Good leaders leverage the strengths of those in their charge and render their weaknesses irrelevant. They ‘fit’ them to roles that suit their strengths rather than try to fix their weaknesses.
Too often leaders feel that any employee should be able to do any job that they are tasked with. This is just not right. This is the same as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Is it any wonder why there are so many performance issues in organisations today.
Leaders need to understand that people possess specific and unique skills that differ from person to person. Some people possess skills more appropriate to working in collaboration in large groups whilst other people possess skills more suited to working individually and on analytic tasks. Effective leaders identify individual’s skills and strengths and match those individuals with the right tasks. Ineffective leaders waste valuable time and effort trying to shape people in ways they aren’t suited.
A great sports metaphor speaks of playing to your strengths and this is the same in business. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to ignore weakness; however, believing that you will turn and individual’s weakness into their strength is false hope. It is far better to identify individual areas of strength and to further develop those than it is to expect transformational change based on an amount of ‘gap training’. As it’s rare in organisations for any effort to be based on an individual rather than a team, identifying each person’s strengths and directing them accordingly will return the best results.
Teams are only as strong as their weakest member. Having each member of the team work at their highest and best potential means engaging them in their specific areas of strength. Any perceived weakness of any of the individuals in the team should be addressed by allocating a team member who has the requisite strength in that area. While this may sound like identifying a problem and ignoring it, this is more akin to ensuring that each individual team member is employed to utilise their specific experience, knowledge, and skills to their best effect.
