The Reflective Leader. Alan Smith

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      5. Know your weaknesses

      Jo was constantly frustrated. She was a natural visionary, who could see how the business could develop. She would dream up a new idea before breakfast nearly every day. Her colleagues used to dread her arriving at work with yet more brilliant schemes, while they were trying to implement the plans that she had brought in the previous week. The big problem was that her ideas seldom came to fruition.

      Jo took some of her colleagues away for a day to talk about the future. She told them about her frustration that she was making so little progress. Jo already knew that her ability to have big ideas was one of her strengths. However, her colleagues helped her see that she had two major weaknesses.

      First she was hopeless at prioritizing. Her daily bright ideas were exhausting her colleagues and dissipating their energies. She needed to work with them to sift her creative ideas and agree on the one or two that were really going to make a difference that year. She had to learn to keep quiet about all the other creative ideas that were swilling around in her head continually.

      Second, she had to acknowledge that she was an ideas person, not an implementer. She needed colleagues who could think through the implications of her ideas. As a result she appointed a colleague who, when he had been given a task to do, had the talent and ability to work out how to implement it.

      It is more pleasurable to explore my strengths than to have my weaknesses exposed. Yet it is a leader’s weaknesses that can have the most devastating results for an organization. We can all think of individuals whose uncontrollable temper has resulted in good people resigning rather than be bullied; or the leader who can never take a difficult decision if it means they are going to be unpopular; or the person who decides to employ someone not on ability but because they like them. There are also leaders who have an inbuilt need to appoint people who will always be relied upon to say what they want to hear.

      All of us have weaknesses. The difference between a good leader and a poor leader is that the good leader knows their weaknesses and does not allow them to dominate. Instead they think carefully about the extent to which they can develop their skills and abilities in their areas of weakness. They are also willing to appoint strong people around them who have the gifts to compensate for their weaknesses. They build a team which brings in the strengths that the organization needs.

      But there is also a more fundamental point here. Few of us enjoy working with someone who is so competent that they know how to do everyone else’s job. Such individuals leave us feeling as if we are not really needed. We wonder if we have a role in the organization. Of course, in reality there are very few people who are truly omnicompetent (only those who kid themselves that they are).

      Gregory the Great, writing in the sixth century, speaks of two dangers for a leader. One is that they ‘seek to be loved by their people more than they seek truth’. He notes that for some leaders the desire to be liked by others prevents them taking unpleasant decisions. This may be fatal for the long-term thriving of any organization. The second danger is that they bully and ‘terrify them into submission’. Such bullying may get things done in the short term but eventually the best, most highly motivated people will move to another organization and we will be left with a weakened team.

      Good leaders are those who are sufficiently secure enough in who they are that they can be honest about their weaknesses. They are strong enough to know they have to build a team which compensates for their weaknesses.

      One of the most common weaknesses for a leader is the inability to change the way they work as their responsibilities grow. Early in their working life they may have been successful because they were hands-on. But if they continue to attend to the daily minutiae they will not undertake the essential planning and oversight for the long-term growth of the organization. They have to trust others to do the things that they used to enjoy doing. Instead, they have to keep focused on the big picture. They have to delegate tasks to colleagues and not interfere. This transition takes courage, self-knowledge and determination.

      Some leaders fail to adjust their working style to fit their age and experience. Few people in their fifties have the same amount of raw energy they had in their twenties. Conversely, if you have been learning and reflecting you should have a great deal more insight and wisdom in your fifties than when you were in your twenties. Some leaders confuse energy and wisdom. They try to keep working with the energy of a 20-year-old when what the organization requires from them are the insights from a lifetime of experience.