From Episode 63 of the Complete Leader Podcast
After decades in leadership, I’ve noticed that often what you become most passionate about are the things you realize you didn’t do quite right yourself.
Thinking back on the first couple of decades of my leadership career, I was always trying to fix myself. I had trouble with time management, so I’d take every course and read every book on the skill that I came across. I was always focused on those things that I thought were keeping me from becoming the complete leader.
But eventually I realized I was doing it all wrong.
It’s not that you should ignore your weaknesses, but in spending so much time and focus on fixing them, you often forget about developing your strengths—even take them for granted. You think that since something comes naturally, you don’t need to work on it.
When I realized this was a desperational leadership mindset (when you’re always trying to fix yourself) and shifted my focus to an aspirational leadership mindset (when you ask yourself, what you are capable of if you focus on developing your strengths to their highest level) it had a huge impact on the rest of my career.
What is aspirational leadership?
An aspirational leadership mindset is all about discovering your unique potential and making the commitment to see how far you can grow that potential.
Personally, I look back on the skills that came naturally to me, like communication. I love encouraging and promoting others, and discussing the things I truly believe in. But I never thought about taking a class or finding a communications coach—I was already comfortable doing these things!
It’s all about balance. I didn’t stop taking those time management courses because I still needed to develop the skill and learn to use the tools. I did, however, reevaluate how I spent my time so that I could work on both my weaknesses and go deeper into my communication skills.
When I think about developing strengths, I am always reminded of an old friend, Glenn Basham. Glenn was 12 years old when he took up violin as a hobby. For professional violinists, this is far too late a start, but Glenn fell in love with the violin and would practice four, five, six hours a day as a teenager. He both recognized his natural affinity and had the passion to grow his skill as much as he could.
As an adult, Glenn became the concert master of the Naples Philharmonic and a professor of violin at the University of Miami. He is such a great example to me of what it means to organize around your strengths—and proves that it’s never too late to get better.
Often when I work with other leaders, they get frustrated when they aren’t where they think they should be. I always tell them, all that matters is that you are further than you were yesterday. And there are methods to build your strengths and your mindset of aspirational leadership.
Three ways to become an aspirational leader:
- Get to know yourself and your strengths better. You have to be willing to take an honest look at yourself and admit what your true strengths are. I think sometimes we can be afraid of thinking about what we could be really good at, but if we can embrace our strengths we can then ask ourselves how we can use those strengths to create value for others.
There are many ways to increase self-awareness: you can read books about developing yourself or take online assessments. Commit to going deeper in your self-evaluation and self-reflection. - Let others help you. Ask them what they think your strengths are, particularly those that come naturally to you. These are great clues about your natural talents and offer another way to learn about yourself.
- Have the courage to embrace your potential. Once you know your strengths, ask how you can build on them again and again. Read more about what you are good at, take courses, find thought leaders, mentors or coaches. As you work to be an aspirational leader and become the best version of yourself that you can be, you must have the courage to stick it out, to fail and get back up to reach your full potential.
You have to be intentional in doing these things and asking yourself what more you are capable of. I believe that after we’ve spent the first 16 to 20 years of our lives being told what not to do—as a child the ratio of no’s to yeses is high and while we are in school we get papers back with everything we did wrong marked in red—we have to unlearn that focus on weakness. But we can reprogram our thinking to focus on aspiring rather than fixing.