4. (Building Great Careers) Play to Your Strengths
“This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.” — Swami Vivekananda
In my previous blog, I covered the idea of treating career journey as a project. In this blog, as I continue this series on “Building Great Careers”, I recommend taking up lines of career where your strengths can provide you natural advantage and even more importantly, where your weaknesses do not hold you up.
A few years back, I used to lead a large organization — it comprised more than 1900 employees. I oversaw a number of senior leaders who ran various groups and functions. One such leader had an excellent analytical bent of mind. He was quick with numbers; he was good with identifying and quickly narrowing focus on issues that needed most attention. However, he could not motivate or inspire his team members and peers naturally — he could not connect with people easily. Empathy was simply not his thing. He was aware of this shortcoming. On an occasion at work, when certain team members were being felicitated for their extraordinary contributions, I observed that he was seriously trying to make connections with his team. He was less formal and tried to be humorous. His seriousness in effort was obvious but I could also note that his attempts came across as desperate. In our subsequent one on one, I advised him that he is better off playing to his strengths. He was quick to appreciate my point and it definitely helped him.
“Don’t push your weaknesses, play with your strengths.” — Jennifer Lopez
I believe that any strategy that involves converting your weaknesses to strengths may provide middling results at best. A weakness is a weakness for a reason — it is an intrinsically weak quality — facing it constantly can be demoralizing. Efforts to turn it around, assuming it can be turned around in the first place, can be daunting. With time, the enormity of the effort could overwhelm one psychologically and one may end up abandoning one’s ambition altogether.
On the other hand, leveraging your strengths could enliven the journey, progress will be relatively easier to come by. With time, progress will compound on itself resulting in extraordinary results.
“If you play to your strengths, you’ll turn in a superior performance. Just be yourself.” — Yuki Kure
You will be able to leverage your strengths only when your pursuits rely on your strengths. If your goals depend on your weaknesses, it will be an impossibly uphill battle. This means you take up goals which are consciously determined in the context of your strengths and weaknesses and not those that are handed down to you (or those that seem like it) by your boss, friends, family or society.
Not everyone is a natural people leader, nor a scientist, a politician, a technician, an accountant or a doctor. It makes sense to invest time in exploring and discovering those pursuits that leverage your strengths, while, at the same time, challenging enough to keep you motivated. There is no point hurrying this discovery process. I know a lot of people including myself who did not put this kind of investment up front and consequently suffered long years of internal struggle.
“Everyone, regardless of ability or disability, has strengths and weaknesses. Know what yours are. Build on your strengths and find a way around your weaknesses.” — Brad Cohen
But there probably is not a single pursuit out there that completely suits one’s personality. So long as a pursuit involves interaction with the world, it will involve things outside of one’s control — a good possibility that it will engage one’s weakness as well. This is why it is important to develop the ability to work around one’s weaknesses.
For example, while one of my strengths has been developing careers and people, I used to struggle with “politics” that one necessarily ends up having to deal with — particularly as one moves up the corporate ladder. I realized that I could not afford to let this weakness get in the way of my progress. I developed a way to deal with it without having to compromise any of my values. I developed savviness enough to recognize “political” acts — I was able to anticipate and offset them. My inability to deal with “politics” ailed me for a long time resulting in tepid career progress. Only after I realized that “politics” is a natural human quality and my progress required me to get around my discomfort with it, I was able to make good progress.
Bottomline
“Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself — not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.” — Peter Drucker
I remember years that I spent trying to convert my weaknesses into my strengths so that I can do well in my career. My logic was simple and solid (or so I thought) — my strengths were not going anywhere — they were going to remain my strengths anyways. If I convert my weaknesses into strengths as well, then I will be unstoppable. I have a whole lot of lost time to show for it. I don’t quite remember who told me or where I read it but somehow, I came upon advice that playing to your strengths is a great way to go forward. This does not mean you ignore your weaknesses — you ensure that your weaknesses do not trip you up. You work around your weaknesses. My career galloped once I took this advice to heart. Even more heartening was the quality of growth — it felt that I was facing positive and exciting challenges. As a bonus, there was no more heartburn at the end of each day.
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Thanks for taking time to read this. In this newsletter, I share my learnings that could help you improve your decisions and make meaningful progress on your goals and desires. I share stuff that I have personally experienced or experimented with. If you find this newsletter worthwhile, please do share it with others — of course, only if you do not mind it.
A bit on my background
I worked in India and the USA with most of my work experience with large global organizations. My last corporate role was the Head of Technology for “Treasury and Trade Management Solutions” for Citigroup South Asia cluster. At Citi, I set up from my Business Unit and grew it from a team size of 1 to over 1900 Citi employees in a span of eight years.
I quit Citi in 2021 to focus exclusively on my interest area of improving decision making. In the last 2 years, I studied this topic closely and developed a training course to systematically improve decision making ability. I’m also an Investment Advisor (RIA) registered with the Securities and the Exchange Board of India (SEBI). As an RIA, I analyze and prepare financial plans to help people achieve their financial goals.
I have done MBA in Strategy and Finance from Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota and B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
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