Managing Yourself: How to Calibrate Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses

you are constantly put in the position of doing things you haven’t done before. For example, say you have to fire someone. How do you prepare yourself for such a task? It’s not like improving your skills in drawing or writing, where you can invest time on nights and weekends to sketch or compose short stories. You can’t just snap your fingers and say, “I’m going to practice firing a lot of people this month.” You must actually go through the real thing in order to gain the experience you need.

The world’s top leaders come from vastly different molds — some are extroverts (Winston Churchill) and some are introverts (Abraham Lincoln); some are demanding (Margaret Thatcher) and others remind you of a favorite relative (Mother Teresa); some leave a room breathless with their vision (Nelson Mandela) and others prefer to avoid the spotlight (Bill Gates).

The first part in understanding how you lead is to know your strengths — the things you’re talented at and love to do. This is crucial because great management typically comes from playing to your strengths rather than from fixing your weaknesses.