Focus on your Strengths or Focus your Weaknesses?

In today's episode, we dig into an important question: Should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? Let's explore the advantages and challenges of each approach and discuss how this decision can impact your personal and professional growth. join me as I try to help you to figure out the best way to direct your efforts for success.
 

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Welcome to today's episode, where we dig into an important question. Should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? So let's explore the advantages and the challenges of each approach and discuss how this decision can impact your personal and professional growth. Join me as I try to help you figure out the best way to direct your efforts for success. So, should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? My answer is yes. You should. My mom always said that she was trying to bring me up as a well rounded person with a good general knowledge across a wide range of topics, or as my dad put it, a mind of useless information. What does that have to do with the question? I believe that you need to focus on your strengths, but build on your weaknesses over time. That way, you become stronger all around. So let's look at 10 key strengths that leaders need. How do you rate your ability in each one? Maybe list the ones you rate below 5 and be honest. Communication, number 1. Communication's obviously a very, very important skill for any sort of leader because you cannot get things done properly if you cannot get your message across and help people understand what it is you need them to do so that you can achieve your mission. So the number one thing is communication. If you're having trouble communicating with people, maybe take some time out to read some information about that. Go and watch some videos on that topic. Learn how to communicate better. Sometimes it's just as simple as making a list of things and then going through the list rather than trying to talk off the top of your head. It's one of those areas where practice makes perfect, but also there is some key skills. I know when we're using radios, we talk about pitch and volume and all sorts of things like that to make sure that we get the message through clearly from 1 radio to another. And it's no different when you're communicating face to face online via an email. It really doesn't make any difference again. So, make a list of bullet points and then go through those to make sure you get your message across. The second one is emotional intelligence. Emotion is not something many people like to talk about. It's something that interferes with your ability to work rationally. But emotion is important because we're dealing with humans. And the fact of the matter is humans are emotional things. So you need to make sure that you build on your emotional intelligence. And that means getting in touch with your inner self. That's the say, get to know how you react to people, how you react to someone questioning you of, you know, what your decision is, how you feel about things and how you feel about other people. Sometimes you've got people who are introverts and they don't really like being around other people. Other times you got extroverts and they love being around other people. But whichever you are or whatever combination you are, it will affect how you emotionally relate to the people you're around. So building your emotional intelligence is also important. And again, it's not something that's necessarily learned through living life. Sometimes it's worth taking time to go and read a book about emotional intelligence. There's lots of content on that topic that you can look up online or you can just go to a bookstore. Either way, building your emotional skills will set you in good pace for when you're dealing with other people. Number 3 is decision making. Decision making is one of those key elements. As a leader, often we have to make decisions rapidly, but we don't wanna react to a situation where you need to respond to it. When we react to situations, we make decisions without getting all the information, thinking about what we need to do, putting a plan in place, and then going for to go into action. Decision making is is is super important as a leader because in the end, that's really your key job is to make decisions affecting your team. You need to practice decision making. That means looking at problems, making decisions about them, being able to justify those decisions, and also being able to explain to people clearly the steps involved in the way you got to that decision. So decision making is always going to be a super, super important part of being a leader. Next, we have problem solving, which is a little bit different to decision making. You've gotta solve the problem before you make a decision about how you're going to fix the problem. So problem solving means getting together with people, finding out what the issue is, developing a list of all the underlying areas that are causing the problem, collecting information and ideas that might help you solve, then working your way through a series of problems or steps until you get to a solution. Problem solving is, is essential because everything in life really comes down to solving problems. The people who get paid the most are the people who can solve problems the best. It was something that was taught to me very early in business. It's not that people couldn't do what I did. It's just that I was much quicker at doing it, and I could solve their problems more efficiently than they could. So they were happy to pay for my services. Delegation. Delegation is an obvious one and yet so many people who tell me they're a leader don't delegate. They do everything themselves because they feel that as the leader, it's their responsibility. It's not as a leader. If you are not delegating tasks, you are not doing your job properly. People have specialists area, delegate that task to that person and let them go and do what they do. You have to develop the leaders of tomorrow. So unless you're delegating jobs to them, they never get the chance to lead either. And it's a key factor in the growth of any organization or business. You need to be able to look at things and delegate them out and entrust your people to be able to complete the task. Don't delegate to someone who can't do the task. Or if you want