To Succeed We Need More than Just Talent - Doug Pardo LionPoint Coaching
Talent is great, but it is not enough to fully succeed.
We all have great potential that we can foster by going farther than our talents. What we must also focus on is self-awareness that can give us important context. Context of ourselves and those around us, that will allow us to stay focused on our values and goals throughout any situation.
The founder of LionPoint Coaching, Doug Pardo delves into the importance of creating a clear context by explaining that our talents alone will not lead us to success. One must consider other ‘critical factors’ that may change the conditions for ourselves along the way to our goals.
“If we consume ourselves with measuring our potential by our talents alone, we can overlook the purpose that drives us, the culture in which it’s harnessed, and how those elements serve as the medium to achieve our desired outcomes.”
The coaches at LionPoint assist leaders in detailing the contexts in which they and their teams need clarity to be the most effective and reach their highest potential. Doug notes that leaders can fall into the habit of using ‘talent-based mindsets’ to help their teams achieve their utmost potential while simultaneously blaming organizational downfalls on the areas of lack of talent amongst the team. This mindset is counterproductive and creates an organization with a weak team infrastructure.
This is why LionPoint Coaching emphasizes developing your teams’ talents while also creating clear contexts for those talents to bloom.
Doug describes that to avoid this talent-based mindset and create the appropriate context for people to use their talents and achieve their highest potential, the leader of the group must be self-aware. Self-awareness is not always naturally embedded in us, which is where the guidance of an executive coach becomes a necessary aid.
“For early-stage companies experiencing high growth and rapid context shifts, emphasizing talent over context is a key factor in lost productivity and unrealized potential. Instead, we should make evaluating context part of the process in daily workflow to increase self-awareness and alignment. As leaders, our most important job is creating a holistic context that is consistent with who we are and responds to the evolving needs of our teams and then communicating it throughout the organization.
Evaluating the context is about recognizing where the team is not being given clear directions. Leaders may blame lack of talent instead of realizing they are not communicating clearly. As Pardo writes, “Talents are part of the equation, but we must also focus on creating a purpose and meaning that motivates our teams.” Successes and failures come from creating and promoting a sense of mission and purpose. It also comes from creating a culture that supports team members and encourages them to work in collaboration.
It is easy to judge a person on their skill set alone but teams succeed because of much more. Leaders must evaluate the holistic context if they want to actualize the potential of their team and organization. Doug Pardo believes that this can be challenging to understand but “this lesson is learned by a leader who has the self-awareness to know their role and where they are not delivering clarity to their organizations.”
