Why I don’t believe in being ‘well rounded’

Often I get advice from well-meaning leaders to spend considerable energy tackling my weaknesses. This is how you get ahead, they say. Aspiring to be more ‘well-rounded’ is the goal. Be relatively good at everything. IQ …and EQ. Team socials. But also focused and self-directed. Presentation Skills…but also analytics. Writing skills. People leadership. Understanding our financials. Speedy and fast. But also thoughtful and deliberate. Be a product visionary. But also detail oriented and structured. Be bold and share your feedback. But also mind the politics. Be….Everything. We spend our mentoring time discussing my weaknesses. This is where all my focus should go. Weaknesses are bad, we must constantly work to minimize them. Sound familiar?

Being well-rounded surely must be the answer—the great schools and the best jobs ask for it. Well-roundedness will propel you into a successful career and thereby successful life. Right?  

Wrong I say.

If you want to become exceptional or the absolute best in your field, you need an unmatched skillset. Whether you are aspiring to become an elite athlete, musician or marketing wizard, becoming the best in the world means having unparalleled abilities. The most effective way to construct best-in-class abilities is by sharpening your existing strengths. Strengthening your strengths will have a disproportionately higher impact on becoming exceptional in your field than working on your weaknesses. The all-rounder is never a superstar —I hate to break it to you.

To be clear, I am not advocating that you never take notice of weaknesses and never work on them. Of course, our weaknesses can become a problem for all of us if they are not kept in check. However, accept that even if you work really hard on your weakness, at best, you’ll become average at it. You are not a natural in X factor. It takes way more effort to improve from incompetence to mediocrity in an area of weakness than to improve from first-rate performance to excellence in an area of strength. Doubling down on strengths is how you become great.

Let’s take a concrete example. Steve Jobs had many strengths that allowed him to manage a large innovative enterprise like Apple, though patience, leadership EQ or “fostering a postive culture” were not any of them. He was outstanding as a creative design genius and blue sky innovator. Innovation & design were his calling cards, and that is what made him exceptional. He doubled down on them, at the cost of improving his management skills (much to his teams’ dismay at times I am sure).

The danger of well-roundedness is that we are confusing the need for well-roundedness of the individual vs. the need for well-roundedness as a group. And while the latter is necessary as we create almost everything in groups, the former is pointless to aspire to. It’s great if your University Alumni roster has an Olympic swimmer, a New York Times columnist, and an award winning engineering PhD. But they most certainly will not and should not be the same person. 

The truth is, as much as well-roundedness seems like it would be good, we’re dazzled, intrigued and impressed by spikes in ability so much more. Once you’ve truly maxed out in any one area, all you really need to do is to check the “sufficient” box for the rest.

There’s a clear mismatch between what schools, recruiters, and companies say they’re looking for and what is actually valued. We delude ourselves into thinking well-roundedness reigns supreme, when in reality, it’s disproportionate ability in something that make you interesting. 

Stay true to your strengths and seek out opportunities to practice them. Acknowledge your weaknesses but accept it’s not your lane to race in.