Andres Manuel Olivares Miranda shares a few tips to help leaders identify what their strengths are and then play to those in the workplace.

1. How to Play to Your Leadership
Strengths
ANDRES MANUEL OLIVARES MIRANDA

2. BEING HONEST WITH YOURSELF
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Playing to one’s leadership strengths is a skill that can take years to hone. Perhaps one of
the biggest factors is being honest about what one’s limitations and strengths actually are.
Too many “leaders” believe that they are someone completely different than who they
actually are, and that reflects in what their subordinates think of them, and the quality of
work they produce. Without knowing their current strengths and weaknesses, a leader
cannot map out a path to becoming a better leader.

3. PERSONALITY TEST
One of the best ways to get a good
assessment of one’s strengths is to take a
personality test. The Meyer-Jung test is used
by many university psychology and business
classes, and can be found for free here. This
type of test assesses a number of different
personality metrics, and places the user into
one of 16 categories. Each of these
categories has its own strengths and
weaknesses.
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4. A N D R E S M A N U E L
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Encourage Feedback
Anot h e r w a y to get good feedback about current l e a d e r s h i p s t r e n g t h s
and w e a k n e s ses is to enc ourage honest (and often a n o n y m o u s ) f e e d b a c k
from s u b o r d inates. Takin g feedback from a superi o r i s u s e f u l a s w e l l , b u t
a sup e r i o r may not be pri vy to knowledge of a part i c u l a r l e a d e r ’ s s t y l e a s
i t pe r t a i n s t o their subordinates, while subordina t e s o f t e n u n d e r s t a n d
how t h e i r l e a der interacts with those higher up. T h e s u p e r i o r m a y n o t
know t h a t a leader is a m icromanager, or that they p u t d o w n , o r i n s u l t
thei r s u b o r d i nates. Accepting feedback and critici s m f r o m s u b o r d i n a t e s
i s ab s o l u t e l y essential to becoming a better leade r , s o m u c h s o t h a t
acco r d i n g t o this article from Forbes, the top 10% o f l e a d e r s w h o a s k e d
for f e e d b a c k, were also r anked the best in leaders h i p e f f e c t i v e n e s s .

5. LEVERAGE YOUR
STRENGTHS
Once their current strengths and weaknesses are
known, a leader can begin to really leverage their
strengths to the advantage of everyone around them,
simply by doing what they did before, but more and
better. The real advantage of this self-assessment
though, is that once a leader knows their weaknesses,
they can begin to fill in those gaps, by delegating to
subordinates who are stronger in that area, or by
seeking mentorship from other leaders or superior
who have experience with that particular issue or
project type. In a crunch, just knowing that they are
weak in a particular area can allow a leader to
research a problem more thoroughly, sometimes even
turning that weakness into a strength.
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