Working from your strengths
In his book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, renowned management consultant Peter Drucker dedicates a full chapter (Chapter 6) to managing oneself. The chapter opens with these questions: What are my strengths? What is my contribution? What are my relationships and responsibilities?
Drucker focuses on working from strengths. However, your strengths may sometimes deceive you. Why? Simply, because they come so naturally and easily, you devalue or overlook them. If it is that easy to do something, you tell yourself, there must not be much value in it – except, of course, for the person who does not have this particular strength and finds the task at hand very difficult to accomplish without it.
Weaknesses, on the other hand, include skills that do not seem natural to you and are difficult to improve. A funny thing happens when you have to work hard at improving on a weakness. The more you focus on the weakness and try to convert it to a strength, you begin to place too much value on that weakness. You tend to believe you already have converted that weakness into a strength. At the end of the day, focusing on that weakness just holds you back and saps your energy. Do not waste your time on weaknesses since they do not serve as a solid foundation for outstanding performance. Instead, learn, recognize and understand your strengths, then work from them. After that, find individuals who balance out your weaknesses and support your strengths.
Utilizing the Kolbe ATM Index
The Kolbe ATM Index and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator help determine how these tools can effectively help you create this million dollar business.
People are different in fundamental ways. To achieve the business you envision, surround yourself with the right mix of people as advisors, employees and peers. Their personality profiles, instinctual styles, interests and values should complement yours.
Since determining a good fit is a multi-dimensional exercise, begin by examining the role played by instincts and feelings, also called “temperament play.” To best understand instinctual style, use the Kolbe ATM Index (www.Kolbe.com). This tool provides an insight into the actions, reactions and interactions which allow individuals and groups to thrive and shape their own destinies.
The mind is multi-dimensional, with three dimensions at its foundation. These dimensions are thoughts, feelings and instincts. Knowing your instinctual style – or, in Kolbe terms, your modus operandi, or MO – enables you to make better decisions. Kolbe’s instinctual styles include the fact finder, the follow-through, the quick start and the implementer.
What you learn about your personal instinctual style will help reduce conflicts, improve communications, expand effectiveness, enhance personal awareness and increase healthy behaviors. Understanding personal style, therefore, enables you to focus on your strengths. While no one’s MO is better than the MO of anyone else, knowing your dominant style will help you better understand why you do what you do, as well as help you find people with complementary MOs. This concept supports the notion of the power of two, which will be discussed later.
Adding the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI)
However, you must also understand your psychological, or affective, makeup. The MBTI is an excellent tool for this. Myers-Briggs offers a look into sixteen different personality types. These combinations include the thinker or feeler, the sensor or intuitor, the judger or perceiver, the extravert or introvert.
First, understand your MBTI type. There are four main dichotomies that form your type:
- introversion/introspection
- intuition/sensing
- thinking/feeling
- judging/perception
Each of these four pairs contains opposite characteristics. Your personality type consists of one from each of the four pairs. For example, you might be considered an “INFP,” which means your personality traits are introversion, intuition, feeling and perception.
I suggest you take the Myers-Briggs Personality Test to learn more about yourself. Once you learn your specific personality type, you then can seek those with complementary styles in order to attain your long-range success. A good source of information about the MBTI is the book, Please Understand Me, by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates.
Join us in our next post Hatching Your Million Dollar Business Idea: The Power of Two. If you cannot wait for the posts and articles check out my book on YouTube, Amazon or visit us at Satori Inc. and “awaken your possibilities”.
