknesses anyhow.
8. Developing strengths builds competence and confidence of the people in your organization. It creates momentum. It builds self-esteem, both individually and organizationally.
Top leaders have always known that the best way to get the most out of their people is to accentuate the positive. The leader helps them to maximize and capitalize on their strengths and works around their weaknesses.
Dealing With Weaknesses
No one likes to admit or even acknowledge that they're weak in an area. We prefer to be thought of as being good at everything. But this is not reality, and a key part of a leader's job is to see reality. Until a leader can stop seeing things as they used to be or as he'd like them to be and start seeing them for what they are, progress is grid locked.
Becoming immersed in strengthening the weaknesses of your organization causes you to lose in two ways. First, your strengths will diminish if you don't develop them and spend too much time trying to correct flaws. Second, no matter how hard you try, you'll rarely turn a weakness into a strength. With a great deal of time and energy, you might turn a negative into a minor positive. But think what you could have accomplished had you committed that time and energy into building on your strengths.
Developing The Right Strengths
The key to developing your strengths is spending time first determining what your people and your organization are strong and weak at and then developing them. However, it does you little good if your strengths are not in areas of great importance that can bring a maximum return. (For instance, a salesperson may have a strength in organizational and follow-up techniques. However, if he's an ornery cuss that turns everyone off and never gets as far as the closing booth there's little sense developing his strength by purchasing new software to make his follow-up even better. You'd better see if he has the ability to build rapport and relationships first so he can sell the car and actually have someone to follow-up with. If not, get someone who does.) You must either be strong in an area of vital importance worth developing, or if you are not, bring someone into your organization that is and build around him. If that person is in management, it will then be their job to begin filling the organization with people who can accentuate the needed strengths, if they're not already present.
Identifying Weaknesses
Donald Clifton, chairman of the Gallup Organization gives these clues to identifying your weaknesses. He states that by examining your feelings when you're in a difficult situation, you probably have a weakness if you:
· Feel defensive about your performance.
· Experience slow learning.
· Develop obsessive behavior.
· Don't profit from repeated experience.
· Feel a lack of self-confidence.
· Lack futuristic thinking.
· Suffer burnout while in the task.
When confronted with these symptoms you have to concede that there's a problem. Admitting weakness takes guts and is an act of growth. After admitting them, manage around them by trying the following: stop doing what you're no good at by delegating or subcontracting to competent parties or install support systems to overcome the problem. Then refocus your time and energy on developing the key areas you are strong at that will bring you the results and the edge you need to succeed in today's marketplace.
Take a few moments and think about your people and your dealership. What are the strengths and weaknesses of both? Which have you been spending more time with?
Without first determining your position on the field, you probably won't be able to call the best plays. After determining where you are, assess for your organization and each person in it:
1.What the strengths are and are they in the right areas?
2.How can you manage around the weaknesses?
3.What actions can you begin taking to turn your strengths into a competitive edge?
You have limited time. Make sure you're investing it in the sectors that will make you exceptional, not in those that will simply establish mediocrity. Developing strengths and managing around weaknesses is a key to thinking and acting more like a leader and less like a maintainer (a manager).