Turn Your Strengths Into a Superpower
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
In this episode, I explore how to turn your strengths—and the strengths of your team—into a superpower. I share a personal story that shifted how I lead, define what a true strength really is, and offer practical tools to help you stop wasting energy on your weaknesses.
What Happens When You Focus on Strengths
Imagine the impact if everyone on your team spent at least 50% of their time using their strengths.
Leveraging strengths increases performance, engagement, and fulfillment—for you and your team.
Experience from running a staffing firm
Kim excelled at recruiting but dreaded sales calls.
Julianne was energized by outreach but struggled with evaluating candidates.
By aligning their roles to their strengths, both team members became more effective and happier.
What Is a Strength?
A strength is not just something you're good at.
It’s a combination of:
Natural talent
Practice and development
Energy and enjoyment
True strengths put you in a state of flow and elevate your work.
Why Focusing on Weaknesses Leads to Mediocrity
Spending too much time on weaknesses:
Creates stress and burnout.
Weakens your strengths from lack of attention.
Often results in only marginal improvement.
Shifting focus to strengths leads to excellence and fulfillment.
How to Handle Weaknesses Effectively
Delegate tasks that drain you to people who enjoy them.
Improve to acceptable levels if delegation isn’t possible.
Reevaluate your role if most of your job isn't aligned with your strengths.
Discovering Your Strengths
Use assessments like:
StrengthsFinder 2.0
VIA Character Strengths Survey (www.AuthenticHappiness.org)
Ask yourself:
What gives you energy?
What do others come to you for?
What do you do that feels easy but others find difficult?
Helping Your Team Do the Same
Encourage team assessments and reflection.
Ask team members what energizes them and where they lose track of time.
Adjust roles to better align with strengths and minimize burnout.
Use team strength mapping to identify gaps and collaboration opportunities.
Investing Time in High Performers
Don’t default to spending most of your time with underperformers.
Mike shares a pivotal story about being overlooked as a high performer.
Prioritize coaching, challenging, and developing top talent to retain them and maximize results.
A Team Exercise to Leverage Strengths
Identify top 3 strengths and ask:
How am I using this strength today?
How can I grow this strength further?
What can I delegate or change to spend more time in this zone?
Coach each other, brainstorm solutions, and hold each other accountable.
Book Recommendations
Performance Breakthrough by Mike Goldman
StrengthsFinder 2.0
Now, Discover Your Strengths and First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham
Final Challenge
What’s one strength you can better leverage starting tomorrow—and how will you do it?
Imagine the impact if your entire team spent most of their time in their strength zone.
Thanks for listening!
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What would your business look like if every single person on your team was spending at least 50% of the time on their strengths? What would your life look like if you were spending at least 50% of your time on your strengths? And if you are already doing that's great. Let's figure out how to spend more.
'cause I'd argue the more time you and your team spend work leveraging your strengths, working on things that are strengths, not only does your team performance go up and your business you know, skyrockets, but. But it's more than performance. It's about the level of fulfillment that you have that your team has, the level of enjoyment you have at work.
I could remember, back a number of years ago when I owned a small staffing firm and I had two people working for me. I had Kim and I [00:01:00] had Julianne, where my staffing supervisors now, the. Job of the staffing. Stu supervisor, I almost said stupid advisor. the job of a staffing supervisor was a pretty standard job.
Their job for both of them, for both Kim and Julianne, their job was to. Make sure that they understood the requirements of our clients for what kind of people they needed or what kind of person they needed for a job. Their job was to recruit those folks, make sure they showed up for work, and then, part of their job about.
10 or 15% of their job was do helping me in doing some sales for me, doing some outbound calls to try to get clients outbound calls to try and get me some speaking out there to promote the business. Well, [00:02:00] a few months into Kim and Julianne working together. I noticed, actually, I noticed this very quickly, but didn't do anything for a few months.
