Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success: Discovering Your Gift and the Way to Life's Riches (12 page)

If you have strong skills in communications, project management, and team building, but you have weaknesses in budgeting and finance, it is unlikely that your skills would match up well for a chief financial officer position. On the flip side, if you have strengths in technology and digital design, your skills could line up well for a chief technology officer. Make sure you know your opportunity, relationship, or job well enough to size up its requirements in relation to your skills so that you can knock it out of the park.

You cannot give your best when you don't know what your best is. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is important because you need to learn how to maximize your wins and minimize your losses. Taking on the challenges of life, business, work, health, and family means you will have to take and throw a lot of punches. Being honest about your weaknesses will put you in a place to take fewer punches and minimize being knocked off your path to success.

Finally, each of us has the ability to either evolve and grow stronger or remain stagnant and become weaker. When you know what you do well, you can develop a strategy for growth. All of this is possible with a little work, but none of it can happen if you don't take the time to know your strengths and acknowledge your weaknesses.

Assessing your strengths and weaknesses is not an emotional process. Rather, it is a time for cataloging your skills. Knowing what you do well versus what you still need to improve upon will help you to identify your personal skills and traits. As you begin this treasure hunt to uncover your qualities, here are the areas where you may start looking for your strengths and weaknesses.

        
•
     
KNOWLEDGE-BASED SKILLS
:
These skills include degrees, languages, technical know-how, industry-specific skills, or managerial savvy that you have gained from educational training or professional experience.

        
•
     
TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
:
These skills include everyday traits that you can bring with you into any situation, such as communication skills, financial knowledge, customer service expertise, leadership aptitude, problem-solving skills, and project management experience.

        
•
     
CHARACTER SKILLS
:
Traits such as honesty, timeliness, hard work, trustworthiness, and confidence are great characteristics that will serve you well both personally and professionally.

First, let's take a look at your personal and professional relationships. What are the skills you demonstrate in interpersonal relationships? Are you a good listener? Are you supportive? Now think about the areas where there's room for improvement. Can you be more patient? Do you need to work on your ability to compromise?

Next, let's focus on your professional career. What are the skills you have needed to do your job well? What are the skills that your employers ranked you highly on during your performance reviews? What were the areas that were marked for continued growth and improvement?

Now that you have a list of skills in these two major areas, I want you to identify what kind of skill it is (for example, Knowledge-Based, Transferable, or Character). Note whether it is a strength or a weakness, and evaluate each as follows: Superior, Good, Proficient, and Needs Improvement. So that you can get an idea of how to rank your skills, I have included my own Tale of the Tape in the table below.

This self-assessment will give you an honest picture of yourself. But before you complete your sheet, bear this in mind: You have to complete your assessment based on where you are
today
. No beating yourself up over past weaknesses or undervaluing strengths when you have clearly developed in certain areas.

What are your skills? Compose your own self-assessment in a chart that looks like this:

Your personal assessment is important, but you also need an outside perspective. You may want to consider hiring a business-development coach to assess your skills. If that's not possible, you might ask a longtime colleague or a trusted friend to objectively evaluate your skills. If there are a number of people you can rely on in your inner circle, you may want to consider having one person give you a personal assessment and another give you your professional assessment. As you start working with your outside observer, here are three things to keep in mind:

        
1.
   
BE OPEN
.
Your feedback with your outside observer will be more effective if you can let go of your beliefs and hear what your observer has to say.

        
2.
   
KEEP YOUR EMOTIONS IN CHECK
.
Your observer may uncover something that could hit a nerve. Don't shut down when you hear something uncomfortable. Stay in the moment and use this conversation as an opportunity to learn and grow.

        
3.
   
LISTEN WITH YOUR HEAD AND NOT YOUR HEART
.
Identify areas where your strengths and weaknesses impact your life in ways you previously had not thought about.

There are traits of your strengths and weaknesses that you must understand to ensure your success.

Stepping Up Your Strengths

        
•
     
BE CONFIDENT BUT NOT COCKY
.
Know your strengths and use them to your advantage. Be confident enough to insert your skills into opportunities that will provide advancement and growth. However, even your strengths have limits. Know your limitations and manage them well.

        
•
     
STAY FIGHT READY
.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is not always the most popular person, but he has the distinction of almost always being at fight weight. Most boxers have to train for months to get to a fighting weight. Likewise, you have to consistently work on your strengths. Continued education, supplemental training, and reading everything you can get your hands on will not only keep your skills sharp; they will also help you to grow.