to delegate to someone who maybe doesn't have the experience, pair them up with someone to help them. But delegation is important. You cannot take on everything yourself. If you do, you'll burn out. It's very simple. No leader survives on their own. Adaptability is also another key that we need to look at. In my world of firefighting, we need to adapt quickly. It is the key element of fighting fire. Fire's change. The weather changes. The terrain changes. The people you've got available change. The amount of water you've got to put fire out changes. It is always constant change. So rather than thinking that things might change, we accept upfront that things will change and we have contingency plans in place. It should be the same for you in business. You need to be adaptable. You need to expect things will go wrong. In fact, you probably need to expect that everything will go wrong and make sure that you have contingency plans in place. If you're like most businesses, you tend to work in 1 vertical. So it's not like you're working across a whole range of things like, say, carpentry, electrical, and plumbing. You're probably only doing electrical or plumbing. So therefore, the changes that you will see are more the changes that you see are more predictable because you have experience in that area. So you can put plans in place for those changes when they happen, but you need to be ready for them to happen. Nothing ever goes perfect. You might have one good day and then you'll have 5 bad days, or you might have 5 good days where you have 5 problems that you've got to adapt to. Either way, it is just normal for things to change. A leader needs to have visionary thinking. You need to be able to have vision of what you're trying to achieve, what you're trying to grow as an communication. As a business owner or a business leader, you need a vision of where you are going, where your people are going, and where you are taking them. Just being able to say, we're trying to achieve is one thing, but being able to vision what you want to do and get people involved in that vision so that they can see it too is a major thing if you want to be successful. Being visionary means going beyond the normal. It also means looking to a future that is different and better, and things have changed from the way they're done today. Often you see people come into an organization and they look around, they go, oh, this is wrong and that's wrong. I'm gonna change everything and everything falls apart. And that's because they're trying to change things that have been placed for many, many years without understanding them. That's not being a visionary. A visionary has an idea. And then they look at what's going on around them. They look at what they need to change and whether it actually needs changing or whether their vision needs a little bit of tweaking. A bit rethinking is really, really important for a leader. You need to see more than what other people see if you're gonna lead them towards a better future. Integrity is absolutely essential. If you can't be trusted, it's a waste of time as a leader. The key element is you must be able to be trusted. People look to you, they follow you. They expect you to lead them in the right direction. When you can't be trusted, when you don't have integrity, it destroys people and it can destroy whole organizations very quickly. We're not just talking about the reputation of a business, for example, we're talking about future businesses. There's nothing worse than having worked for an organization that actually lacked integrity. And then you go somewhere else and they go, we can't hire you because you worked for them and we know how they operate. So integrity is absolutely essential as a leader. At least if you have integrity, you can hold your head high and say, I did the right thing. It's a key element. 2nd last thing in the list is team building. Team building is absolutely essential. We need to work together to build our teams. And as the leader, we are part of the team. Remember above the team or below the team, we are equal with the team. It's our job to lead it, but we're one of them. If you put yourself above the team deliberately, they will see the gap. Now it doesn't mean as the leader, they don't respect you or see a gap themselves, but operating as such, you should be able to switch in and out of your team as the leader. If necessary, go in and fill a place in the team if someone gets injured or is sick or can't turn up that date. And that's really key to team building. I think you need to be able to actually swap in and out. So being the leader is important, but being the leader and not being able to be part of the team is super, super important. Getting teams that work together is a lot of fun. It's a lot of hard work. But once you build a good team, they are so reliable. You can ask them to do anything. You can trust them to do anything. On the fireground, it the best thing. When you've got a good teams working with you and you can just set a task and walk away and know that they'll report back what's going on, if they have any problems, and what they've achieved, It is awesome because you no longer have to be thinking about that because the team is capable of taking care of it. Of course, you check-in with them. Of course, you praise them and you tell them what a great job they're doing. A great team can stand alone and they can run on their own. Last on my list is conflict resolution. It is the major part of being the person in charge. When you are the leader, you are dealing with personalities and problems between personalities. So dealing with conflict resolution is a normal part of every day for any leader. I still think it probably takes up 90% of your time when you're a leaders. But once you've broken down the conflicts, once you get people working together or you move people around so that the system's working better and and and flowing properly, there won't be as much work to do. Good teams have good flow. So there's not as much conflict to be dealt with. That said, there will always be conflicts from time to time that you do have to deal with, and you need to be aware of them. That means you need to rely on other leaders you're working with to report back to you. You need to be talking with your people, not just sitting in an office somewhere locked away from them. You need to be out there and doing it with them so that they can talk to