Noticed that whenever Kim had to pick up the phone to make a sales call, the phone seemed like it weighed 500 pounds. And of course if you've ever done any outbound selling, it's, you get a lot of rejection and you get some people that hang up on you and some people that aren't very nice to you. Well, for Kim, not only did the phone weigh 500 pounds, but every time she got any kind of rejection, she looked.
Nauseous, it was just not good. And she would, you know, we'd get to the end of the day and I would check in and see how everybody did. and it got to the point that she always had some fire drills, some excuse as to why she didn't get to her sales [00:03:00] calls that day. on the other hand, Julianne, who.
Wasn't as skilled anywhere near as skilled as Kim was at recruiting and evaluating talent. Kim was phenomenal at that. Kim could, you know, spend 20 minutes with someone on an interview man, and she just knew, she knew if we could trust that person to go out on an interview, go out and get the work done.
Julianne was not very good at that, but Julianne was the kind of person who could walk in a room full of strangers and walk out 20 minutes later with 10 new best friends. She was also the kind of person that had no fear of picking up the phone and making a sales call, and when she got rejection, she'd say, fine, you know, who's next?
So. It was pretty obvious to me that what I needed to do is leverage both of their strengths. Why was I trying to get Kim to [00:04:00] spend 10 or 15% of their time, of her time doing something she was not any good at? She had no natural talent for, she hated it. Literally made her sick, and it impacted,not only the time she spent.
On her strengths, but it impacted those strengths 'cause it kind of brought her whole her whole mindset down. It added a whole bunch of stress into her life. And on the other hand. I had Julianne who really liked doing that stuff, so it was kind of a no brainer for me to say, Kim, don't worry about it.
You do not have to make any phone calls anymore. We're gonna, we're gonna tweak your role and you don't have to make any sales calls. But Julianne, instead of 10 or 15% of the time, you're gonna spend 25 or 30% of your time making sales calls. They were both happy. They were both leveraging their strengths.
I know for me personally, I am so much more productive now that [00:05:00] I have built a team around me to deal with the stuff that I don't like doing that I'm not very good at. The stuff I'm good at is working with my clients. It's things like public speaking. I hope you think I'm pretty good at this podcast thing, but it's about clients.
It's about. speaking, it's about thought leadership, writing new books. but man, for a long time I was doing all my social media. I was doing all my meeting scheduling. I was doing all my bookkeeping. So since I've delegated that and started leveraging my strengths, I'm way more productive and my business is growing much bigger than it ever was.
So. My goal in this episode is to help you figure out how to better leverage your own strengths, your team strengths, and really maximize not only performance and growth, but fulfillment.
So let me next define what I mean by a [00:06:00] strength. The strength is not just something that you are good at. There are things that we are, we might be good at, but we hate doing.
And I wouldn't necessarily call that a strength because that activity, while we may be really good at it, it depletes our energy and it can burn us out over time. So it's not just something we're good at. It's also not just something we have a talent for. You could have a talent for something, but not really be spending any time honing that talent, working that talent, and that talent doesn't really become a strength.
So, so with strength is really those two things together. it's, or maybe it's three things. It's having a natural talent. That you work on. So it turns into something that's strong, but it's also something that you are, that's part of your job or part of your life. So it's not [00:07:00] just something, it's a talent.
It's a talent that you're putting to use and it's something that you enjoy that brings you energy. In fact, when we're working on something, I know when I'm working on something that's a real talent, things just. The I get into this flow state where all of a sudden two hours go by and I had no idea.
Two hours went by and I was incredibly productive for those two hours. I know when I am in front of a client, I have three hour workshops. I do, with CEO groups. I do full day workshops with my clients, full day planning sessions with my clients, two day planning sessions with my clients. And those fly by because I'm just in a flow.
Because I'm leveraging a talent, I'm leveraging a strength.
So let's talk a little bit about strengths [00:08:00] versus weaknesses and why we're even talking about strengths. So the whole idea is to take these strengths and instead of spending most of your time. Trying to fix your weaknesses or as it relates to you as a leader, spending most of your time trying to fix the weaknesses of your team members or spending the most of your time with most of your time with your weak team members.
