Strengths to Match your Goals
Are your leadership skills and strengths on par with your goals?
One universal set of goals for leaders is to improve on one’s strengths. What would happen if leaders also focused on improving their weaknesses? Would there be an exponential improvement of their leadership skills and the value of their expertise? Some researchers believe working on weaknesses goes a long way to improve leadership strengths.
Performers and athletes understand the value of cross–training. Actors improve their ability to sing, dance, and fence as well as how to act to present a memorable character to an audience.
Football players, especially linemen, take ballet lessons to be more agile on their feet. Basketball players learn mindfulness with team members to learn how to concentrate and stay focused in the moment.
Building a corporate culture takes more than having great ideas and expertise. The value of having ideas and expertise is greatly diminished when you can’t effectively communicate and explain your ideas and expertise to others. Expressing those ideas authentically, passionately and persuasively takes skill and training. Once your communication skills are on par with your goals, your leadership skills will be on par with your goals.
Unfortunately, rather than put the time and energy into improving weaknesses the majority of leaders go with the traditional corporate rationale of “I’ll hire people with who possess the strengths to compliment my own weaknesses.” This is a partial solution at best.
As a leader, the key question to ask yourself is do you want to be a leader versus a manager. As Seth Godin puts it “Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.”
Outside of their area of expertise, effective leaders need to be Creative, Communicators and Collaborators. I called those the three C’s necessary to be a great leader. Cross-train to improve your leadership three C’s by contacting me.
As a coach, trainer and consultant, Larry Blumsack partners with people and organizations on the move and those already there to accelerate their communication, presentation and speaking skills to be on par with their ambition. Through one-on-one coaching and group training Larry helps leaders and aspiring leaders elevate their presence and communication skills to influence more people, sell more products-services-ideas and inspire others more successfully than they ever imagined.
Larry is the bestselling author of Face-to-Face is The Ultimate Social Media and founder of Zoka Institute and Zoka Training®. Zoka Training® — Mind/Voice/Body/Mindfulness in sync — is the result of Larry’s 45 years as a coach, acting teacher, actor, voice-over artist, theater and TV director/producer, radio & TV commentator and show host, speaker, trainer, serial entrepreneur, and syndicated columnist. Larry was a founding member of the theater department at Northeastern University.
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