Robert Steven Kaplan: Assessing Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Thank you. So, the first thing you need to do in order to reach your potential or do what you're really meant to do is understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

It turns out that most people I talk to do not know their strengths and weaknesses. They maybe can take a stab at their strengths, but they have a tough time writing down their weaknesses.

The trap people fall in often is they say, "I'm in a class of 50 other people," or "I'm in a job with 20 other peers, and I ought to be able to be good at everything they're good at." If they're good at something, then I want to be good at it too.

The reality is every person is good at certain things to a certain degree and not as good at others. The trick is to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and what the things are you need to improve on.

You have to assess them versus a specific job. If I want to be a newspaper reporter, there are certain sets of strengths and weaknesses I need. If I want to be an investment banker, it's a different set. If I want to be a college professor, it's another set.

So, you need to understand your own strengths and weaknesses and then calibrate it to what you need to do very well to be outstanding in that job. Figuring out your strengths and weaknesses probably is not something you can do all by yourself.

You need to get advice and observations from people who watch you, who see you in action, and can point out to you what you're good at and what you're not good at. The reason it helps to get advice from others is we all have blind spots.

The problem is it has to be skill-based; it can't be amorphous. It can't be generalized; it needs to be based on skills that are relevant to whatever task you're doing.

Then, ideally, a coach would give you some advice on techniques for improving those skills. You need to be open to hearing things that you don't want to hear, and you need to not send off a vibe that you don't want to hear feedback.

The mistakes people make are they either don't understand their own strengths and weaknesses, they're not willing to get advice from others to get feedback on what they're really good at, and they don't calibrate it against a job.

What I'm trying to encourage people to do is do this systematically because your strengths and your weaknesses are really the building blocks of whatever you're going to try to do.