Polish your gold, don’t clean your copper
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D Muralidharan | Mar 03, 2009
Most of us have been taught to work on our weaknesses, and overcome them assiduously!
Here is a contrarian thought. Ignore your inherent weaknesses, and spend all the time and resources in honing your inherent strengths. You will do a lot of good to you, your life, and work.
Many contemporary leadership lessons speak of the need to do what you are good at. Decisively identify your strengths and do something which is pretty close to your core competence.
You have a handful of a mix of shining gold coins, and some rusted old copper coins. You would do good to just ignore the rusty dusty copper coins and just put all your time and energy into how well you can exploit and make good of the gold coins on hand. Wasting your time and energy on cleaning and making the rusty copper coins is really not going to move you up in life. You would be wasting your time. And the cardinal rule in managing time is – putting time to its best use here and now. So, your time is not going to be best used by cleaning the rust and dust of the copper in you. Just do not give any importance to the copper in you (weaknesses) and hone your gold (strengths) now and always.
Most of us have been taught and guided to convert our weaknesses into strengths… and believe me, if you have ever worked on any of your weaknesses for some considerable time, you will testify to the fact that it takes a lot of time with disproportionately small or miniscule results. So just for the sake of wishful thinking that we can completely overcome our weaknesses and even convert them into strengths (?), we expend so much energy… at times to the point of being frustrated. By doing this, we lose precious time and energy – precious resources that should have been used in focusing on the positives within us and getting to the point of perfection.
So why are we speaking and doing so much to ‘work on weaknesses’. Many business leaders I know have opined that working on weaknesses is not a great personal growth strategy. More can be achieved by getting more time and focus into what you are good at.
Pick up three to five things you are good at and make them to the point of being great! See the difference it makes in your life.
Filed Under: Miscellaneous
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Interesting.
Sounds convincing! One must not let the frustration of failing to improve on weak areas weigh down on oneself. Honing your skills, sharpening your tools in the core competency areas may be a better option.
How true !!! using your pencil after sharpening it is better than getting your useless refill working .
very true, it is really great one and during this economy slowdown it is more apt.
The story was a very good analogy for looking at parts of our personalities, our talents.
Perhaps something to consider. Pure gold is too weak to even withstand the day-to-day pressures of being jewelry. Imagine that– too weak to look pretty.
Also, copper coins are still minted. At 1.2 cents a copy, the US copper penny is still being minted.
Here’s another way of looking at things. Perhaps instead of trying to segregate our strengths and weaknesses, we could consider integration instead.
There are good reasons for taking a systems approach to self-improvement. Capitalize on your strengths, sure! But do not ignore your weaknesses. A rocket’s greatest strength is its power to escape gravity and propel itself into space. But, introduce a single flaw in a critical location– doesn’t even have to be a big weakness– and the whole thing self destructs. Its greatest strength becomes its greatest weakness– and the whole system fails.
People are that way, too. A passionate leader without the self-control to govern his/her emotions will leave a wake of destructive relationships, and finally self destruct. Take that same passion, introduce self-control, and suddenly that “weakness” is converted to strength. It would be as if those “copper coins” were suddenly discovered to be more valuable than gold. With the right penny, that’s true (ask a coin collector.)
Black Hills gold uses various alloys of gold to produce color and variation in the jewelry. The alloy plays to the strengths of gold, becoming jewelry, but also integrates the “lesser” metalls into its character to resolve those “weaknesses” into a strength. That is, the jewelry withstands the day-to-day pressures of form AND function.
As project managers, we understand that there is an INTEGRATION knowledge area which applies to all projects– including projects of self-improvement. Play to your strengths, but integrate (not overcome) your weaknesses into the total package.
Think of it as a critical path milestone. Sometimes, it is a very small, relatively small effort that changes the entire course of a project. It could be as simple as knowing someone’s name. After all, if you look at classical left-right brain thinking models, a great artist ought not be great at math. We know that if that artist cannot balance their income and expenses, however, the artist cannot be successful. Even if it never becomes a strength, the artist will have to improve his/her weakness to be able to do some math, even if they hire an accountant to do most of it. Knowing that little bit of math at the right time, however, can never be replaced with a contracted accountant.
Same with leadership, personality, and people. Play to your strengths, acknowledge and integrate your weaknesses, but don’t let your copper fall by the wayside… even your greatest weakness can be converted to a strength.
Just remember– to be a person of integrity, you have to integrate yourself. Segregating your weaker parts without spending some time to improve them may leave you like the rocket– all that power, and ultimately self destructing.