Don Roulo is the CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) of Life Quest. He is a life, career and business coach as well as a Certified 48 Days Workshop Facilitator. He travels nationally and internationally to conduct business and career training as well as marriage and family workshops.

By DON ROULO

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, says CEOs and other executives should spend half of their time training people to become leaders. As we train people, our immediate thought is to work on the areas which appear to be areas of weakness. However, is this really the right thing to do?

As we seek to improve our own lives, or those of others we are building to be leaders, we should NOT spend the majority of our time on the evident weaknesses we all have. We have not been created to be great at everything. This means we are going to do some things at the level of average or even below average. This does NOT mean we are incompetent or we won’t achieve great goals and dreams. It simply is a fact that we cannot be great at all we do.

I am naturally a good communicator. I excel in the area of speaking. Other people have told me I am a great speaker. (It is not only okay to acknowledge what you do very well, but it is essential to your success.) I can organize and plan a great message, speech or event. However, I am not naturally gifted at organizing files and keeping the paperwork in just the perfect order. Should I go take a course on how to be more organized and learn how to file things just right? If I did this, no matter how hard I worked, I would only become average at filing and organizing paperwork.

Should I spend hours and hours of my time and money to become average at something I am not good at and don’t enjoy? Absolutely not! I should spend my time and money at going from a good speaker to a world class speaker. I should spend the majority of my time becoming great or exceptional at what I already am gifted at doing.

Does this mean we should never take any time to work on areas of weakness? No, absolutely not! Let’s put some numbers to this. If you are trying to improve your own or someone else’s areas of weakness, don’t spend more than 10-15 percent of your time on those things. Spend at least 50% of your time on strengthening your natural gifts. This is how you achieve phenomenal results as opposed to average results.

I want to stand out in a crowd with my gifts. I don’t want to blend in with everyone else. I want to hear from others that I am rock star speaker. I don’t want to hear someone say, “Don can file papers and organize them just like everyone else.” No matter how much time I spend on getting better at organizing and filing, the best I will ever be is average. Everyone should stand out in a crowd with their God-given gifts.

If you are asking someone you manage to become great at something they are not gifted at, you are going to be frustrated and so are they. If you try to teach a pig to sing, both you and pig will be frustrated. The pig was not created to sing. You need to look for and hire people to be in the right position to begin with instead of asking them to change who they are and who they have been created to be.

None of us were created to be average. We have all been created to do great things. Who wants to be average anyway?!

About the Author
Don Roulo is a life, career and business coach as well as a Certified 48 Days Workshop Facilitator. He travels nationally and internationally to conduct business and career training as well as marriage and family workshops.

As a business consultant, he has written business plans and worked to market products or services as well as organizing financial statements for investors. Because of his success in the sales and business arena, Don has been blessed with the opportunity to train, motivate and inspire others. His passion is to motivate and equip people to find their passion and achieve their goals and God given destiny.