Story Time…

I had two different passions in high school, football and marching band. More specifically drumline. Now if you know anything about football games, you know that the team plays the first half and then goes in to the locker room for halftime. There they get strategy and the new plan for the second half. The other activity that happens during halftime is the show put on by the marching band. So immediately you can probably tell were my struggle lies. For me, I played on the field for the game, and then mostly skipped the locker room time and played on the field for the halftime marching band show. It was not an ideal scenario, and I knew that soon I would need to make a choice. I will never forget the night I made that choice. It was a hard fought game on the field. I went out for a play and immediately got called back by the coach. He put his hands on my helmet and said, "Crane… you need to be more aggressive!". I heard him loud and clear. Mainly because he was yelling and had my helmet in a vice. So I went out for a couple more plays before I was called back by the coach. He proceeded to tell me again, "Crane… you just aren’t aggressive enough". It was in that moment that I made my decision. I heard what he was saying loud and clear. Football was a weakness for me, not a strength. I was forcing myself to slog through a weakness. I finished out the regular season and turned in my gear. I knew where my strength was. It was drumline. The picture on this post is me in my college drumline.

In leadership, you have a lot of choices when it comes to strengths and weaknesses. You can focus on your weaknesses and try to be more rounded, possibly at the loss of some strength, or you can focus on your strengths and find another way to cover your weaknesses.

Do you have something that just comes natural to you? Something you don’t even have to think about, but just seems to be your nitch. This is a strength! Now think about that thing that takes a massive amount of energy from you. The thing that you often procrastinate on. This is a weakness.

Take a second to write down a couple strengths and a couple of weaknesses.

Tips For Your Strengths:

• Find out what your strengths are!

• The book strength finder is a great start!

• Ask a friend or a confidante to look at your list and see if they agree.

• Be creative in using your strengths.

• Sometimes it looks like you won’t be able to use a strength, but if you get creative you can find a way to self a problem or overcome an obstacle that utilizes your strengths.

• Strengthen your strengths.

• Chances are, doing something that is a strength for you gives you energy. So go out there and grab some energy. Go to a conference, sign up for a webinar, have coffee with an expert in the field.

• Try new things.

• We can’t know that something is a strength or a weakness unless we try. I am constantly trying new things to see if I enjoy them. If I have a knack for them. If I think I could enjoy them in the future. Don’t be afraid to try something new to find more strengths!