No One Has It All, Everybody Has Something
The What’s In Your Toolbox? post from May 10, 2017 is a great starter to this current four-part series.
There are four key themes that I’ve seem repeatedly during my career:
(1) strengths are situational
(2) no one has it all
(3) diversity of talent leads to great success, and
(4) a diagnosis can be an asset.
The first of these themes was detailed in the June 29, 2018 post There’s No Piano in a Marching Band. Today, we tackle “no one has it all.”
It is generally accepted that the “so-called normal” have the ability to be successful at work, play and home based on their strengths. They also have weaknesses that can lead to failure, but the focus often remains on the likelihood of success.
The label “disabled” significantly alters this assessment process — the expectation of limitation paves the way to diminished possibility of success and increased certainty of failure.
In working with “so-called normal” executives, high performers and other high potential professionals, it is fact, proven person by person, that each has needed expertise and talents that promote great achievement. But each also has gaps in experience, uncultivated skills and never-gonna-happen characteristics that are mitigated over time or counted on from colleagues.
In working with those with great talent who are also entitled to the label “disabled,” it is common to hear that one’s expectation of success is based on another’s assumption of limited capability. The success-assuming evaluation for the “so-called normal” is swapped for the failure-assuming evaluation of the “disabled.”
Yet no one has every skill needed, honed to a perfect level, for every situation of every day of their lives.
All do have a unique set of natural skills, experiences and expertise that are the foundation of accomplishment — and the need for complementary talents of others, too.
Thank you for reading this Oh Fabled One post! “Fabled” is a mash-up of “failing at being disabled” from the title of the TED Talk that started it all, now with 1.3M+ views.
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