In the previous mission, you assessed yourself against the top 10 leadership skills. But working on 10 skills at the same time is… well, not possible 🙂
So how do you choose the three you should focus on?
We’ll change the context here: Imagine a man on the dating market looking for a soulmate. Let’s say the five critical factors for attracting the one are:
1. Appearance
2. Values and character
3. Intimacy
4. Communication and being fun to be with
5. Financial stability
The guy needs to assess himself on these criteria from 1 to 10 and ask two important questions:
Why would someone choose me? What do I excel at? (Where am I a 10?) Imagine a guy who is a 6 on all five criteria. A good guy. But nothing really special. Perfect for the friend zone 🙂
Why would someone dump me? (Where am I below 5?) Now imagine a very good-looking guy — he’s a 10. Values and character — 9; intimacy — 8; financial stability — 9; communication — 1. A dream-come-true guy, but he can bore you to death. And this may be the biggest obstacle to forming a long-lasting relationship.
Now back to leadership. You should work on:
Your 9s and 10s (or the highest scores you gave yourself). Most people would say, “I’m already good enough here — let’s focus on other areas.” Wrong. This is your strength, the one that defines your leadership style and the reason people would follow you. Become even better here.
The areas where you rank below 5 (5 is the hygienic minimum). These are your weak points — the reason people might not respect you. Your goal here is not to reach a 10. Just bring them to a bearable level of 5 🙂
So how do you choose the three areas to work on? - Choose one or two from your highest scores and one or two from your lowest scores (where you rank below 5)
In the second part of this mission, we will introduce you to The Management Toolcase. Throughout our leadership careers, we come across books, articles, and videos that contain specific models for different leadership situations.
Yet when you need such a tool, it’s never there 🙂 We find it useful to collect the exercises and tools you encounter along the way in The Management Toolcase and keep track of which ones you’ve used.
