Leaning on Our Strengths
Everyone has a certain set of primary talents. Some folks are athletic. Others, easy going. Some are visionaries. Others are charismatic. Some talents are difficult to pinpoint and others are quite blatant.
Aside from the primary or most obvious talent are other talents that don’t come quite as naturally. Perhaps a musician is great at hearing the music and playing it by ear, but struggles to learn how to read music. After time, the musician learns to play just as well using music as they do by ear.
The key is recognizing your primary strengths while also realizing your secondary talents. Very rarely are great things done with a single skill.
This seems to be the case with many leaders: they naturally possess either charisma (excitement or enthusiasm) or vision (having a goal or a place to go). Charismatic leaders wing-it, constantly relying on their skills with people to compensate for their lack of long-term vision, while visionaries often forget to take other people along.
Visionaries without charisma lead a handful of people while dreaming of great things. Charismatic leaders take people on a merry-go-round of life, gleefully enjoying the ride but never getting anywhere.
I write all of this to say that we should examine our natural strengths and use them accordingly. But we should also work toward maturation in the other areas of our lives that don’t come quite as easily. And I speak even more strongly to leaders, because their failure to consider their talents and develop them causes problems for many other people.