the more i’ve learned about career advancement and life in general, the more i’ve understood that leaning into strengths is underrated and can lead to both happiness and career success.
and those things are separate - happiness and success - understanding yourself better leads to more happiness in your personal life, and knowing what you’re really good at helps you achieve success in your career.
but for many people, leaning into your strengths can be counter-intuitive and involve un-learning the “well-rounded” mentality that’s pushed on us now more than ever before. perhaps it’s that when growing up, preparing for college involves putting together a well-rounded lifestyle, or perhaps it’s simply viewed as bad to have weaknesses (and better to try and be a little bit good at everything). as children, oftentimes your parents want for you to excel in every subject at school, while also being a “normal” kid with a good social life, and also have extracurriculars / hobbies on the side, etc (being a good child, maintaining good health, etc). in childhood, being spiky is often valued less than being well-rounded. and maybe this well-intentioned - most children probably won’t discover what they spike at until they try a lot of stuff and get exposed to a lot of things. but it’s definitely more risky to throw most of your time towards the thing you’re good at as a child, versus trying to be more versatile.
as you go through college and navigate early career dynamics, you learn that your time is fixed and you can’t do everything, so you have to get good at allocating / prioritizing your time. there is not enough time in the day to try and be good at everything (although a few rare cases exist of true renaissance men). so allocate time in the way you want, and do what you like. this could involve trying to learn a little bit about everything, but many people who have a competitive instinct (or are trying to discover who they are) will start prioritizing their time playing games that they are particularly good at. i’ve learned that i enjoy healthy competition, and so have tried to place less emphasis on being well-rounded and lean more into what i’m good at.
venture capital is a great example of a career type that rewards people who lean into their strengths. there is no one blueprint for a successful investor - many of the best vc’s of all time have come from disparate backgrounds including journalism, exited founders, career vc’s, operators, etc. the fact that there isn’t one “archetype” that is universally successful points to the fact that there are many ways to win in venture, and from what i’ve seen, a way to do well is to figure out what you’re good at / how to play a game that you’re good at (on that not many others are playing).
- if you’re really extroverted, maybe you should lean into that and start hosting events / building community
- if you are great at crafting your personal brand, maybe you should focus on podcasts / navigating elite networks
- if you’re naturally more quiet and intellectual, maybe you should become known for your thoughtful writing / long-form content
- if you love one geography (like nyc or la), maybe focus on that and be the one person everyone from your city goes to when raising
- if you’re a contrarian, maybe be loud about it and you’ll attract the contrarian founders you’re looking to back
- if you’re a great storyteller, maybe focus on fundraising / investor relations and outsource the day-to-day of the fund to an operator / executor persona
- if you’re a product person, maybe figure out how to productize your value-add to founders, and constantly out-innovate other investors on products you offer
- etc
if you try and do all of the above, it will become a lot harder to become top of your field at one of these things, because someone focused on playing only that game will have a natural advantage.
playing into strengths doesn’t only apply to venture - many other fields seem to reward this behavior. i first noticed this by meeting some great salespeople that had very different personalities and ways of selling, but all achieved lots of success. it seems like great salespeople understand what they’re good at and use their personality and strengths to sell. for example, one founder friend is more reserved but has a very trustworthy air to him, and people want to work with him because they think he’s smart and honest and will help them win. another founder sells well because his personality is so unique that it intrigues you, and you can’t help but remembering this person and getting pulled back in constantly. another friend is a classic sales persona who is your friend first, and juggles lots of relationships well. if you’re quiet and you try and sell by being loud, it might not work, and vice versa.
career success is one obvious outcome that understanding your strengths can lead to, but it can also help you hone your taste / personality and have other downstream effects outside of work. if you know that you’re very creative and like to produce things (writing, music, art, projects, etc) then if you allocate more of your time towards this, you’ll probably naturally be happy. or if you know that you get into the flow state by listening, reading, consuming content, etc, perhaps you’ll be unhappy forcing yourself to create for the sake of creating and more happy to “listen to understand” and make connections between concepts in your head.
this isn’t to say that everyone should only focus on what they’re good at, and ignore everything else. when you are figuring out your strengths it’s good to get exposed to a lot of things at first. and there is value in the liberal arts curriculum / being a renaissance man (where you know a bit about a lot of things), because you can oftentimes connect concepts across disciplines. it’s also probably true that one person’s strength could be going horizontal, that’s what they’re good at, because they’re very curious and good at integrating knowledge together. in theory it sounds great to be a “t” - you can go wide on a lot of things, but you can also go deep on one thing. i wonder if most people would be happiest though if they picked one or the other (horizontal or deep), and that also most people would be happier if they picked going deep on something.
there are some things you can do that can help pinpoint your strengths / style. the one i like best is simply doing an audit of your week (or month) and finding the times where you felt truly in a flow state. this could be obvious (you sat down for hours working on one thing) but there are other less-obvious forms of the flow state too (maybe you got lost in a long conversation with a friend which would indicate you love learning from conversations). generally, beyond identifying flow states, good introspection should shed some light on what your strengths might be. and last, asking your close friends and family what they think you’re good at can work surprisingly well. sometimes you’re too close to yourself to see it, but your mom can point out something she has noticed in your since childhood that you never saw before.
knowing yourself well is easier in theory than in practice though. maybe it’s just me, but i’m still trying to know myself better and figure out what i’m good at. and it might take a while to figure this out.