So many people have things holding them back in the world of work but refuse to truly acknowledge them.
They have confidence in many areas but bury their vulnerabilities in the hope that they’ll just go away.
But the best thing to do is to recognise them, accept them and then relentlessly work on them.
Gymshark founder, Ben Francis, eloquently discussed his weaknesses with Steve Bartlett on No.1 UK podcast ‘The Diary of a CEO’.
Francis, whose fitness apparel business is now valued at over £1bn, admitted to struggling earlier in his career with public speaking – a frailty I’ve wrestled with in the past.
But rather than avoiding it, over the past few years he’s actively pursued improvement in that area.
It all started with his decision to make a simple list – produced through self-awareness – and featuring an honest assessment of his strengths and weaknesses.
Then, after initially focusing on raising his confidence levels by accentuating the positives, he went about ironing his flaws.
He said: “I asked myself – What am I good at? What am I bad at? At that point, I’d split the two out and decided to lean into my strengths.
“I did that for three or four years. I got really comfortable with my strengths and then I decided to lean into my weaknesses.
“What you need to do – and I think everyone should do this in whatever field of work – is write down your character traits.
“It could be – ‘I’m messy. I’m always late’. The conversation for me is ‘yes you’re messy and always late’ but those things should be up for grabs, right?’
“You should look at those things and not roll your eyes and say ‘that’s just me’ because it’s not or certainly doesn’t have to be.
“If I’d done that in my early days, I’d have put ‘I’m introverted, shy, not good in front of cameras, terrible at public speaking and I’m not good at people management’.
“But I didn’t want to identify with those things. I didn’t want to say ‘Ben is that’ because I didn’t want to be that.
“Don’t identify with those things – those parts of yourself that aren’t maybe ideal. Look at them in a logical manner as you would any other problem in life and try to solve them.
“Going back to my list – what I’m good at and what I’m bad at – one of those things was public speaking.
“I didn’t immediately draw up a plan. I just had that list on my phone. Then I was at an event chatting away to people and was asking them what they did. Someone said ‘I’m a public speaking coach’. So it was ‘boom’, lightbulb moment. And I said ‘Can you teach me?’ That’s how it happened.
“But if I hadn’t done that work and written it down on a list, I would probably have just said to him ‘enjoy your day, lovely to meet you’.”
Most people mask their fragilities in the hope they’ll disappear by themselves in time.
But what Francis is preaching is radical acceptance of your current flaws, radical ownership of your current flaws and a radical commitment to consign them to your personal history books.
It’s a process that’s so simple to understand yet also difficult to face. But if you show the bravery to go on this journey of self-discovery and self-improvement, these fragilities will never ever be able to blindside you again.
Paul Brown 