Warren Buffett's Career Advice

Steve Jobs on Passion and Picking Great People

Donald Trump On Choosing A Career

Tony Robbins on Finding Your True Gift

John Maxwell - "Stop Working On Your Weaknesses!"

Neil Gaiman's Commencement Speech

Every few years there is a commencement speech worth paying attention to. Steve Jobs gave one a few years before his passing. This one from Neil Gaiman is in that class.

The STRENGTHSPATH S.T.R.I.D.E. Program

Bringing Your "A" Game!

The Science Behind STRENGTHSPATH

Turn Right To Get On Your STRENGTHSPATH

Dialing In Your STRENGTHSPATH

The Janitor and The General

The "Kobe System" and Strengths

Nike has produced an entertaining set of commercials with a tongue in cheek spoofing of the those that sell success. They key figure is Los Angeles Laker Basketball Star Kobe Bryant but the co-star list is pretty amazing including Kanye West, Hope Solo, Landon Donovan, Serena Williams and even British Billionaire Richard Branson. As you see in the clip above, Tony Robbins is actually in a whole series of the commercials as the student of success learning from Kobe, rather than the teacher/coach role that has made him famous.

Robbins began his career offering some very good material that I believe a lot of people have found helpful including myself. His "Personal Power" program was outstanding and his focus on taking "massive action" set him apart from other teachers of success. Historically, he seemed to fall into the same "Anyone Can Do Anything" trap that most success trainers do. His background in Neuro-Linguistic Programing that holds as a major pre-supposition, "If one person can do something anyone can do it" fit in with that. So did his focus on "modeling" which encourages students to identify a successful person and basically copy them or do what they do.

But in recent years Robbins has begun tweaking his message to incorporate natural talent and strengths as a fundamental component of success as has Stephen Covey with his book "The Eighth Habit". In, fact Robbins and Covey did a dvd together in a program called "Find Your Gift". Robbins also now offers coaching that begins with Strengths Discovery and 2 assessments put together by Jay Niblick's InnerMetrix. Covey has a simple strengths assessment available on your iPhone as an app.

In the above clip, Tony underscores a major tenet of most Strengths Practitioners, "focus your time on improving on your natural talents rather than trying to overcome your non-talents". In this case Tony's gift is his terrific smile.

Great stuff!!!

A St. Patrick's Day Strengths Message

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I don't know what comes to your mind when you think of St. Patricks' Day. Susy and I have a bit of Irish in our massively mixed heritage and we are celebrating more than usual this year. My parents coming over for corned beef and cabbage, green clover shaped ravioli stuffed with Irish cheese and some Irish themed Ben and Jerry's to top our Irish themed cup cakes. I can't wait :D

In doing some research, I was surprised to learn that a 3 leaf clover and not a 4 leaf clover is actually a symbol of St. Patrick. As he traveled Ireland preaching the gospel and planting over 200 churches, he used the 3 leaf clover to explain "The Trinity" concept that is so core to the Christian faith and message.

Actually, each of us are "trinities" as well in a sense. We are all body, mind, and spirit. And each of the three components offer up a unique individual lens to view our natural talents and strengths.

What are your body talents? Are you coordinated? Do you have good tweezer dexterity? Are you naturally strong? Do you have unusual eye sight? Is your sense of taste or smell especially pronounced?

What about your talents of mind? Do you naturally think strategically? Are you creative? Are you strong at math? Are you gifted with words?

How about your spirit? How do you love and relate with others? Do you have a knack for encouragement and building others up? Do you naturally serve?

St. Patrick's Day is a magical day of sorts. Go out and spread your own unique brand of magic today!

"Hugo"

Susy and I watched "Hugo" last night. It's an adventure drama about an orphan boy growing up in Paris train station just after World War I. The film was a bit slow paced for me but other than that I found it absolutely magical, and a movie with a strong "Strengths" message. Hugo is a mechanical genius. In fact the movie has several characters who are full of passion and genius in their respective life work.

Starring Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Jude Law and Christopher Lee, Hugo received five Oscars—for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing. It's 11 total nominations was the most for this 84th Academy Awards.

This is a good one to watch with young children and have "The Strengths Talk" in the hours and days following!