        
•
     
DEVELOP OR DIE
.
If you do not develop other strengths, your enemies will always know what choices you will make. Switch things up, learn and master other skills, and apply them strategically so that you can stay ahead of the marketplace and your industry.

Working on Your Weaknesses

        
•
     
PROTECT YOUR WEAKNESSES
.
Like Ali, you don't have to expose your weaknesses. Remember to identify opportunities that speak to your strengths.

        
•
     
CHOOSE YOUR WEAKNESSES
.
Weaknesses are only a detriment if you allow them to be. Create partnerships with people whose strength is your weakness. Learn from them and build that area so that you can grow stronger.

        
•
     
DEVELOP OR DIE
.
If you stay the same, your enemies will know where to attack you. Continue to develop so that even areas that need improvement can be assets.

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is without question the difference between your success and your failure. Assess your skills and develop a strategy so that your skills will always be used for your advancement.

What are the strengths you want to focus on for your next opportunity, job, or relationship?

What are three opportunities you can connect your skills to?

What is one weakness you want to strengthen, and how will you do so?

O
ne thing that has helped me throughout my entire career is my total willingness to reinvent myself. When I was the host of
Celebration of Gospel
for thirteen years, that was a complete 180-degree turn from being one of the original Kings of Comedy. I used my past experience of growing up in church to host
Celebration of Gospel
, which then propelled me into a broader space of people.

My willingness to reinvent myself yet again from being a solo act to being part of a touring act with a group of men opened the door for the film
The Original Kings of Comedy
, which then propelled me onto a national level as never before. Next, at the request of HarperCollins, I had an offer to write my first book. I had never set out to become an author, but I released myself from that fear, and the resulting book went on to be a great success. The popularity of
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man
led to Fremantle-Media coming to me and saying, “You are very popular among women. We have a game show we'd like you to look at.” Thus came the birth of my hosting
Family Feud
.

I always wanted to do a late-night talk show, but after my success with
Family Feud
, NBC and Endemol approached me with, “We have a daytime project for you.” I lost my fear of daytime television and launched into doing my own show. My constant willingness to reinvent myself has helped me not to get stuck on stale, meaning desiring one thing my entire life.

Change comes in every person's life. You can either react to it or you can participate in it. I choose to participate in all the changes in my life. If you live your life reacting to change, you are then behind the eight ball. My choice is to be proactive and to participate in the change. I truly believe that that's been a huge part of my success. The more willing you are to accept change and to be a part of change, the more successful you will become.

Diversifying your gifts also means knowing how to use other experiences in your life. Most of us really only have one talent. My talent is to take information and to immediately transfer it onto other kinds of platforms. I know how to take information and transform it into comedy, inspiration, motivation, or guidance. At one time, I thought my only talent was transforming information into comedy. As I have gotten older, though, my experiences have shown me that I can take that information and transform it in many ways, and by doing so, I become an inspiring, sharing, and motivating person.

If you are a hairdresser, your gifts may lead to teaching or leading seminars at a hair school or creating hair products or hosting your own hair TV show. You never know. You just have to stay open to diversifying your gift.

Let me break it down using my friend Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Magic is one of the greatest basketball players the world has ever seen. But I don't believe that his gift is playing basketball. I believe that his gift is connecting with people in a way that few can. Basketball was a talent. What Magic has done off the court is his gift—strengthening communities with resources and commerce by convincing the right people to believe in his vision. His talent put him in the position of exercising his gift. Watching Magic Johnson navigate a post-basketball career, you realize that this man can talk to anyone, from any background, and make them believe their idea is possible. That is his real gift, and the kinds of business and personal relationships he has been able to create with that gift have far eclipsed his basketball prowess. When you commit yourself to excellence, even a talent can take you to amazing places.

Sinbad was a guy I really looked up to back when I started in comedy. I remember him telling me one evening that he was able to pull in $50,000 per week at some of the clubs where he performed. At the time I thought I was doing all right just making $500 a week, but when I heard about the kind of money that Sinbad could command, I made it my goal to earn that kind of money and then some. My inability to work
all
types of crowds wasn't going to get me any closer to that $50,000 paycheck. I had to step up my game, study my craft, and truly learn what was going on in the world so I could create the kind of jokes that would allow me to share my gift with a broader range of audiences.