We wrote some time ago about the importance of building a team if you choose to grow beyond a single-location business. While all business owners often start wearing multiple hats, as you grow, there is actually an order to take those hats off: focused on delegating the areas that are not your strengths and relying on the team members who are more proficient than you in certain areas.

How to Identify Your Weaknesses

While “What’s your greatest weakness” may still qualify as the world’s most predictable and least insightful interview question, the reality is that sometimes business owners aren’t attuned to what their weaknesses are. A good place to start looking is “the pile.” This is the place where all the “I need to do that” items live. Perhaps it’s making sure you have engaging content on your website, via a blog or videos. Perhaps it’s a social media strategy beyond simply treading water on Facebook or Twitter. It could be more related to operating your business: following up with your best clients or creating new strategies for marketing. Wherever you feel obligation but also feel resistance, you’re likely running into a weakness.

When you identify a weakness, start to collect the roles and responsibilities related to that weakness into a job description. If it’s something that can fit into an existing staff member’s portfolio (and he/she is strong in those fields), delegate directly. Otherwise, in a labor pool that is increasingly filled with microservices to deal with everything from picking up your dry cleaning to delivering your food, there is every chance you can indeed find someone better than you, even in the smallest of tasks, to help move your business forward.

Why Focus on Strengths?

Simple, because strengths are things that engage you, that playoff your talents, that are things you are known for. You don’t need to be encouraged to focus on items that use your strengths, in fact, you often find yourself chiming in for others when your strengths are engaged – be it for personal or business matters.

But the most important reason to focus on your strengths is that it gives you a focal point to improve. Rather than rest on laurels of complacency, which we can often do in areas of strength, we can seek out coaching, classes, and workshops to take our skills from top-level all the way up to world-class.

If you still aren’t sold on this, we’re going to delegate some chiming to the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk.

Ultimately, focusing on your strengths and delegating your weaknesses is going to help your company grow its competence and revenue, while also improving your individual strengths and talents.

Don’t know where to start? Ask 2-4 trusted colleagues or friends to take a few moments to tell you your three greatest strengths and three greatest weaknesses. Then use that honest intelligence to move forward.

For more helpful tips about entrepreneurship, check out our other blog posts or learn more about the support and training resources provided by The Gents Place.