All of those things have a negative impact on us as individuals, on our teams and on our business. So the problem with spending all that time on a weakness is really twofold. One is very often where we're weak in something, we're weak because we have no natural talent and because we're weak at it, we have no natural talent.
It's normally something [00:09:00] we don't enjoy doing. So by spending a ton of time working on that weakness. We feel stressed, we feel frustrated, we feel overwhelmed. And on top of that, there's not a, there's not a great ROI in doing it because what I have seen, and I imagine you have as well, is that when you are working on something you have no talent for, you're not gonna take that weakness and make it a strength.
it's very rare. What you're gonna do is you're gonna take that weakness and get it to the point where you're mediocre, where it's acceptable. So by working on all these weaknesses, we take those weaknesses and we make them acceptable. That's good. But if we're spending much of our time working on weaknesses and not honing our strengths, developing our strengths.
What happens is we're stressed. We're frustrated by working on the [00:10:00] weaknesses. The strengths actually get stale. Your strengths get a little weaker, and you wind up with mediocre. You wind up with stronger weaknesses and weaker strengths. That's mediocrity for you as an individual for your team members and your team.
We don't want mediocre, we want extraordinary, and the way we're gonna get extraordinary is by leveraging strengths. Now, what do we do about weaknesses?
we don't ignore weaknesses, right? This isn't fantasy land where I'm saying just work on your strengths. Don't worry about your weaknesses. There are weaknesses that are pretty important to the job you need to do.
So you've got some options. One option. Like I did by delegating my bookkeeping and delegating my podcast production and my,my calendar and my social media [00:11:00] is do your best to delegate your weaknesses, not just to pass your crap onto somebody else, but I hope when you look around you and look at your team, you see that there are things.
That are strengths for you, that are weaknesses for others, and likewise, there are weaknesses You have things you detest doing that you're not very good at, but there may be someone else on your team who loves that stuff, who eats that stuff up, who's really good at it. So partner with someone you know, whether it's a peer, whether it's someone that works for you, try to delegate those things that are weaknesses so you don't have to do them now.
If you can't do that, and there's just some part of your job that you just have to do, even though you're not very good at it, well then work at it, but work with a goal of just getting to an acceptable level. Don't try to make it a strength. I don't want you [00:12:00] spending all your time working on those weaknesses.
If you spend all, all your time working on your weaknesses, all you're gonna get is tired. Don't do that. So you can delegate or, change your responsibilities. Work with a peer partner with someone who's strong in an area where you're weak. Now there, so there's a third option. So the first option is partner with someone.
Second option is just get to an acceptable level. The third option, if you have a role where. 80% or 70% of your role is doing something that you don't have a particular strength for. you may be in the wrong role, and if you are the CEO, the owner of an organization, well good for you. You get a chance to change your role as much or a little as you want, but if you have a job.
And this is what you need to do. [00:13:00] and a good portion of that job is something you just don't have any talent for. While it's maybe a tough message, but you probably don't belong in that job.
So let's talk about some ways, some specific ways just to be pragmatic, that you can better.
Leverage your strengths, and it's gotta start with you identifying your own strengths. And I'm gonna talk about your team members as well. But whether you are a member of a team, whether you're the leader of the team, leader of the company, should start with you identifying your own strengths. two great ways of doing that.
if it's not. Brutally obvious to you what your strengths are, and it's not. Sometimes we need someone or something to hold a mirror up to us because those things that you know, your strengths, your natural talents and strains are normally things that come [00:14:00] easy to you. And because they come easy to you, you might think they come just as easy.
For everybody else can everybody do that? Isn't everybody comfortable walking to walking into a room of strangers and making 15 new best friends? No, everybody's not comfortable doing that. So sometimes you need someone or something to hold a mirror up to you. So there are actually two assessments that I really like.
one is called, Strengths Finder 2.0. That is, is a book called Strengths Finder 2.0. really good book to read. you know, there, it's a quick book to read. It's a little bit about strengths, and then it just defines all these different strengths. I forget how many, there are, 30, 40, 50 different types of strengths that they talk about.
