Circles and Triangles: Confusing ‘Well Rounded’ with ‘Strength’

I was think­ing about cir­cle and tri­an­gles and how, in our soci­ety, many peo­ple believe we should all be well-round­ed cir­cles. In fact, we talk about how being ​‘well-round­ed’ as a bet­ter thing to be – a well-round­ed ath­lete, for exam­ple – but is it?

But the truth is, many peo­ple are not well-round­ed: they’re more like a tri­an­gle, with skills and attrib­ut­es that are strong and sharp. And, from my per­spec­tive, when we try to take a strong tri­an­gle, and make it into a cir­cle, we weak­en it.

Now, I’m not an engi­neer, but I do know that in math­e­mat­ics and engi­neer­ing, noth­ing beats the unyield­ing strength of the tri­an­gle. It’s unpar­al­leled in terms of its strength to sup­port a load and to resist exter­nal forces. You just have to look at bridges and truss­es to see their pow­er at work.

So why would you take a high-per­form­ing, sales­per­son who is amaz­ing with cus­tomers and at find­ing solu­tions, and get them to focus on inputting data into the com­pa­ny CRM, or on their writ­ing skills – to make their tri­an­gle more like a circle?

It may seem log­i­cal to try make them more ​‘well-round­ed’ but, in real­i­ty, that per­son is bet­ter off focus­ing on get­ting in front of more clients, and have some­one else edit their work or input details into the CRM.

You’re much bet­ter off with two over­lap­ping tri­an­gles: one who is amaz­ing at sales and anoth­er who is amaz­ing at administration.

Many exec­u­tives know and live by this, but many miss this prin­ci­ple and try to force real­ly good tri­an­gle peo­ple into a weak­er, mediocre cir­cle. Not good for them or for the company.

The Chal­lenge

• Find a way to lever­age and cel­e­brate your tri­an­gle-ness by invest­ing in your strengths:
  • Read or review Invest in Your Sweet Spots (Chap­ter 4 Your Oxy­gen Mask First)
• Lever­ag­ing the strengths of oth­ers on your team instead of mak­ing your­self into a circle:
  • Read or review Make Your­self Use­less (Chap­ter 10, Your Oxy­gen Mask First).