Presidents Day and Strengths

4 Ways To Be A Great President

How many ways are there to be really effective at your job? Probably a lot more than you think. In my work as a manager, I have observed sales people reach the pinnacle of success with quite different strengths and ways of going about their job. This is possible with most jobs including the job of running the country. Let’s consider our first four presidents. Did they have similar strengths that led to similar ways of operating in office? Not at all.

George Washington was the military strategist who projected an image of consistency and stability while serving as a great unifier. He had no great gift as a visionary but his cool even temperament served us well as he united a young country.

The second president, John Adams was a phenomenal orator and skilled debater. It was said that he could hold Congress in rapt attention for hours as he waxed on eloquently about his positions on Britain, France and so on. He was at his best when voicing his opposition to a real or perceived foe.

Thomas Jefferson was completely different than either. Unlike the orator Adams, Jefferson hated public speaking. In fact, he hated it so much that he refused to give the traditional State of the Union message to Congress each year. He was a grand strategist that loved sitting at his desk, thinking and writing. He wrote out the State of the Union speech and had his assistant read it.

James Madison was different still. He was a very precise thinker and the consummate networker. He loved roaming the floors of Congress, meeting one on one, collaborating and building alliances to accomplish his goals for the country.

All four could rightly be held up as examples of great presidents. But each understood their strengths and weaknesses proceeding to shape the job around who they were. List any other four great presidents in history and you’ll see much of the same principle at work. Lincoln, the melancholy who suffered great bouts of depression worked quite different than the energetic Theodore Roosevelt. Jimmy Carter who is arguably the most effective former president in history worked long days while occupying the White House. His successor, Ronald Reagan worked much shorter days while joking, “I know hard work never killed anybody, but why take the risk”. Reagan was arguably more effective during his years in the White House.

Joan Biskupic wrote a very similar synopsis of the U.S. Supreme court justices for USA Today. They are all very different in more than just politics and values. Their personalities, talents and approaches to the job are vastly different.

What about military commanders? Surely they have similar talents and approaches. Not so. If you look at Jonathan W. Jordan’s mosaic of Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley, you couldn’t find four different men with vastly different approaches and natural talent. What about MacArthur? He was perhaps more different yet.

And so it is with your profession.

Definitions - What's a Strength? "SUMMARY"

Let's sum up!

First, it's so important that you pull apart what comes naturally from what you must add through development. It's important because you will only fulfill your full potential when you build on your "Authentic Advantage".

As Marcus Buckingham says, "STOP TRYING TO ADD IN WHAT GOD LEFT OUT. FOCUS ON TRYING TO PULL OUT WHAT GOD LEFT IN!"

You are unique! You have a "Success Print" or a "Strengths Print" as unique as you finger print. That's what we call the first two components of a strength. That's your Talent and your Passion.

Identify those two ingredients. Then start building on that core center and foundation. Add Skills and Knowledge. Make sure you focus on adding Skills and Knowledge that compliment, support, and accelerate your Talent and Passion. Strive to be "Pointy". Be on guard that you don't become a "Jack of All Trades and Master of None".

Invest in your talent and passion heavily with development. I haven't said a lot about hard work because I believe when you begin to work form your talent and passion it won't seem like hard work. It will seem like going to the playground everyday. But you will have to put in a lot of long hours to realize your potential. Like Star Wars creator George Lucas said, "You'll start at 7am, start to feel hungry, and realize it's 7pm."

This is hard work, but it's hard work you will Yearn to get up and do tomorrow and the day after that. The work will Energize you. And you'll have a deep sense of Satisfaction when you're finished.

Definitions - What's a Strength? "Knowledge"

The last component of a strength is knowledge. Like with skill, you want to focus on adding most of your knowledge in areas that compliment your natural talents. And it's worth repeating, rapid learning or rapid knowledge acquisition is a very strong sign that a natural talent is in play.

