"When faced with deficiencies instead of strengths and inclinations, this is the strategy you must assume: ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others."
-Robert Greene, Mastery
He's writing about Temple Grandin, the Colorado State University professor who was diagnosed with autism as a child and has been a beacon of what is possible. And Greene's advice is this: direct yourself toward the small things you're good at and keep working on them.
His point, and it's worth restating: our tendency is to focus on what went wrong or where we are weak. That's the mistake. We are all unique. One of one. Literally nobody else in the world with your combination of DNA and experiences. And when we spend our time on our "deficiencies" or our "weaknesses" we are wasting our time.
It's our strengths that matter more. I'm not the first person to say this, but unfortunately, as a world, I'm not sure we're paying attention. We need to move those strengths to superpowers. Then work on the next thing. And the next.
Leaders need to be cautious here. We can fall into the trap of trying to make people versions of ourselves. We find the deficiency or weakness. Likely, because we are good at it, it's easy for us to point out the flaw. Then we commit a leadership crime. We try to make you a version of us.
That's not what we want. We want people to find their superpowers. To cultivate them. To give them permission to work on the one or two things they can be best in the world at. And then we need those brought into the team. That's the whole point.
The same happens in the hiring process. Our bias for people like us is strong. We see people with strengths that we value. Absent those, we think less of the candidate. Why do we do this? Fear mostly. It's very human. We are worried about what can go wrong.
Instead we should be spending our time on the strengths. Make sure they are a cultural fit, no jerks allowed, but understand their superpowers, or their potential superpowers. If they're still young, what superpowers lurk that they haven't found yet. Can you create the conditions for superpower cultivation?
We have teams for a reason. Puzzle the people together. Yes, I made puzzle a verb, and I really like it. Puzzle them together like power rangers. Volume isn't what matters here. The number of rangers isn't what we're after. We're after the right mix.
Red, Black, Blue, Yellow, Pink, and then Green (eventually White). All different weapons. And personalities. Disciplined, serious. Or fun and energetic. Or timid but genius. Or the thoughtful and grounded one. Bring their superpowers together and you get one big blaster.
Power rangers. That's what we want.
Take care. Be good.
-kv
