Focus on Your Strengths, But Don’t Completely Ignore Your Weaknesses!

Do you have a weakness in some area of your life that you are avoiding dealing with? Are you hoping that by ignoring it and focusing on your strengths that you might never have to deal with it? As you’ll see from our NFL friends, that may not be the best strategy…

This past weekend the Saints of New Orleans bested the Vikings of Minnesota in the game of football. As a result, the Saints get to play in the Superbowl in Miami and the Vikings get to go hibernate in the Minnesota tundra.

The interesting thing is that if you look at the stats, it really seems like the Vikings dominated that game.

• Time of Possession: Vikings: 36:49; Saints: 27:56
• Total Yards: Vikings: 475; Saints: 257
• First Downs: Vikings: 31; Saints: 15
• 3rd-Down Efficiency: Vikings: 58%; Saints: 25%

So if the Vikings dominated almost every category, why did the Saints win? Because the Vikings dominated every category except for one:

Turnovers.

Minnesota committed five turnovers – 3 fumbles and 2 interception. Even if you’re not a football fan, you can probably guess that handing the ball to your opponent five times is not a “sure fire success strategy.” One of the interceptions happened in the last two minutes with the game tied. Had that interception not happened, the Vikings had a very high likelihood of winning that game. Instead, the game went into overtime where the Vikings lost.

Even though the Vikings controlled most of the the game, by screwing up one area five times, they lost the most important stat: total points.

The lesson we can learn from the Vikings is this: it doesn’t matter how awesome you are in how many different areas; if you mess up little things in even one area, that can completely derail your success.

There’s a common personal development statement that “you make more progress focusing on your strengths than on improving your weaknesses.” For the most part, I think that’s true, IF the weakness is at least at a baseline level of performance. If not, you better improve your weakness up to a point where it’s not holding you back.

Do you consider yourself a “bad writer”? Ok, no one’s saying you have to write articles, a blog, or a book. But you better have enough grammatical sense to write a coherent email.

Think you’re an excellent leader but you hate having difficult conversations with the people you lead? That’s surely going to be an issue.

Do you give great presentations but occasionally make an off-color or inappropriate remark? Guess what the audience (and decisions maker) is going to remember, every time…

Hate the phone? No problem; don’t cold call and focus on email and face to face communications. But you better be good enough on the phone to connect with a prospect when they call you.

Are you a “really nice person” 95% of the time but 5% of the time you snap at people “when you get stressed?” Sorry, that 5% will label you waaaay more than the 95%.

Often people will avoid working on their weaknesses because a) it feels bad and b) it’s a pain in the ass. They then use the self-help bromide of “focusing on strengths” as an excuse to stick their head in the sand and complain about their lack of success. That’s just silly.

The formula is relatively simple.:

1. Figure out what you want to achieve
2. Identify your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to achieving that goal
3. Objectively and honestly decide if those weaknesses will hold you back
4. If so, do whatever training, learning, practicing you nee to get them up to at least a baseline level
5. Then, focus your energy and time on leveraging your strengths

This should be far easier for you than it was for Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings; you don’t have eleven giant men attacking you in an attempt to screw you up!

About

By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+

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