In my workshops, I usually talk about two different kinds of knowledge. The first is book knowledge or classroom knowledge. And there are ever increasing ways to add book knowledge and classroom knowledge with the advent of the internet. Many are free. Here is a short list of ways to add classroom or book knowledge:

Books
Used Books
Industry Specific Magazines and Newspapers
On Line Books (Free)
Down loadable books on Ipads, Kindles, and other similar devices
Apps
College Classes (Audited classes can be free or low expense)
On Line College Classes (Top Universities Offer Classes for Free including Harvard, Stanford, and MIT)
Adult School

The second type of knowledge is experiential. There are some things you just can’t learn out of a book, from a class, or an instructor no matter how gifted. You have to get your hands dirty and do something to learn about it. This is why 10th grade biology has you dissect a frog. This is why medical school students work on a cadaver before you go rummaging around in a live body. Here is a short list of ways to get experiential knowledge:

Internships
Job Shadowing
Volunteering
Working for Free
“Hanging Around”
“Parallel Work”

Let me elaborate on “Hanging Around”. Let’s say you want to be a songwriter or audio guy that runs sound. You’ve confirmed that you actually have a good amount of talent. Next, you need to hang around with musicians. You need to hang around the music business. That might mean getting a job a The Guitar Center. That might mean you get a job loading or setting up music equipment. Your not working in your ideal position yet but you are in the right ballpark for opportunities to show up.

Another is “Parallel Work”. Susy and I have family member by marriage that finished his college degree and was contemplating medical school. He was Science and Math smart so that wasn’t an issue. He just didn’t know if he was cut out to handle the blood. Instead of rushing head first into medical school only to come out the other end $100,000 poorer and then finding out he didn’t like the blood, he took some “Parallel Work”. He became an “EMT” or an Emergency Medical Technician or Paramedic first. This gave him the opportunity to see how he did with the blood. As it happened he handled it fine and was off to med school.

You can probably figure out your own version of parallel work.

Let me make one more distinction about knowledge. In some ways I alluded to it my list of ways to get book knowledge but let me define it a little more clearly. Some people are best suited for very structured formalized education with a degree or some type of certification at the end. And some types of work demand this. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t care to have a surgeon work on me that hadn’t even bothered to graduate from medical school.

But some work really lends itself to independent study and frankly a degree isn’t very helpful. And the lines aren’t always that clear. Our favorite U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer. Harry Truman didn’t graduate from college either.

If you gravitate toward independent study, I recommend you pick up a copy of “Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success”. It’s written by James Marcus Bach. James dropped out of school at age 16 and a few years later was leading a team at Apple Computer. Today he is an expert in the field of computer software testing. He has taught this around the world at places like Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

If you want to be successful, education is not an option. You have to get education and keep getting it. Life-Long Learning is the only path that leads to sustained world-class performance. Most people should finish high school and even a couple of years of college. But some people just do better with off-road versions of education.

Bottom Line: Discover your natural talents and spend the majority of your development efforts adding knowledge that supports those talents.

Definitions - What's a Strength? "Skill"

Skill is the 3rd component of our strengths package.

It’s so critical that you pull apart your natural talents and passion from the development of those talents and passions. There are two primary ways we develop our talents and passion. One is skill and the other is knowledge. And you need to tailor your choice of skills and knowledge to compliment and support your talent and passion. Many add skills and knowledge going off in all directions. Strive to be “Pointy”. An enormous synergy is created when you add skill and knowledge that is complimentary to your innate talent.

Our education system has been designed to turn out well-rounded graduates. But “Pointy” people become world class at something. World Class is where all the fun is and it’s where all the money is. I’m not saying don’t try new and different things. You should. You’ll uncover dormant or unknown talents. But spend 80% of your development investment on what you already know you are naturally good at. This is simply an expounding on the phrase, “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”.

Skills come in at least two kinds. One is generalized skill and the other is specialized skill. The distinction between the two is a moving target on the time line. An example of a generalized talent today is driving. Being able to drive to work is a general requirement for most jobs. This is especially true in car crazy California. If you live in New York City, many don’t own cars and take the subway. An example of a specialized skill is being able to drive a tractor-trailer rig. It requires additional skills that get certified with a special drivers license.

100 years ago driving wasn’t a generalized skill. Maybe horseback riding was. Horse shoeing was more of a specialized skill.

Computer Keyboarding has become more of a generalized skill required for all kinds of work. Writing computer code on the other hand is a specialized skill.

All of these skills, generalized or specialized have underlying natural talents. Some people have natural gifts in vision, hand and foot coordination, anticipation, and even caution that makes them safer drivers. Gallup has even verified this with there exhaustive work around talent identification.

Skills usually involve methods, models, and steps. These methods, models, and steps are developed by training, coaching, and hours of practice. It’s generally accepted that 10,000 hours of practice is a baseline requirement to master a skill. This often works out to about 5 years.

