I wrote a post with basically the same title and premise back in January 2019 and, funny enough, I just read it as part of my regular review of old posts.
Today I’m going to present a bit of a different perspective, though it’s the same at heart.
I don’t want to give away enough details to identify this person, but I recently was thinking about how hard it is to work with someone in my life. And I put some thought into why that is.
This person isn’t dumb and isn’t unfriendly, but they are incredibly ineffective in a lot of ways. The primary reasons seem to be:
- Lack of accountability
- Lack of a system to organize tasks that need to be done
- Inability to think critically and develop novel solutions
- A sense that things outside their normal scope of care are either unimportant or outside of their control
- General lack of initiative
- Total lack of follow-through
These are all things that most people struggle with at some point or another. And none of them really have anything to do with intelligence (though it can help a bit).
But in the case of this person, I would say that these are the reasons they are difficult to work with and also are likely causes for any failures or lack of success they’ve had elsewhere, as well.
It could be totally different for everyone, but these are the main things I’ve seen with this person.
Everyone starts out with tons of weaknesses. Some affect them more than others. Intelligence might help solve some of those problems or improve those weaknesses, but by itself, it won’t accomplish anything.
I’m thinking now that the single most-important traits (or group of traits) is probably the ability to accurately reflect on one’s own weaknesses and to effectively improve or compensate for them.
Essentially, it’s the ability to accurately answer the question, “what’s holding me back?”
And then, of course, to figure out a way to overcome whatever the answer is.
More broadly, this could really be described as having a “growth mindset,” though I generally think of a growth mindset as being entirely internal, whereas external factors could also be holding you back and you still need to be able to overcome them.
A related trait that may be just as important is the ability to effectively identify and take advantage of the right opportunities. Sometimes there may not be anything holding you back, but you still need to be able to figure out which opportunities to pursue, and how to stick with them and pursue them effectively.
That last part is where I feel I’m weakest right now and where I really need to push forward. I’ve identified some excellent opportunities and feel I have everything in place to go after them.
I just need to do it.