Work Your Winning Hat — Why Doubling Down on Strengths Beats Fixing Every Weakness.
Contributed By: Scott Koepf, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)– Cruise Planners
The quest to reach your goals in the travel business requires skills in four basic disciplines. In previous articles I have described these as the four hats that must be worn by travel advisors to be successful. The four hats are:
- Travel Advisor
- Salesperson
- Marketer
- Entrepreneur
There is not a specific standard allocation of time between the four as each advisor has different personalities, goals and skills. Instead, it is up to you to determine where you need to spend the most time. Based on how long you have been building your business and how big you want it to grow will determine which of the four hats you need to wear the most.
However, there is another factor that you should keep in mind when determining where to focus your efforts. The author Marcus Buckingham extols the virtues of spending our time building upon our strengths instead of trying to constantly improve upon our weaknesses. He cites the example of a child bringing home their report card with all A’s and only one C. Most parents (and I certainly did this) would quickly praise the A’s and then spend most of the review focused on the C and how that one subject needed much more attention. As adults we take the same approach to our own skill sets. We may ignore the skills that we excel in just to try to get better in the areas we may not excel.
When it comes to the four hats, if you were to create your own report card, what grades would you give yourself for each hat? Remember a C is average and not a bad grade so to have a C with one or even two hats will not mean you are destined to failure. If you gave yourself a D or F for one of the hats then I would suggest creating an education plan to get yourself up to a C, not an A or B. Being average (grade of C) with a part of your business will not derail your success but only if you focus on where you graded yourself an A.
Buckingham rightly says, “Only 41% of people believed that focusing on their strengths was the key to success. But focusing on our strengths is our only chance to distinguish ourselves and excel. The truth is most people are less interested in deploying their assets than in lessening their liabilities. Only 17% of working people say that they spend most of their day doing things that they really like doing!”
In other words, straight A’s is not what is required to reach your goals. There are extraordinarily successful advisors that have three C’s and one A. The key to their success is the focus on the area where they shine.
Some people will know which hat is their primary strength without even thinking about it while others may need time to determine which hat is their primary skill. I have often said that it seems there are kids who know exactly what they want to be very early in life – doctors, nurses, engineers. Those of us who in the fourth year of college were still uncertain of our career path usually end up in sales! Take your time to not only determine which hat brings out the best in you but is also the hat you like to wear the most.
Once you determine where you are most proficient, the question might be how to continue to improve and evolve to maximize that strength. In short, Buckingham extols that we need to bring a childlike approach to our journey to success. He sites a UCLA study that showed that at the age of five, we engage in creative tasks 98 times, laugh 113 times and ask questions 65 times per day. By the age of 44, however, the numbers shrink to two creative tasks, 11 laughs and six questions per day.
Six questions compared to 65 questions per day! Are we so wise at 44 that we don’t have more questions? A childlike approach to each hat – trying creative approaches, laughing through successes and failures and asking way more questions than you are today may be the best way to reach your goals.