Just any kind of practice won’t do. There is sloppy practice and deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is very focused and intentional. It’s much more than just showing up and going along for the ride. Deliberate practice is very disciplined with the minute-by-minute intention of getting better. Deliberate practice is goal focused and very segmented and incremental in nature. Often it involves breaking a skill down into component parts and practicing each in isolation. Then deliberate practice might involve putting the pieces back together with concentration on segues (connections) or the whole.

Should you ever develop skills where you have very little underlying talent? Some generalized skills, yes. You should probably learn to drive even if you don’t have the underlying talent to be a world-class truck driver doing cross-country halls. But it would probably be a waste of time to get your class “A” license if all or most of your talent involved working with people.

I’ve made a big deal of the fact that 80% of your skills should be complimentary to your known talents. 20% of your time can be spent on new areas. One of the best ways to uncover a dormant or unknown talent is to try new things. Try to add a new skill now and then. See how rapidly you pick it up.

With children up to the age of 14 you might even reverse it. Give them plenty of room in their younger years to explore their talents by trying to learn new skills. But don’t force it either. Be on the look out for that single activity that just absolutely enamors your child. Encourage them and turn then loose on that.

By age 14 your brain wiring is fairly well set. There is a lot in magazines and newspapers lately about neuroplasticity. This is the idea that the brain remains fairly plastic or pliable into old age. It does remain pliable into old age. You can re-weight neurons and re-wire them with brand new connections. Regeneration is also occurring. That is new neurons or brain cells are being added. But this does not mean you can turn a non-talent into full-blown talent. You can uncover dormant talents. But there is no evidence I’m aware of that you can actually add talent.

Bottom Line: Discover your natural talents and spend the majority of your development efforts adding skills that support those talents.

Definitions - What's a Strength? "Passion" Part 2

Does Everyone Have Passion?

Passion is the 2nd component of 4 in our strengths package. But does everyone have passion? I believe they do but it has been smothered in many. My dad has passion in spades… or maybe in hearts. He may be the most consistently passionate person I know. He also has what Gallup Strengthsfinder would call “Self-Assurance”. It is clearly an innate talent for him. He was so self-assured as a child he didn’t fear death. This actually was a concern for my grandparents.

Here’s the thing. Self-Assurance is an accelerant for passion. What smothers passion? Fear is the number one enemy of passion. Show me a person that appears more or less passionless and I almost guarantee fear has smothered it down to a pilot light size flame. Sometimes fear shows up under other names. Fear may show up as doubt, numbness, procrastination, caution and a bunch of other labels.

But fear doesn’t kill passion, it can’t. It just neutralizes it and renders it impotent. The Christian Scriptures say God’s Calling and Gifts are Irrevocable. They also say that God Gives Us The Desire In Our Heart. He plants them there. They tell us to “Fan the Flame” of our gift and that “Perfect Love Drives Out Fear”.

Go hunt down your pilot light. Fan the Flame. Crank the Oxygen. Perfect your Passion and Drive Out the Fear. The fear may hang around, but the higher you turn the oxygen, the more it’s forced off to the side.

Consider a welding kit. You’ve got a torch to focus the flame. Some struggle with passion because it’s not focused. People with a many interests and talents have to learn to pick something. You’ve got fuel, often acetylene. Your fuel is an interest that’s constantly at the back of you mind. It’s that thing that has to express itself. But many are missing the pure oxygen. Without the oxygen the flame won’t burn hot enough. With the oxygen it will cut hard metal and melt metals together. That’s where the confidence and self-assurance come in. Confidence is the oxygen that makes the flame hot.

How do you get confidence if you don’t have it? You may have to borrow it at first. Get around other people with confidence and it will run off. Maybe you’ll have to buy it. Can you buy confidence? You bet! You can hire someone with confidence. You can hire people with the natural talent of self-assurance. My mom married it. It worked out pretty well to.

If you are not naturally self-assured you have to be more intentional about uncovering your passion, guarding it, and seeing that it's fueled with a steady supply of oxygen. But it’s worth the extra effort. And the beautiful thing is, when you do uncover your passion, it will be in more valuable. You won’t take it for granted. It will also help you spot the passion deficit in others and empower you to reveal theirs.