How important is working on your strengths?

[henry.hastlan]

You know,
In business there are a lot of things we need to focus on.

How important do you think is working and focusing on your strengths?

[Comspec]

Henry - obviously it is important, but it is equally as important to build up the areas you have any weaknesses in too.

Is there something specific nagging at you? I spent 9 months working in a call centre a few years back (selling cancer insurance to women of all things) just to get my telephone/sales calls skills brushed up - I knew I was weak in this area. It helped immensely and I hope it shows now when I am on the telephone.

Mark

[Peter Bowen]

I think that you get exponential gains when you play to your strengths but only incremental gains when you try and work on your weaknesses.

Cheers

Pete

[Comspec]

Absolutely no doubt - but there may well be some weaknesses that you have to improve on if you are to grow your business. This is particularly relevant if you are a one-man-band.

Knowing your own strengths is important - as is putting them to the fore when marketing yourself. It is also important to you, however, to highlight your weaknesses, identify those which are holding you back, and then improving on them.

[Peter Bowen]

Hi Comspec,

Mind if I disagree (slightly) with you. I've owned a few businesses over the last 15 years and have found that the single biggest problem with any of these has been me. I've tried to know everything and do everything.

Obviously if you want to own a business (as opposed to making a living from self employment) you need "business owner skills" but if you're not careful it doesn't take long until you know how to do everything and find yourself spending all your time doing the stuff that doesn't actually make money.

It feels good and can be very rewarding but as the owner you have to focus on making the business work rather than doing the work of the business.

Cheers

Pete

[Comspec]

Oh no Peter - I agree with what you are saying totally. I am talking from the Sole Trader perspective only in my previous posts.

That can become a major problem and I have met it before personally - where the business manager/owner is too caught up in the actual work provision rather than actually 'managing' the business.

Once your business had made the leap from you actually providing the manpower by yourself, to employing staff to carry out specific functions - then if you cannot let go of these functions to the staff, you are heading for trouble. I hope this is a problem I have to deal with at Comspec before too long

[henry.hastlan]

You guys said some interesting things. But I think it is not possible to work on your weakness and on your strengths at the same time.

I think you have to decide...

[Elisor]

IMHO the important thing is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Without that info you can neither play to your strengths nor cover for your weaknesses. All sorts of things can be brought into play to bolster a weakness - from skills training to life training to outsourcing. But you can't act until you know what to act on.