them. So you can tell from their tone of the voice that they're having a problem, or you can see where they're having a problem. It's interesting when I'm at the station sometimes, go out and work with teasing up your rolling and bowling hoses or doing burnover drills or whatever it happens to be. It doesn't really matter. But once you get in there with them, you suddenly notice, oh, that person's skills have actually really increased. This person probably needs a bit more work in this area. But if you stood back and you watched them all roll and bowl hose, you would say, oh, well, they can all roll and bowl. And it's really simple, but it's not necessarily as true when you're close to them and talking with them and watching closely and listening to their questions. And often, they'll take the opportunity too to ask you a question about something. So conflict resolution, there's lots to it. It's not as simple as just sitting people down and talking to them, finding out the problem. Often, it's about solving problems before they even really happen because you know what's going on with your teams. Research has shown that the following, 10 key areas most leaders are their weakest. So we've talked about the ones in which most people are strong. Which of these do you see as your most pressing? First, we have listening. Gotta be a good listener. Empathy. You need empathy. You need to be able to empathize with people when they're going through things, understand what they're feeling in the process of their own growth. You need patience. You you can't be impatient as a leader. People take time to deal with problems, to grow, to get better. Whatever it is, you need patience because everybody changes at their own speed. Delegation. There we are again with the strength that we need, but it's often one of our weakest areas receiving feedback. Oh, nobody likes negative feedback. We all like positive feedback. So why is that? Well, it's human nature. Okay. But it's often a weakness. Some people cannot take negative feedback or any sort of feedback, quite frankly. They don't want anybody saying anything that peers like they're questioning them. Self awareness is the next one. Be aware of what's going on around you. Be aware of what you're doing. Often, we do things without thinking. Sometimes we need to step back and actually be aware. Okay. Well, no, that was a bit harsh or stop before you even do something and think, well, let's just rephrase that before it comes out of my mouth. Next is work life balance. Leaders, healing work life balance is really important. Too many people work themselves to the bone, See it all the time. You must have balance in your life. You must have family or friends and sport or staying fit and spirituality. If you want spirituality, all these elements make for a balanced person and a balanced person is a happy person. You need cultural intelligence. People don't understand different cultures. And that comes from being around other cultures, reading about other cultures and learning about them. Understand that there's big differences in how you were brought up compared to the next person. Even if you think they come from the same culture as you, because you don't know what their historical culture is. So get with it, learn a little bit more about people's cultures, get to know your people and their family situation. Just that little bit so that you can be a little bit more intelligent when dealing with them. Stress management, I think that comes in a little bit towards work life balance. Stress management in itself is being able to deal with stress in the moment as well as afterwards or before. So preparing for stressful situations that we go into a fire, we know it's going to be stressful, but within the time you're on the fire, you also have to manage the stress of people being in danger and doing things and making sure everyone's where they're supposed to be so that everyone's safe. And then afterwards, dealing with the stress of the feedback that comes from that. So stress management's a huge one. As I've always said, I like to meditate. It doesn't take long using an app. You don't really have to understand meditation. It will talk you through it, and it's very simple to do. And lastly, consistency. You need to be consistent in the things that you say and do. It's simple to jump around and change viewpoints, but you can't be one day saying, this is what we need to do, and the next day turning around and going, no, we need to do the opposite. Sometimes you're in a situation where that is the case, but I I try and avoid it. You can't be flip flopping all over the place because then people, again, comes down a little bit of trust here, but people don't know what to expect from you. And it's very, very frustrating. The best thing about leaders is consistency because you know what you're gonna get. You know when they're in charge. You know how they do things. You get to know how they want things. And for your people, that's important because they get to recognize your consistency. Now, People change and they get new ideas and, and suddenly find that information you, you have to flip from what you were doing. But if you explain the situation before you do that, it makes it a lot easier for people to understand that this isn't something inconsistent with what you've done in the past. It's case of policies change and you need to change this. So that's a whole nice big list of weaknesses, and I'm sure there's a few there that you have that you need to deal with, but have a think through them and see what works for you. Thanks for joining me today as we navigated through some intriguing questions about whether to focus on our strengths or weaknesses to enhance our personal professional growth. I hope this discussion sheds a little bit of light on how balancing your strengths and areas for improvement can make you a more effective leader. Remember, as my parents taught me, being well rounded and continually learning, adhere to being knowledgeable and prepared. How did you measure up with all those lists? Think about where you might need to work and set goals to develop those areas. If you found today's episode helpful, don't forget to like, and subscribe to the Ladies in the Life podcast. Your support helps us keep bringing valuable content your way. Until next time, keep striving to excel and grow, lead wisely and lead well, and of course, run towards the flames.