Career
Pathways
Developing Strengths
It takes very little effort to move away from something that you currently do well, to something that you can do better. Here lies the difference between being just “good” at something and being “great”, or even “the best”, at something: devote more time to your greatest strengths, so that “your good becomes better and your better becomes the best”. Yet in the race to become “great”, instead of building on our strengths, we begin to believe that true “greatness” comes from learning to convert our weaknesses into our strengths. This however is a wrong approach for several reasons.
Followers of this line of thinking believe that a weakness can be converted into a strength simply through willpower, discipline, dedication and by acquiring the necessary skills and competencies. What these people tend to forget is the element of motivation – the difference between what is merely a weakness (lack of skills, which may be rectified) and a limitation (lack of motivation, which cannot be cured). If it were simply a matter of insufficient skills, the weakness can eventually be cured by acquiring the necessary skills and gaining the necessary experience. However, if there is no motivation to cure a particular weakness or capitalize on a particular strength, this motivation cannot be acquired – and there is very little chance that weakness will ever be removed. The best that can be expected of such people is mediocrity. Thus the most practical approach to achieving greatness in a particular field is to focus your attention on developing your individual strengths, rather than working on removing your weaknesses.
In summary, the key to achieving greatness is to discover what your motivations and then to build on them. Only then can you discover not only what you will excel at, but also what you will enjoy doing – and achieve job satisfaction in the true sense of the word.
