We’re often encouraged to play to our strengths—and it’s sound advice.
As an emerging leader, those strengths have helped you build your reputation. They’ve enabled you to grow, develop your expertise and progress in your career.
It’s often that success that brings you into leadership in the first place.
But leadership can create an unexpected challenge.
The qualities that helped you succeed as a specialist in your field aren’t always the same qualities you need as a leader.
Your problem-solving skills make you invaluable, but as a leader, they can leave you jumping in too quickly instead of allowing others to find their own solutions.
Your high standards drive quality, but can lead to overthinking and hesitation when broader decisions need to be made.
Your reliability means people trust you, but can result in taking on too much yourself.
Your independence and ambition have helped you progress, but can make delegation difficult.
None of these strengths are the problem. In fact, they’re likely the reason you’ve been successful.
The challenge is learning how to apply them differently.
Leadership isn’t about abandoning the qualities that make you good at your job. It’s about using them more strategically to allow your impact to show through other people.
This is something I often explore with leadership coaching clients.
Together, we identify the strengths that have fuelled their success and consider where those same strengths may be creating friction in their leadership.
Because the qualities that got you here still matter.
You just need to channel them differently.
I’ll leave you with a question to reflect on:
Which of your strengths is helping you most as a leader—and which might be getting in the way?