A very interesting question was posed to me recently – ‘As a Leader, do you focus on your strengths and attempt to capitalise on them, or do you look to identify your weaknesses, and work on developing and improving these?’ A fascinating question, and one that I will ask you. What do you focus on? Your strengths, or do you focus on where your weaknesses are, and areas for improvement?

As I reflect over the last 10 years of my Sales Leadership career, my experience has been that many leaders actually do try and identify where their weaknesses are and seek to develop strategies to ‘plug the gaps’ and try to improve their leadership. And this guidance has often come from very well meaning mentors and leaders, who had been taught the same approach as they were developing their leadership career. The problem though is that often these leaders become less effective as their focus is too much on their shortcomings, with the end result being that their performance and results drop, as does that of their team. Continue reading →