Everyone in any role has heard of mapping out their strengths and weaknesses. This is a great practice for everyone to help develop their skills and teach them where to focus the majority of their time.

 

If you have worked with your own strengths and weaknesses in the past then I am sure you did something like the paper above. Again I cannot stress the fact that this is a good thing enough. This is something that EVERYONE should do on a regular basis. Once you move into leadership you need to change this a little bit, when you sit down to do your strengths and weaknesses you need to add additional people.

For each person that reports to you, as well as your peers and superiors (If you are comfortable doing this with your superiors) so that you can get a good idea of the people that you surround yourself with. One of the most difficult things that I have learned moving into a leadership role is the fact that I am not alone. You have to rely on your peers/superiors and even your agents at times to help fill in where you have weaknesses.

You should develop a spreadsheet similar to the one below.

Me
Strengths	Weaknesses	Support
Communication	Saying “No”	John
Planning	Time Management	Bob
Execution	Work Life Balance	Jason

 

Now you are going to see something different on my Strengths and Weaknesses chart that you do not normally see. There is a column for “Support” that is normally left out of these exercises. This column is extremely important not only when you first start out in leadership but whenever you have a weakness that you need to work on. This support structure is going to be there for you and be the people that help to hold you accountable when you do not actively work on your weaknesses. You should make sure that you have advised these people that they are going to be your support structure as well, not that you wouldn’t in the first place, but if you don’t they will not be able to help you to the best of their ability.

The next step is to do this with your people.

Team
Agent	Strength	Weakness	Mentor	Leader?
John	Consultation	Tech	Joe	Yes
Amber	Tech	Consultation	Samantha	No
Shaun	Closing	Consultation	Bobby	No
Chelsea	Rapport	Tech	Joe	No
Samantha	Consultation	Tech	Randy	Yes
Bobby	Consultation	Tech	Joe	Maybe
Robert	Closing	Tech	Randy	Yes
Randy	Tech	Closing	Samantha	Maybe
Tom	Tech	Consultation	John	No
Joe	Tech	Consultation	John	Yes

 

Now when you look at your team you are going to see a couple more columns as well. The Mentor and Leader columns are added in from the standard Strengths and Weaknesses layout to help identify the support structure that you can have for yourself and for your people. Assigning mentors is something that is huge for all types of agent development and this is simply pairing people who excel in areas that someone else is deficient.

The most important item of this spreadsheet is determining who on your team has leadership potential. These are the people that you need to focus additional time on developing because they are your bench and the people that will replace you one day.

By assigning your leaders people to mentor you will show them that you have trust and faith in them and it will help them to begin developing your other agents. By doing this you are now effectively increasing the management staff that you have on your team by making “mini yous” to work with your agents that may or may not have the natural leadership abilities or the drive to get into leadership.

My challenge for you is to create a spreadsheet like the one above for your team and for yourself. If you are confident in it then you can also build one for your peers and for your supervisors and work with them to help them improve as well.

I hope this exercise helps some of you to determine not only your strengths and weaknesses but also to determine your support structure and those people that can help you develop your agents.

If you are having a hard time coming up with your own strengths and weaknesses you can check out this Link

Thanks again for your time and attention.

Jared