Play to Your Strengths and Delegate the Rest

Many professional and personal development plans focus mainly on building acumen in areas where we either are deficient or are not truly interested in.  That strategy can often lead to spinning wheels and not really improving your performance. Consider the professional athlete.  Michael Phelps does not try to win gold medals in every sport at the Summer Olympics.  He concentrates his time and energy towards the area where he has natural ability and the greatest chance of being successful. It may seem counter intuitive, but you often may get better results by playing to your strengths and delegating the rest.

Everyone has a natural aptitude in some area.  It could be math, writing, artistic endeavors, or any number of things that come up in the work place and during leisure time.  Often we don't know where our true passions and talents lie.  A major clue is to watch for signs of excitement when you are engaged in an activity.  If calling customers or interacting with your employees makes you feel energized and fulfilled, that is a great sign that people skills are something you are naturally good at.  Start making a list of things that are easy for you, things that make time fly for you, things that make you smile, and things that are interesting for you.  This is a great starting point for finding your strengths.

There are some other tools that can help you determine what your natural strengths are.  Multiple Intelligences has an on-line assessment tool that can help you find the areas where you have a natural tendency for excellence. A great book that helps focus your energies on strengths is Now Discover Your Strengths by Donald Clifton.  Several years ago, I used this book to hone my idea of where my talents were and where I could make the most use of them.  The lessons I learned after taking the assessments and reflecting on the results have enabled me to make a move to a new career and business.

We all know that your day is not only full of things you like to do.  There are still necessary things that have to be done in order for a business to run smoothly.  You can take advantage of services such as Administrative Business Consulting in order to remove those items from your day and keep you focused on your favorite things.  Outsourcing your administrative tasks can put more time in your day to focus on building those strengths in to an unstoppable force for good in your business.

No matter how hard you work on areas where you do not have a natural aptitude, you probably will never get beyond average in your performance.  However, by working on building your natural talents will allow you to reach higher and higher levels of achievement and success.  You will find your professional and personal life to be more rewarding and satisfying in the long run.