Know Your Limitations

As the great Harry Callaghan said 'A man should know his limitations'. I'm sure a new enlightened woke Harry would have extended that to all humans and not just a subset, but putting that to one side his point is a hugely important one. There is always a tendency to focus on growing/increasing knowledge/gaining experience and rightly so - that is how we grow. But without understanding your limitations, you are only looking at half the equation.

In my younger years I was going to be

• Prime Minister
• A rock star
• Open the batting for England at Lords
• A professional footballer
• A professional Rugby player
• Rich and famous

However, I had no political allegiance, I am a hopeless musician who can barely hold a tune and whilst a decent golfer, or was, am bang average at football, rugby and cricket and actually discovered I don't really care about wealth that much. I understood my limitations and whilst I enjoyed lots of sporting good times, it was clear my dreams were just that and not backed by any talent - I made the best of what I had. While I am sure I could have improved at all of my sporting and musical interests, and indeed did; pursuing those ambitions at the expense of things that I did have some level of innate ability would have been extreme folly. I suspect most of us had similar dreams but realised they were just dreams. Why then are many people unable to make the same connections in their career and accept and manage their limitations?

I have had the honour of working with some truly brilliant people in my career but bizarrely (at least in my mind) a small number of them were really clueless about their weaknesses. Maybe that was lack of self-awareness or, more likely, they saw admission as a sign of weakness. One person in particular springs to mind, who shall of course remain anonymous, who in my opinion had the potential for true greatness in business but couldn't understand/accept their deficiencies. They never, in my opinion, fulfilled their potential.

Some of the problem comes from the mantra around focusing on your strengths and keep away from your limitations or minimise them. Well of course you should aim to get better at what you are already good at, but ignoring your limitations, or worse not knowing what they are, is a profound mistake.

Starting with understanding your limitations. Some people are just intuitive and know them early. If you are one of those people great. If you are one of those people who feel you are good at everything, sorry, but you are probably delusional. There are a few polymaths, but they are rare and you are likely not one of them. Reminds me of the (probably) apocryphal story about the boy who upon being made to take guitar lessons complained that Jimi Hendrix didn't have lessons. 'Ah yes, said the teacher, but you are not Jimi Hendrix'.

So once you accept you likely have limitations you need to figure out what they are? But perhaps you haven't yet figured that out. What do you do? This is where good leadership, assessments and coaching come in. If you are working for a good leader, they likely will be working with you on not just your strengths but maximising your weaknesses. As a supplement, or as alternative, you can use assessment tools such as DISC. This is also where an external coach/mentor can be tremendously valuable - someone who can look beyond day to day performance and view the bigger picture.

So you've done that and now understand your limitations. What next? Hope for the best but plan for the worst is never a bad way to think about the future. But if you ignore your limitations, then you are just planning for the best.

Ignoring your limitations can quite often lead to excessive stress and anxiety. You spend all your time trying to manage the things you are poor at and end up neglecting the things you are good at!

Failure to manage your limitations can also lead to excessive risk taking. Depending upon the context and your role that can be a very bad thing which will impact you and others. Think about examples where you have been in a situation where you are not just pushing a boundary (which is in reality growing your capabilities) but you are heading into a place that is a little scary. Of course that can be true of pushing a boundary; but if you know your limitations and what is in front of you is pushing you into a dark place, because you realise you are in your limitation zone, then you need to think about backing off and/or managing the problem effectively.

Of course you may find others 'pushing' you into situations that you are not comfortable because they hit your limitations. These don't need to be major things. I am a morning person. I find it difficult to work late (even if I want to) - it has always been a limitation for me. If I find and accept I am being put in a situation where that is necessary, of course I can do it, but it has significant impact on the rest of my work and my work-life balance. Hence I try to manage that as best I can. It means saying no on occasion and indeed sometimes saying yes, but being clear about how, when and what I am going to do to manage the fallout. Might sound a trivial example, but actually if you are like me, this is a big issue.

Knowing your limitations is particularly crucial when building teams. Good leaders who understand their limitations use that knowledge to ensure they have balance in their teams. Having people around you who complement you by having strengths that are your weaknesses, is key. Personally I am prone to making very quick decisions (with varying levels of success) so I always try to make sure that I have someone who is more risk averse who will constantly be the one who says '....but, have we considered....' Drives me slightly mad but I know if I surround myself with people like me, we'll get more things wrong than right. It is soooooooo easy to surround yourself with like-minded people. Don't.

During performance discussions, I generally focused more time on the weaknesses of individuals than strengths. Building on strengths is relatively easy. Asking people to confront their weaknesses, improve on them, but most importantly learn how to manage them and turn them to their advantage is more valuable, and in my opinion more difficult. Unless there is serious underperformance, I have always felt that performance reviews should be forward looking and spend the majority of the time on how people understand and manage their limitations. Of course talk about the positives and how to build on them, but greater benefit comes from covering the areas of weakness which quite often are associated with innate limitations which need to be managed effectively.

My advice is be aware of your limitations, get help/coaching to understand them better and then while improving at the things you excel at, pay special attention to limitations. If you are in a leadership position be really thoughtful about the composition of your team. Make sure it is balanced by consideration of strengths AND weaknesses.