Play to your strengths

According to a recent Gallup poll, 14 percent of people spend the majority of their time doing work that plays to their strengths.

Put another way, 14 percent of professionals are focused on things that they’re good at.

Put another way, 86 percent of your colleagues (and perhaps even you) focus on doing things they’re not good at.

Those statistics are scary. They tell me that the majority of our employees are swimming upstream, and likely aren’t happy about it. They tell me that the majority of businesses are focusing their employees on the wrong things.

They also tell me that we likely don’t even know this problem exists.

Clearly we all need to spend part of our day doing things we don’t like, or aren’t good at. But the majority of our time should be spent on things we enjoy, things we’re good at, and places where we are most likely to succeed.

Think how much happier your employees would be if you helped them spend the majority of their time on their strengths.

Think about how much more productive your business could be if you could simply double the number of current employees focused on their strengths.

There’s significant work to do here, for all of us.