Feedback can be a wonderful thing; there are always golden nuggets of information we can use to reflect on our skills sets both soft and hard. I particularly like 360-degree feedback where your superiors, colleagues and staff get to give anonymous feedback on your performance.
Sometimes we hear things we would rather not and it’s a little difficult to not take it personally. The suggestions of areas to work on can feel like personal criticism. Well, it is! Feedback is all about us, about our professional performance, our strengths and weaknesses; it is personal!
The interesting thing is what we do with this feedback. Generally, we look at the overall result and then take a giant microscope and we focus in on those perceived weaknesses. We decide that we must work harder to build those skill sets. Why do we do that?
Would it not be much better to focus on our areas of strength and build them up? We could take things we do well to be things we are really awesome at. The weaker areas we can acknowledge and delegate, or outsource to someone who is great at them.
Where would your business be if you did that?
Where would your confidence and job satisfaction level be if you did that?
Great leadership begins with the self. We need to know ourselves well, our strengths and our weaknesses. We need to have the ability to acknowledge our weaknesses and delegate those associated tasks to others who are strong in that area.
When you know yourself well, you can view your areas of weakness without any negativity. They are simply not your strong suit because other areas are. Your strengths make you great at what you do. We can’t be great at everything; others need the chance to be great too!
Surround yourself with a great team who have strengths that are different to yours and utilise their talents so they can work on the tasks that they enjoy.
Let them be great at it!
