From our friend and inspiring leader, Amy Bona, Benefits Consultant at AssuredPartners
The Issue:
Before I learned about excelling in my zone of genius, I worked about 75% of my time in other, less satisfying zones…including a good amount of time working in my zone of incompetence.
My job as a benefits consultant involves detailed presentations to C-Suite Executives, requiring rigorous financial, contractual, and data analysis. Although complex financial analysis is in my zone of excellence, my zone of genius is meeting and connecting with executives via big picture strategizing.
When Crafted Leadership took me through identifying the four zones of brilliance, I realized I was wasting everyone’s time by feeling obligated to operate in my zones of competence and incompetence. Projects such as creating PowerPoint presentations or marketing communications were tasks that could be better accomplished and more quickly handled by others who excelled at and enjoyed creating communication pieces.
The Shift Move:
I made a commitment to decrease the percentage of time I worked in my zones of incompetence and competence, so I could spend more time in my areas of genius. I did this by letting go of the obligation story I had created in my mind. It was ok not to take on tasks I was terrible at, and disliked at the same time…in fact, it was more effective for the whole team for me to spend my time in areas of excellence and genius.
This realization empowered me to shift work responsibilities within our team, in order to better support one another’s areas of genius.
The Impact:
I now hand-off all PowerPoint presentations and communication pieces to others on my team, and in turn, they hand over more excel spreadsheets to me. My time is more valuable to the organization if spent analyzing numbers and connecting with clients directly. The time I spent working on tasks I wasn’t good at and disliked doing, is now available for more energizing projects. At the same time, others on my team get to spend more time in their creative zones of excellence or genius, which translates to real efficiency for AssuredPartners.
If YOU have stories of inspiring leadership in action, we’d love to hear them! Email Nancy at nancy@craftedleadership.com.