But along with the book, it comes with an assessment you can take that I find to be pretty accurate, to help you identify what are your top five strengths. And it also gives you some ideas how to [00:15:00] leverage those strengths. The other one I really like, which you don't have to buy a book for,or buy an assessment, it's a free tool.
is something called VIA Character Strengths and the website is called
it's a website that was created by Martin Seligman, who is the known as the father of Positive Psychology, which is all about leveraging strengths. So taking either one of those assessments is I find to be really helpful.
Tell you what your top strengths are. Define them for you, even give you some ideas on how to better, better leverage them. the other thing is just you could reflect on your own strengths by, you know, asking, you know, what's something that comes easy to you, that others find difficult? What kind of work energizes you the most?
And then once you identify your strengths. Through an assessment and [00:16:00] or by reflecting or, you know, another way to do it is ask others, right? Ask your friends, ask your peers. Ask whoever you are reporting to, ask your team members and they probably have a better handle on your strengths than you do. And then once you find those strengths, start to,
Make some decisions start to brain, well start to brainstorm and then start to make some decisions as to how you could better leverage those strengths. How could you get to the point that you're spending 60 or 70% of your time leveraging those strengths? And I'm gonna share an exercise with you a little bit that's gonna, that's gonna help you brainstorm those things.
So.
Let's talk about team members. so as an individual, understand your strengths, take an assessment, reflect yourself, ask others, and then what could you do to [00:17:00] leverage those strengths? What you, what could you do to delegate those weaknesses? Or what could do your work on them just to get to an acceptable level.
Now, if you're a leader, it's a wonderful idea to help your team members. Identify their strengths. Encourage them to take, maybe as a team read Strength Finder 2.0 and have everybody take the assessment. maybe have everybody do the VIA Character Strengths survey
Sit down with your direct reports and help them understand what you see as their strengths.
Maybe ask them what kind of work energizes them. Ask them what they love in their role, what kind of work causes them to just lose track of time because they're in the flow. So, so help your team members identify their strengths and then coach them to. Leverage those strengths, help them understand and brainstorm with them [00:18:00] how they might better build on their strengths, provide opportunities for them to showcase those strengths to,to spend more time working on those strengths, you know, work with them on what.
What you together you might be able to do to modify their role. So they are better leveraging their strengths and not having to work so hard on their weaknesses. The other thing that becomes important as you, and again, I'm thinking of, I'm talking to you as a leader right now, the other thing that becomes important is.
who you are spending your, who you're spending most of your time with now. We tend to spend as leaders, we tend to spend most of our time [00:19:00] with the people that need us most with our lower performers. That feels like the right thing to do. Shouldn't we spend most of our time with the people that need us most?
Well, back in 1994, tell you a little story. Back in 1994, I was working for a company. I,got a job was in between consulting jobs with Accenture and Deloitte, where I spent first half of my career. And I got a job where I went to work for this company where I had to build a brand new department.
and after a year built a great team, built a nice revenue stream coming in, everything was going well. and I really wanted that next challenge. I was about 30 years old. I wanted that next challenge. I wanted that next promotion, but the company wasn't growing fast enough to provide that.
[00:20:00] And then my boss, gave me my annual performance review was time for my annual performance review. and on the annual performance review, I kid you not, were five words. Just five words. Keep up the good work. Keep up the good work. I've gotten better career advice from fortune cookies. Keep up the good work.
Didn't cut it. I needed a challenge. I needed some coaching. I needed something. I was 30 years old and at that moment I decided I was, I had to find another job. Now I understand my boss. Was spending a whole lot of time with folks that needed more help, that were lower performing, and that seemed to make sense.
