Here is an interesting article on career development and talent development, from Careerearlism.
It talks about the importance of focusing on your strengths, and building your personal and professional development from there.
While it is true that you should build on your strengths, I also think that you should know your weaknesses, and work hard to improve these areas. It is way too easy to just ignore our weaknesses, and it is also a predictable reaction of our mind. It is not fun, and our mind tends to avoid actions, contexts or events that would bring to light our weaknesses.
The key is: you should improve your weaknesses, within the general area of your strength. Don’t work on improving what is not in your ballpark. But if it is, then to master your game, and optimize your talent, you should work on those weaknesses.
As an example, you like doing public presentation, but your preparation is not always optimal. Somehow, you prefer to just improve it all. When doing presentation is your ballpark, and to maximize your potential, you have to learn to be the best presenter. This will not happen if you always avoid facing your presentation weaknesses.
This is true in sports, in music, and any professional areas.
To Reach Your Highest Potential, Start From Your Strengths
I just read a wonderful book called Unique Ability: Creating The Life You Want by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller and Shannon Waller. The book is about identifying what makes us each unique and then sharing that ability with the world. It is about discovering our unique gifts and then using those to create our livelihood and life’s work.
For me, reading this book reinforced what I’ve known and seen successfully demonstrated throughout my 16 year career as an HR coach and consultant; that is, when we work from our strengths and let our unique abilities shine through, we are most successful. By doing this, we thrive, and, in turn, those who work with us can also thrive. To reach our highest potential, we need to start from our strengths.
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