The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten podcast.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about strengths and weaknesses.

They define how to identify, if your mindset, is set to say “I am really good at this, I’ll keep doing it” or “I am bad at this, I am going to get better”. They also look at how strengths and weaknesses can affect your employees and business.

While strengths and weaknesses, can be a useful tool to assess our own or another person's skills. They are most useful, when paired in some way with an outcome. So if you want to be an athlete, you will have to train towards being the best and if you are in business you will have to hire to achieve your business outcomes.

Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to see how strengths and weaknesses tie in to your life & business, If you are motivated to double down on one or fix the other. Steli and Hiten, also share some interesting insights into how to move forward from the strength and weakness paradigm within your business, to build and work with the best team possible.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:43 A question from a friend.

02:16 Defining the weakness focus.

03:10 Defining the strength focus.

05:02 Where to focus?

06:03 Interesting questions on strengths & weaknesses.

06:30 A system for working with employees.

07:52 About change and expectations.

08:43 Change within business.

10:21 In the choosing the right people business.

14:59 The difference between not wanting to and not being able to.

3 Key Points:

No one can be good at everything.

You are looking for that person who has that drive; on learning, on changing, on improving.

Strengths and weakness are just the beginning, not the end.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey, everyone. This is Steli Efti.

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. On today's episode, we're going to talk about strengths and weaknesses and how to coach either yourself or somebody else on your team or even a friend about strengths and weaknesses. I think it's a super fascinating topic. I know you brought it up, Steli, and we jumped right into it. Why don't you give us some context on the framing of where this came from?

[0:00:25]

Steli Efti: Yeah. A founder friend of mine, a very young person, very successful, hired his first few employees, and he sent me a WhatsApp message, an audio message, basically asking for advice because he hired this person that's incredibly talented and has proven that he has amazing abilities in certain areas, but has some real weaknesses as well. My founder friend was basically saying, "Yo, Steli, what should I do here? Should I ... The weaknesses are, they are annoying me, but I really love this person's strengths and so I'm now thinking should I focus my energy on coaching my employee out of those weaknesses? Or do I just need to find work arounds or do I need to take that type of work off his plate and just focus on encouraging him to do the things that he's doing really well even better? Basically, should I focus on my employee's weaknesses or strengths? How should I coach him? How should I approach this situation?" I know that ... It seems like an age-old debate. Should you double down on your strengths or try to make up for your weaknesses and be well-rounded? I thought it would be an interesting discussion to have between the two of us. I'm actually curious to hear what you say about this, although, I have a hunch.

[0:01:57]

Hiten Shah: You know what? I think it actually depends on who you are and what your personality is like or what you really believe about yourself. There are some people out there that are like, "Oh, I suck at that. I'm going to get better at that and I'm going to get better at that just because I know I suck at it and I really want to get better at it." That is a drive that I would say,