Fix your weaknesses or enhance your superpowers?

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When you decide that there is something you’d like to better at doing, there are two possible reasons:

  1. It’s a weakness of yours that you want to improve.
  2. It’s already a strength of yours, but now you want to take it further.

Finding the balance can be tricky. If you’re a baseball player who is a good hitter but a poor fielder, which one should you work more on? Should you try to become an excellent hitter, or work to make your fielding less of a liability for the team?

The answer is likely “both”, but your daily efforts will lean one way or another.

Personally, I’m more of a “fix a weakness that I want to improve” kind of person. This is why I have things like Anki to help fill in my knowledge gaps. I try to play both sides a little bit, but I generally focus more on shoring up my weaknesses.

Gary Vaynerchuk seems to disagree. In his book “Twelve and a Half“, Gary says:

But I don’t overstress this point, because most people work only on their weaknesses, not their superpowers. Yes, I want to level set my weaknesses, but I’m more interested in taking my strengths to the moon.

Gary’s case is interesting. Generally speaking, he’s done a great job of taking his “strengths to the moon”, but much of this book of his was about how he was fixing some of his shortcomings.

Strength or weakness?

Even then, perhaps it’s a matter of perspective. A big piece of this book was Gary’s work toward “kind candor“, which I can see both ways:

  1. This is Gary fixing a weakness of his (candor).
  2. This is Gary pushing forward a strength (leadership).

I view it more like the first one, though I suspect he sees it more like the second.

Either way, he’s pushing himself to improve, and regardless which basket those improvements fall into it’s a great journey to be taking.

Which direction do you tend to push more into?

Kindness is about the recipient

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For years, I thought that a key to being a good leader was to treat your staff with kindness. That’s not wrong, but research into various personality profiles (such as enneagram and DISC) have shown me that “kind” is different depending on who you’re talking to.

An old business coach of ours laid it out clearly. In his world, he knew that he should spend 10 minutes with Stacey every morning just catching up with life and discussing “stuff”, as she enjoyed that kind of interaction. However, with Rachel he needed to be in and out in 30 seconds, as she found empty small talk to largely be a waste of time. In his example, treating both of them with kindness meant very different approaches.

In his book “Twelve and a Half“, Gary Vaynerchuk simply says this:

“Kindness is based on the recipient’s terms. Not yours.”

That’s it. If you truly want to show kindness to someone, it’s their interpretation of “kind” that matters, not yours.

For some people, that means spending more time with them. For others, it’s about the quality of the time instead of the quantity.

If you’re wanting to help someone in need, sometimes money is the best thing you can offer. In other cases it might be giving up a day to help them move.

Situations are different. If you really want to show kindness, find out what really matters to the recipient.

Being kind doesn’t mean you’re a pushover

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We could all stand to see a bit more kindness in the world but I think it’s often seen as the opposite of “toughness”, even though the two can go hand-in-hand.

You can be strong and relentless in all you do, while still being kind while you do it. If you think you need to be a jerk to get ahead, you’re mistaken.

In his recent book “Twelve and a Half“, Gary Vaynerchuk puts it this way:

People confuse the definition of kindness with the definition of pushover—“a person who is easy to overcome or influence.” They’re not the same at all.

Be strong.

Be courageous.

But be kind.

Clear is kind

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If you follow Gary Vaynerchuk very much, you’ve probably noticed that his big push lately is for “kind candor“. In his earlier years he did well with the “kind” part, but hid from the “candor”, which was a big disservice to those on his team.

You don’t need to hide from the truth, but don’t be a jerk about it either. It’s similar to what I shared a few weeks ago when I said that “Honesty without kindness is brutality, and kindness without honesty is manipulation.“

In her book “Dare to Lead“, author Brené Brown shared this thought a few different ways. She had a pretty harsh overview:

“Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind”

But she also summarized it very neatly:

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Hiding behind the truth to make someone feel better may work for a while, but in the long run it’s likely to lead to trouble. Speak the truth whenever possible, but always try to be a good human while you do it.

Reliability makes work easier

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I’ve long said that the level of trust that I have in my team helps make my life much easier. Among other things, I know that if I send an email to one of them to get something taken care of, I don’t need to remind myself to follow-up — it gets done.

However, a section in by Brené Brown’s book “Dare to Lead” has helped me refine my thoughts a bit further. In the book, they discuss seven separate behaviors that encourage trust, which just happen to form the acronym BRAVING:

  • Boundaries
  • Reliability
  • Accountability
  • Vault
  • Integrity
  • Non-judgement
  • Generosity

From that list, “reliability” is clearly the one that affected my thoughts from that older post. While our team exhibits those other traits to a wonderful degree, reliability is the part I was referring to that makes my day-to-day life run more smoothly.

Greg McKeown summed it up perfectly in his book “Effortless“, when he said:

“When there’s trust, we don’t have to spend time and effort managing people or relationships. We can assign tasks with the confidence that they’ll be completed.”

It’s an amazing thing to have, and I’m thankful to have a team with reliability that I can depend on.

Calm is contagious

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If you’re in a suddenly stressful situation, freaking out is likely to make things worse. It can be hard to control, but staying calm, particularly if you’re in a position of leadership during the event, can make a huge difference.

From Ryan Holiday’s excellent book “The Daily Stoic“, he shares:

There is a maxim that Navy SEALs pass from officer to officer, person to person. In the midst of chaos, even in the fog of war, their battle-tested advice is this: “Calm is contagious.”

Especially when that calm is coming from the man or woman in charge. If the men begin to lose their wits, if the group is unsure of what to do next, it’s the leader’s job to do one thing: instill calm— not by force but by example.

If you’re stressing out, others are apt to follow suit in that regard too.

