People Aren’t Well-Rounded, but Teams Can Be

As an organizational leader, I spend most of my time thinking about developing people and teams. It’s what I do. In this article, I’d like to tackle a myth that shapes how a lot of leaders think and behave.

True or False: People should be well-rounded.

Answer: False

What answer did you get? Many think well-roundedness is both attainable and ideal. It is neither. Why do we think this way?

For me, it’s my general educational upbringing. Just like many of you, I took a variety of school subjects and got decent grades on some subjects and less than stellar grades on other subjects. After reviewing my report card, I clearly needed to spend more time shoring up my weaknesses. I’d even go as far to say that I would have felt better getting straight B’s on my report card than a mix of A’s and D’s.

You also were probably well-aware of your few classmates that managed to get straight A’s while rocking their athletic endeavors simultaneously. Those people are the ones that made speeches at graduation. I am not one of those people. Growing up this way formed a worldview that has been difficult to unwind.

Focusing on strengths, not weaknesses

About 20 years ago, I read the powerful book, Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. This was the first edition of the popular StrengthsFinder assessment. The book defines 34 unique strengths and helps you identify which 5 are yours. That was revolutionary news for me. It’s as if there were 34 school subjects, but to succeed, I only needed to ace five of them.

A while ago, I wrote an article about my top five strength themes. If you are interested, check it out here.

The myth of well-roundedness

18 years later, Marcus Buckingham co-authored a new book, entitled The Nine Lies About Work. This is a fascinating read about so many things we as leaders get wrong in the modern workplace. I wrote a previous article about receiving feedback, based on two of the lies: #5: “People need feedback” and #6: “People can reliably rate other people.” Check it out here.

Lie #4 is “The best people are well-rounded.” Even though we are conditioned to believe the lie, I think we are all smart enough to observe reality. Consider the successful leaders in the world. Are any of them well-rounded? Most of them are exceptional at a few things and mediocre at everything else. Would anyone describe Elon Musk as well-rounded? How about Richard Branson? These leaders have developed their strengths and the world has noticed.

The practice of individual development

My team members have individual development plans and so do I. It’s really tempting to take assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. We check the box on our strengths and put our effort into shoring up our weaknesses, so we look good on paper. That would achieve the goal if the purpose of individual development was to become more well-rounded.

What if we managed our weaknesses so they didn’t derail us, but put our efforts into developing our strengths into superpowers? Then, by design, no one would be artificially well-rounded. No one would get straight B’s on their report cards. We’d all be differentiated and unique.

The well-rounded team

While I believe well-rounded individuals are a myth, I think well-rounded teams are the ultimate goal. I tell this to my team all the time: We all have gaps. But, when we pull together as a team and achieve great things, we all get to share in the success.

As a team leader, this accountability falls to me. It’s very easy for me to fill my team with copies of myself. Instead, I need to do two things:

First, I need to look across the strength mix of my team members and fill the gaps. Second, I need to look within myself, acknowledge my own gaps, and surround myself with people that fill them. As the leader, this responsibility is mine, but at the end of the day, I am just as incomplete as anyone else on my team. In that way, I am just another member of the team that I lead. I fill some gaps, and others fill mine. No one succeeds alone.

In conclusion, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all stopped trying to be great at everything ourselves, but instead joined forces with others? I think the answer is yes. I think many of you will agree. The trick is, can we put this into practice? We all have minimal time to spend on developing our people and teams. Use this thinking to guide your efforts and make the greatest impact.

Read this article on my blog site or listen to it on my podcast???

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