Sincerity Doesn’t Erase Ignorance: 7 Ways to Capitalize on the Strength of Your Leaders
Everyone knows what you don’t do well.
Confused or inexperienced leaders pay too much attention to people who point out their lack and challenge them to improve weaknesses.
Ignorant helpfulness:
“To focus on weakness isn’t only foolish, it’s irresponsible.” Peter Drucker
People who focus on improving your weaknesses might be sincere, but they’re ignorant. An ignorant helpful person does damage. Sincerity doesn’t erase ignorance.
Useful:
It’s useful to know what you don’t do well. Not so you can improve it, but so you can avoid it. The things you can’t do well never produce remarkable success.
A developed strength always takes you further than an improved weakness.
The important question is what strength should you develop, not what weakness should you improve.
- Make strengths productive.
- Compensate for weaknesses.
- Eliminate self-defeating behaviors.
In order to maximize a leader’s success, capitalize on the one thing that makes them remarkable.
7 ways to capatalize on the strength of your leaders:
- Accept that leaders have limitations and weaknesses. Forget about building on a leader’s weaknesses.
- Don’t put your hopes on reforming your leader. Figure out how to compensate for your leader’s weaknesses.
- What can your leader do really well? How can you help your leader build on his/her strengths?
- How has your leader succeeded in the past? How can you help them do more of that?
- What relationships, interactions, and situations bring out the best in your leader?
- How might you compensate for your leader’s weakness?
- What should your leader stop doing because it’s outside his/her strength?
Bonus: What does your leader need to know to make his/her strengths productive?
How might followers help their leaders capitalize on their strengths?
This post is inspired by, The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker. (Chapter 5)
I don’t think you can just say that you should avoid things you don’t do well. I always think you can improve upon things and learning tips and tricks from other could help people in regard to certain weaknesses. I agree that you shouldn’t dwell on your leaders weakness but they may not realize just how much of a weakness they have and some constructive criticism could help them out. They may even appreciate the feedback.
Whenever I hear the term “constructive criticism” I wonder who it is actually constructive for….
I do not think his post says avoid weaknesses? Just that focusing on your strengths and utilizing those strengths to compensate for areas of weakness. A lot of this is based on working with a team not in a silo, thus other team members strengths can help compensate for your weakness or help you find ways to compensate for it.
“A developed strength always takes you further than an improved weakness.”
I’m not sure I agree 100%. If your brilliant ideas are never taken forward because you’re a miserably bad communicator, or you’re great at winning new customers but they never come back because you can’t deliver on time, improving your communication or organisational skills might pay better returns than learning to produce even better ideas that you can’t give away.
I struggle with the avoidance of weaknesses. I agree that you should not solely focus on the areas of weakness. It is a trap that can easily consume you. However, I think that if we strategically ignore weaknesses all together, we are missing opportunities for growth and development. I used to think that weaknesses were intended to become strengths when provided the correct support and interventions. My thinking has shifted in that weaknesses are intended to be refined. They will still be flawed, but will have transformed/grown from their initial form. It’s all about balance. As always, a thought provoking post!
I often get asked the question, “How can a leader be a strong follower?” Today’s post nails it! I have often encouraged strong leaders to find the “gaps” in the ability/talent of their supervisor to see if they have the skill set to fill it. When that happens the whole team benefits and is stronger.
Can you take the tweet out of a strong narrow minded leader who doesn’t listen? Maybe his cabinet can or a cabinet door. Just a pun NSA, lol.