If I could go back to when I first started a business, I wish that I had known more about myself.
There are some assessments that have been absolutely invaluable to my growth and the growth of my business. They’re worth their weight in gold and are probably one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Anytime we’re hiring within my organization — and for any new firm that we work with — we’ve used the Kolbe, PRINT, and Wonderlic.
One of the best things that you can do as a leader is to learn more about yourself.
You can go around asking people for feedback, saying, “Hey, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses?” They’ll give you some ideas, but they may not always be accurate or objective. Their answers could be based on their personal dealings with you, or they may not have full context.
What a lot of these assessments do is shed light on how you operate, and they provide you with a lot of clarity that you may not otherwise know. Knowing these things is one of the most valuable things you can do.
If you want to really exponentially scale yourself as a leader, grow your organization, and make more money, start taking these types of assessments seriously.
Consider the Kolbe in particular, which is basically a strengths assessment on how you operate as a human being, what types of things give you energy, and what you are predisposed to do. It doesn’t mean that you cannot do particular things. It just gives you insight into how you align yourself with strengths in the role that you’re in. I would say that knowing this gives you a blueprint on yourself. It helps you design a life that is more effective, more fulfilling, and more successful.
This is not hyperbole. If you know your strengths, you can intentionally play to your strengths. You don’t have to try to develop your weaknesses. Then you can create an organization that complements those strengths.
Take the things you’re good at. Those are the types of things you should focus on, and for all the things that may not be your strengths or may not give you energy, there’s going to be somebody else for whom that is their strength. That’s the person that you can hire or delegate to, and you can create this amazing organization where you are focusing on the things that give you energy that you’re really good at — and everybody else is also focusing on the things that give them energy and that they’re really good at, which could be a weakness of yours but a strength of theirs.
If you can hire and attract those people, life becomes amazing. Your organization becomes aligned.
Many times, when you find somebody who is exhausted, burnt out, and frustrated, I think it comes as a result of them spending a lot of time doing things that are not their strengths. They end up working against themselves.
For example, if my job was to build IKEA furniture all day, I would be the most depressed human being in Atlanta. It’s not that I can’t do it. I can follow instructions, but building things doesn’t come naturally to me.
For somebody else, creating spreadsheets or analyzing data sets may be part of their role, but it may work completely against them and then zap their energy. But for somebody else, they get excited at the thought of that.
The more you can learn about yourself, the more you can gain a roadmap for how you can structure your life — and that type of knowledge is absolutely invaluable.
The more self-aware you are as to what your strengths and your weaknesses are, the more leverage you can put on those strengths.