But does it, you know, I want you to think [00:21:00] about this idea of strengths and weaknesses and equate it also to your higher performers and your lower performers as a leader. Should you be spending most of your time with your. Yeah, lower performers, your weaknesses or should you be spending most of your time with your higher performers, your strengths, and I would argue that the way you are gonna get the best ROI and the way, the only way you're gonna create an extraordinary team is by working with, continuing to develop, re-recruiting, challenging coaching your best people.
If you're, if you find yourself not able to do that because you've gotta spend so much time with your low performers, you may have too many low performers. Now, sometimes the best way to take care of a high performer is to fire a low performer, as harsh as that sounds. [00:22:00] You should be spending as a leader most of your time with your best people, because by the way, if they don't grow with you, they will grow with someone else.
They'll leave. Don't wait for an exit interview to find out why one of these folks left. Have a stay interview now and find out what it's gonna take so they never leave. Spend time with them. Some other things you could do as a team is, have everyone on your team take StrengthFinder or VIA character strengths and then map those strengths as a team.
Where's your team really strong? where do you have things that are really important to your team? And you have no, no one on the team with any natural talents or strengths there. It may help you understand the type of folks you need to be hiring. Moving forward will certainly help you understand how the team could better help one another.
The other last thing I'll say before I start to wrap up then an exercise [00:23:00] that I like to do, I promised you earlier, I would help you with a way that had an idea of a way to better,brainstorm how you and your team could best leverage your strengths. An exercise I do with all my leadership teams is I have them take one of these strengths assessments, then they come together as a team.
And they start out with some self-work. And the self-work says, for your top three strengths, how are you leveraging those strengths today? That's number one. Number two, what could you do to get even stronger in those strengths? What could you do to further develop those strengths? And then number three.
what changes can we make so that you're spending more time leveraging those strengths and maybe delegating away your weaknesses? So, so there's some really powerful questions that everyone [00:24:00] on the team works individually on, including the leader of that team. And then what we do is we coach each other.
Now, if it's a very small team of three people, you can just do this as a team. If you've got a team of six or eight or nine people, you may wanna break into coaching Diads or triads where you're taking the time to coach each other. Brainstorm as a group what you can do to better leverage the strengths to make your weaknesses unimportant because you're delegating them and not really needing to spend a lot of time on them.
That I find is a wonderful way. Not only to brainstorm, get some help and come up with more ideas than you could ever come up with on your own. but it also comes with a dose of vulnerability and more trust and understanding each other as a team. And it comes with a dose of accountability because now you can hold each other accountable [00:25:00] for leveraging those strengths and help each other leverage those strengths.
So just to recap, absolutely. My coaching is. Understand what your strengths are. Spend more time leverage your, leveraging your strengths much more time, leveraging your strengths and fixing your weaknesses. Whether that's you or that's the members of your team. It's gonna lead to greater performance.
It's gonna lead to, greater impact. It's gonna lead to higher excitement, higher fulfillment, more enjoyability. you're gonna retain your best people. I'd quickly give you some book recommendations and I'll leave you with the last. Challenge. So some books you may wanna read that do talk about strains first.
My first book, Performance Breakthrough, the Four Secrets of Passionate Organizations. One of the secrets is about leveraging strengths. So absolutely, very proud of that book. I don't talk about it nearly enough, [00:26:00] but very proud of that book. I mentioned Strength Finder 2.0,by the,oh, I forgot the name of the organization.
well, strength Finder 2.0. Go find it. and then Marcus Buckingham, who's the first author that introduced me to Strengths, has written some great books. First Break All the Rules is a great book. And then his second book is called Now, discover Your Strengths, also Wonderful books on that.
So what's one strength of yours? Maybe as an individual or if you're a leader, maybe it's a strength of your team, but what's one strength of yours that you can better leverage starting tomorrow, and what are you going to do to leverage that strength? Imagine if you are spending 60 or 70% of your time working in an area of strength.
How would that make you feel? How productive would you [00:27:00] be? Imagine if your team was doing the same thing. So I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. I hope I got you closer there today. Talk soon.