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Leading with Your Strengths

Written by: Les Brown

Article Overview: Making a difference starts with banishing negativity from life. Changes happen when we start focusing on our achievements and surrounding ourselves with people who support rather than disparage us. As they have unique perspectives to offer us, we, in turn have unique strengths that they need. This is what I call 'social economy' — we 'supply' them what we have to offer and 'demand' that they offer to those in their circle their unique best.

Leading with Your Strengths

Last night, I sent e-mails to a number of our friends and colleagues. When I tried to send one of them, the e-mailer choked on a bad address. I got flustered and had to re-send the item. Only after I watched it disappear from my "Out" box did I realize that the second copy had gone on without a subject line. This was followed by the usual self talk: "What a dumb thing to do!" "Now what are you going to do?" "People will think it's spam and delete it before they read it!"
If I spent half as much time congratulating myself on the things I do well as I do criticizing myself for minor slip-ups, I'd have a sore arm from patting myself on the back. Not to worry: personal history tells me that's not about to happen. So, in this reflection I want to think about my strengths.
The point is that so much of what we do in the line of change is so negative! In spite of all I have learned about myself and how the world works, I still focus on trying to fix what's wrong -- and feel guilty about having so many areas of my life that still need work. All the literature, as well as all my personal experience, shows that progress comes, not from fixing what's (supposedly) broken, but by focusing on what I'm doing right.
The flip side of that coin is that I can accept that I can't do everything perfectly. That's where you come in. There's an old saying that goes, "I can't; but we can." If I really want to make purposeful change, I have to take that seriously and be willing to do what may be the toughest thing in the life of any professional: ask for help. Appreciating my own talents, knowledge, and skills is only half of it. Appreciating that I have people in my life who are willing and able to offer their time and energy non-judgmentally to add their value to my work is vitally important.
I know that I have talents, knowledge and skills that my friends and colleagues can benefit from, too. Being available for them is a critical life choice. This give-and-take of strengths I call "social economy": the law of supply and demand applied to team efforts. It maximizes our individual strengths and minimizes our individual weaknesses. When it's present, purposeful change becomes turbo-charged. That's what I want in my life for today.

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Article Tags: colleagues, critical life, dumb thing, eco, flip side, life choice, literature, personal experience, personal history, purposeful change, reflection, slip ups, sore arm, spam, spite, subject line, talents, toughest thing, ups



Related Forum Posts
Re: How to Promote a MLM Business? - I have to agree with several of the previous posts here. Having your own site so that you can get it ranked is a big one. Also, as stated above, using a "passive" recruiting style works really well. Leading by example, people will naturally want to follow you over time if you prove yourself a leader. Bottom line, if you are promoting your opportunity or products, you are losing sales. About 85% of the population hates to be sold. Promote YOU, build relationships and let the business fall in place after that. Bill


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