Walk, don’t run

It’s similar to a practice I learned years ago about dealing with emergencies indoors. If you need to hurry to the kitchen because your child is crying, a brisk walk is a much better idea than trying to run. Running will save you perhaps a second or two, but will greatly increase your chance of running into something or falling down, either of which could make the situation worse.

It’s one of the reasons that you don’t often see paramedics running. Beyond the danger of it, walking quickly will help maintain a sense of calm, which can help the entire situation.

Keeping calm in a tough situation is always a good move.

Is reading work?

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In episode 179 of The Long and The Short Of It podcast, hosts Pete and Jen argue that reading for knowledge should be considered “work”, and therefore it’s acceptable to do during the workday.

I don’t disagree, but it’s tricky.

I read quite a lot, and most of it is for the benefit of our business, but I do it almost entirely outside of the typical M-F/9-5 “working hours”. For me, it comes down to a few things:

  1. I need to be available when our team and clients are in order to get that work done. I can’t generally read through the afternoon, and then expect my team to hop on a call later in the evening.
  2. Part of it comes down to appearances. I think I’d feel like a slacker if I was kicked back in my office reading on my Kindle when one of our team walked it. Even if it really was “work”, it feels more like play and would look bad.

Pete puts it this way, which sums up how I feel as well:

I still grapple with this every single day, where if I have an hour in an afternoon free, I still struggle with the idea of using that to read a book because I guess that’s how society has conditioned me.

Golf

In a way, it’s similar to how I feel about golf. On one hand, it seems there are some people that golf all week long for seemingly dubious reasons (“just to get out of the office”). On the other hand, many of those types of people derive a huge number of sales out of those games of golf, so it’s really more business-like than it seems.

As my role continues to shift further away from “doing” and more toward “leading/growing”, I think this is an area that I need understand better so I can use it to the benefit of our team.

Magic Time

A related concept in that podcast episode is what Jen calls “Magic Time” — time that she specifically books on her calendar to help improve herself. It might be reading, or listening to a podcast, or going on a walk, or going to a museum.

For me, my mid-week tends to stay pretty full, but I could potentially see making some space like that on Monday or Friday. It’s a fascinating concept.

What do you think? Is reading considered to be work? Taking it further, would you be comfortable with your team knowing you were in your office reading while they were pushing to hit deadlines for your clients?

Leadership means you do more

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As people grow in their roles, the thought is often that they’ve earned the right to do less work, and perhaps that’s valid. However, simply having the ability to work less generally isn’t the right thing to do if you’ve moved into a leadership role. While your work may largely shift from manual tasks to more thinking and planning, the amount of work itself shouldn’t dip.

As your role (and salary) grows, it often makes sense to have people lower on the chart do more of the manual work. It’s just good sense to have someone making $20/hr doing simple tasks instead of people making $100/hr doing them. How far should you push that, though? I can think of two very different examples.

First, I was recently talking to a business owner that absolutely doesn’t touch anything that someone earning less should do. For him, it’s pure math and he measures every minute of what his happening in his organization.

On the hand, you have stories like Dan Cathy (the former president and CEO of Chick-Fil-A) taking time to clean up their parking lots when visiting stores. That’s undoubtedly “beneath his pay grade”, but the impact that makes to his staff is hard to measure.

I think Simon Sinek said it best in his book “Leaders Eat Last“:

“Leadership is not a license to do less; it is a responsibility to do more.”

You might have the ability to start doing less, but you owe it to your team to start doing even more.

Being the best talker doesn’t mean you have the best ideas

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This is something a lot of organizations struggle with – the loudest and/or best talker in the room often gains the approval of those around them, based solely on their manner. They may happen to have the best ideas, but those two things don’t necessarily go together.

In her book “Quiet“, author Susan Cain sums it up nicely:

“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

Of course, learning to speak more clearly and confidently isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, this is something I frequently work on for myself.

Just be careful not to put too much trust in someone solely because they were able to present their argument in a confident manner.

It can be wise to make sure the quietest voices are heard, because they’re often taking everything in and may have a great insight to share. I’ve seen in various meetings where Ali will do a fantastic job of noticing that quiet voice, encouraging them to share their thoughts, and it often brings a profound insight to the group.

Work on your speaking skills and polish your presentation skills, for sure, but make sure you have solid ideas to back it up.

Assume good intentions

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As digital communication continues to expand into different formats, it can be increasingly difficult to determine the intentions of the person you’re talking to. Of the various common ways that we might communicate, I think intention becomes more difficult to discern as you work down this list:

  • In person
  • Video call
  • Phone call
  • Email
  • Text message

On the other hand, you can essentially flip that list around in terms of the amount of attention that needs to go into the communication. As you go down the list, you are less invested in the moment. It’s not a coincidence that both vague intentions and invested attention go hand-in-hand.

The more you’re invested in a communication (you’re unlikely to be watching a YouTube video on the side while meeting with someone in person), the easier it is to determine their tone and intention. With any communication that isn’t in person, though, intention can be hard to grasp — even if you’re focused. So what can you do? Just assume the best.

In her book “Digital Body Language“, author Erica Dhawan simply says:

If tone’s the problem, assume the intentions were good and respond with facts.

Maybe you misread the tone and it came off sounding aggressive. Or maybe the tone was aggressive, but you aren’t sure. Assume their intentions were good, respond with facts, and keep things moving.

If you’re with someone and you often find yourself assuming that their intentions are bad, why are you spending any time with them in the first place? You may be forced into some of those situations (a chat with your boss, perhaps), but in most cases you can just walk away. If you can’t bring yourself to assume good intentions during a conversation, it’s time to evaluate why you’re having a conversation with that person in the first place.