Making Yourself Indispensable

Many employees find themselves hitting a plateau in the workforce. They find they are no longer growing and moving up to more involved leadership roles. These employees may have plenty of experience and positive traits but they often find themselves being surpassed by other employees for new openings. This can be a frustrating and a trying time for many experienced employees.

Strength vs. Weakness Improvement
Naturally you look at your weaknesses and assess how you can do better. However, you should be looking at your strengths. Top level executives have a several outstanding strengths that outweight their weaknesses. Having a couple of outstanding strengths will allow you move up the ladder within an organization. It's more challenging to improve your strengths rather than weaknesses. How do you improve on something that you already do so well? In order to develop and improve your strengths you need to focus on complimentary skills. This is known as "non linear development." Improving a core strength by improving other related skills. There is a synergistic effect of combing two skills. When traits are combined they produce a significant improvement in leadership vs. either skill alone.

Cross-Training
Let's explain this concept another way. The idea of improving complementary skills is how athletes train. Football players can run drills and practice plays. But how do you improve as a player once you have all the plays down? Athletes perform other activities that improve their game. For example they lift weights and run. These skills will allow them to more efficiently execute their plays. Working on their strength and speed will complement their play making. Indirect training to improve an athletes core strength of executing plays.

Strength Building

There are several steps to take when improving your strengths. The first is to identify all your existing strengths. This can be done in several different ways. The best way to discover your strengths is to talk to your peers and co-workers. If possible you should seek a 360 degree evaluation which includes opinions from direct coworkers and other departments. A 360 degree evaluation provides a well rounded view of you leadership style. When you want to be an effective leader, outside opinion of your skills are more important than your own opinion.

Once you have a list of strengths, the next step is to choose one to build on. You need to choose a strength that will benefit your organization and you are passionate about. "A strength you have but isn't important to your organization is a hobby. A strength you have that you aren't passionate about but is important to the organization is a chore." (Harvard) Then you need to identify a complementary trait that is also important to your organization. By focusing on improving your complementary trait, there will be an indirect improvement of your main strength.

You should continue to work on your companion trait until you notice a difference upon completing another 360 evaluation. This change will take time and could even be as long as several years but with continued persistence you will grow as a leader. Once you have developed your companion trait, you can look to improve another companion trait. Once your main strength has seen growth, you can start to focus on another main strength and associated companion traits. Extraordinary leaders don't only have one strength.

Below is a chart of 16 Strengths that are related to success along with their complementary traits. 

Overkill?
After you master several strengths, begin to look at the 5 broader categories that the 16 main strengths fall into. Which strengths are underrepresented in the broader categories? Look to improve these ones next!

In Summary:
You may be a well liked person with no real flaws but without ordinary strengths you will not move up the organization ladder! The more outstanding strengths you have, the more indispensable you are. You will become irreplaceable because your strengths will always outweigh your weaknesses. Even starting with one extraordinary strength rather than being well rounded in several strengths will result in leadership development. Companion traits are the way to improve your already existing strengths. Instead of doing what you already do, you are engaging in new ways of skill development that will result in more effective behavior.

Zenger, John, Joseph Folkman, and Scott Edinger. "Making Yourself Indispensable."Harvard Business Review (2011). Print.