Hiding Your Weaknesses

What I really mean is gravitating toward your strengths as a way to hide your weaknesses. Would you say that was a strategy?

Yesterday I was at a Hilton Garden Inn (BTW this is a nice chain) and both computers in the business center had an error message. Locked up. Some bad file somewhere. Typical Windows. Oops did I say that out loud? I advised the front desk and they said they would call the engineer. As you can imagine, I am thinking the “engineer” in a hotel is a little different than an “engineer” at Intel, but what was I going to do? Tell them to call him the ‘facilities guy?”

Shortly thereafter I sat next to the engineer at one of the desks waiting for enlightenment, as he moved the mouse and stared at the screen. He had a secret password scribbled on a piece of paper.  But I could have told you right then, it had nothing to do with a password or getting access to the internet. It was a bigger problem (I am an engineer and could have told him that, but it was his turf and I am not a Windows person).

This is funny …. the next thing out of his mouth was “where’s the delete key?” I pointed it out. So next he tried to select <ctrl><shift><delete>.  If you’re following me here, you’ll know that it is not <ctrl><shift><delete> but <ctrl><alt><delete>, and of course that was my first course of action in troubleshooting the situation 30 minutes earlier.

I won’t go on. You get the picture. But consider times when you are struggling, looking for an answer or a best approach, and your most ideal route should be admitting the weakness and calling on someone with the skills. Sure there are times when struggling means stretching which also means growing, but there are also times when you ask yourself if you are hanging onto ego for the sake of self-preservation and really need to be reaching out.

A strong leader does not have all the answers. A strong leader knows when to use the people and resources around her to find the answer.