Imagine Yourself

Thisarticle is my continuing efforts to bring to you the findings from my good friend Mr. Jay Niblick's Genius Project.

A Simple Problem
The problem he found was that the vast majority of people assume there is no real difference between natural and acquired talents. They assume that all talents can be developed through intelligence, training and hard work. They fail to appreciate just how fixed these neural networks really are. Instead, because they assume that all talent can be acquired, they set about identifying what talents they need for a given role and then start trying to develop them. They take training programs, they read books, they attend seminars, they get mentors and coaches and they do a whole host of things to try and develop their talents for their job.

What happens, though, is that they manage to develop only the acquired talents. They don't change their neural networks. They don't create new natural talents and so in the end they become one of the most knowledgeable sales people in the company, but they still don't think like the great sales people. They become the greatest knowledge expert on the planet for the rules of accounting and workings of mathematics, but they still don't think like the great accountants do. They become the pilot who knows more about the technical manual than the engineer who wrote it, but they still don't meld with the controls and become one with the plane as an extension of their own body – like the great pilots do.

By assuming that training and development will develop all the talents they need many people, and organizations, fail to understand that they are only building up half of the picture. When the other half of the picture isn't there (the natural talents half) they wonder why they continue to struggle; continue to be emotionally unengaged and continue to lack a certain passion for their work. Unfortunately, when people fail to achieve the level of performance they want, the solution is often even more training and knowledge.

People spend a great deal of time trying to put in talents that are just not there to begin with, and aren't going to be put in regardless of the effort. They exert a tremendous amount of energy attempting to change themselves, when in reality it is the job that needs to be changed. That's what geniuses do.

What Geniuses Do
The most successful people he studied, those who people refer to as geniuses at what they do, don't make this simple mistake. Remember the two things that Geniuses do. First, geniuses possess a superior level of self-awareness, so they know what their natural talents are (and are not). Second, they are also very authentic, so they find ways to achieve success that rely on these talents. They find jobs that rely on their natural talents, not their ability to develop new talents. They find roles that play to their strengths, not their weaknesses. When they do this, they find that the work comes more naturally and success more frequently.

The most successful among us don't spend their lives trying to become the A+ student in that difficult class we mentioned in my last post. Because they understand that they are who they are, instead of wasting energy trying to become something they are not, they invest it in trying to better apply that which they already are. In a sense, they stop trying to put in what God left out and instead work with what he put in! This frees up a lot of extra energy. Imagine how much more successful you would be if 100% of your energy was directed towards just using your natural talents.

By being as authentic as they are, geniuses are free to pour all of their time and energy into doing more of what they already do naturally well, instead of being distracted by trying to develop what they don't already have. This is not to say that Geniuses don't grow or continue to refine themselves. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, one of the Geniuses interviewed for this study, says of refining himself, "I constantly try to refine the strengths I have, but that doesn't mean I try to develop things I don't already have. One danger in the message of only focusing on strengths is that people may perceive this to mean that they don't have to improve at all. Rather within their natural talents they must always improve. The key is to find a role that depends primarily on what you do well, and then continue to get even better at it through practice, awareness and acquired knowledge and experience."

If they need to acquire new knowledge or experience, Geniuses definitely do. But if the job calls for natural talents that they don't possess, they either find another way to do that job, or they find another job. That's what the very best do, and that's what these posts are all about. Remember the formula for 5th level performance; Self-Awareness + Authenticity = Success.

The key to being "true", however, is not about identifying weaknesses so you can turn them into strengths, which is what most theories on personal improvement would argue. The Genius Study shows that the best among us take a very different approach to their weaknesses. While the best do indeed seek to understand their weaknesses very well, they do not do so for the purposes of fixing them, rather they use this knowledge to create objectives, goals, and roles that simply do not depend on those weaknesses. Such thinking runs counter to conventional wisdom, which teaches us that the key to greater success lies in eliminating weaknesses. Geniuses wouldn't argue that eliminating weakness is the key to success, but it's how they eliminate them that is so different. Instead of eliminating the weakness, they eliminate their dependence on it. There are lots of things Geniuses do, so let's let them tell you what some of those things are. Here's what just some of the geniuses Jay interviewed for the study had to say about their natural talents, self-awareness and authenticity when it comes to being successful.

Marshall Goldsmith on Self-Awareness
"I think I am very aware of my strengths. My strengths are being very good at coaching others – specifically the teaching aspect of coaching due to my love and passion for teaching. I love teaching and I'm very good at it because, in part, I am very good at taking complex concepts and organizing them in a simple way that is easy to understand and therefore one of the gifts I have for teaching others. My job is helping others set realistic goals, evaluating them in those
goals, and teaching them how to reach them better. As for my weaknesses, I am not good at managing people, but I just don't do it. I have lots of weaknesses, I just don't do them and I have no interest in correcting them. I constantly try to refine the strengths I have, but that doesn't mean I try to develop things I don't already possess. One of the keys to my success is that I've been able to find a role, or create one actually, that depends primarily on the natural talents I already possess."

Francis Hesselbein on Authentic Passion
"Peter Drucker would say all the time, ‘your job is to make the strengths of your people effective and their weaknesses irrelevant!' I think I've always been very aware of my strengths and weaknesses. When I am at my best it is when I am focusing on what I do best, when I am less effective it is when I am ignoring those talents but choose to carry out those practices which rely on my non-talents. The thing to keep in mind is that success is a matter of how to be, not how to do. People like you and me have never had a job. They have been called to do what they do best. Warren Bennis calls it the leader within or the spirit within.

When you are doing things that align with your talents and strengths, you don't consider it work. It is your passion. I think the purpose of a good leader is to mobilize people around a passionate mission, but it has to be in their way to reach their passion. Great leadership requires the best and to be the absolute best you can't be false, you can't be trying to be great at something you aren't
naturally great at."