Key strength development

Grant Leboff: Pete, one of the things you talk about in the book is key strength development.

Pete Wilkinson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Grant Leboff: I think it’s something that some people have never thought about before, so I’d just like to ask you what is it and how do you do it?

Pete Wilkinson: Okay, so what it is, is understanding that everyone has different strengths and we all have weaknesses. When I was at business school some of the education and some of the development was around working on your weaknesses. I think that’s inherently flawed. I think if you’re really rubbish at something, I don’t see the point in spending a lot of time and money becoming average. For me it’s far better to delegate those things. What I like people to do is think about what are they really strong at and invest their time and money in becoming better at the things they’re already strong at. I joke and talk about Frank Sinatra. Frank would never ever sell tickets. He wouldn’t serve the pints and he wouldn’t put the tables away. Frank would come, he would sing and he would split.

In a business I think what the tendency is, is certainly when you’re starting you have to do lots of things, but as quick as you can, as your business grows and as you grow, you need to be thinking more about what am I really good at and building your business around that, and having your team to take care of the things that you’re not very good at. If you’ve got weaknesses it’s far better to delegate those and really look to multiplying and developing your strengths.

Grant Leboff: How does one go about starting to evaluate those kind of things? Most people have a reasonable idea, I suppose, the things they’re good at and they enjoy, but how does one start to assess, “These are the things I really shouldn’t be doing”?

Pete Wilkinson: Yes.

Grant Leboff: That takes a bit of honesty, doesn’t it, as well?

Pete Wilkinson: Yeah. You’ll have people, we could name business leaders who are very, very successful and there are some areas they’re just not very good at, but what they’ve done is, they’ve got somebody who is world class at that. I think you can get these profiling studies that people do do. There’s different methods of how to profile what your key strengths are. I think for me, I know when I’m working on my strength because it’s easy and I’m comfortable and I want to do it. I know when I’m working on my weaknesses because I find it laborious, I find it difficult and I’m always looking for something else to do instead of this thing. If you’ve tasks that you’re always looking to try and put off and procrastinate over, sometimes they are things you are not very good at. You can go and find somebody who is excellent at that and they do it really well and it frees up your time.

Grant Leboff: How do you evaluate the difference between not bothering with the weak things you’re weak are and try to become average at them, which I agree with you? Then the danger is never going out of your comfort zone.

Pete Wilkinson: Yes.

Grant Leboff: Because, “Oh, this is uncomfortable so I should delegate that.” Sometimes, actually you do need to get out of your comfort zone, don’t you? I know that’s not what you’re saying.

Pete Wilkinson: No.

Grant Leboff: How do you …

Pete Wilkinson: Differentiate.

Grant Leboff: … differentiate.

Pete Wilkinson: For me, I like to move comfort zone in relation to your strengths. You know you’re good at something, you know that’s the thing you should move your comfort zone to become better and grow at that, whatever that might be. Take speaking for example. You might only speak in front of small groups. The comfort zone shift could be speaking to large conferences of 5000 people. That’s going to scare you. That could be frightening. That could need a different set of skills, but if your strength is speaking, then you need to look at that. For me, if you’re working on your strengths, you understand what they are, and that’s the things that you feel you can get a flow in, that’s the area you should identify where your focus should be and allow more and more time in a working week for you to work on your strengths.

When I manage to delegate all invoicing, when I manage to delegate all business travel, when I manage to delegate all finance and book-keeping, I’ve delegated all of that stuff, which took about 8 to 10 hours a week off me, I’m building that time on my strengths. As a result of that, my life in business is just getting better and better.

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