How to Play to Your Strengths in Business – Tom Kereszti
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02/14/2022
Show Notes:
Do you want to achieve your full potential? If you know who you are, what you’re passionate about, and what you’re good at, the good news is that you’re very close to reaching your highest potential. Our guest today has a lot to say about this.
Tom Kereszti is a Leadership Expert, Coach, Mentor, Keynote Speaker, and a Published Author, but above all, he considers himself to be a servant leader. He’s passionate about adding value to individuals and organizations and helping them improve their products and company cultures. As a professional mentor, Tom transforms people into leaders by helping them unlock their leadership potential and become the best version of themselves. In his book called ‘C-Suite and Beyond: The 4 keys to leadership success’, Tom shares a collection of personal and business stories where he illustrates his best and worst moments in a fun yet educational way.
Tom believes that everyone’s good at something and that once you figure out your strengths, you’ll become happy and successful.
In this episode of the Think Business With Tyler podcast, we talk about how you can use your strengths and passions to unlock your highest potential. We also get into the importance of company culture, why you need to design it yourself, the three phases of leadership, and what it means to grow in your strength zone.
If you want to grow personally and professionally, this is the perfect episode for you. Tune in to hear some practical tips on growth, leadership, and business success.
Guest-At-A-Glance
💡 Name: Tom Kereszti
💡 What he does: Tom is a Leadership Expert, Coach, Mentor, and Keynote Speaker.
💡 Noteworthy: Tom’s new book, called ‘C-Suite and Beyond. The 4 keys to leadership success’ is now available on Amazon, Barns & Noble, and many other retailers.
💡 Key Quote: “Life is too short. Find something that you’re passionate about, find something that you love, and find something that you’re good at.”
💡 Where to find Tom: LinkedIn
Key Insights
Figure out who you are, what you’re passionate about, and what you’re good at. This is Tom’s secret formula for success. He says that everyone should know these three things about themselves to be happy and successful. But you can’t learn this overnight. It takes a lot of self-reflection to understand what you’re all about. Tom talks about using this formula in life and business. “I’m pretty good at mentoring and leading. So the beauty of those three answers is you can take that anywhere in your life. I can mentor my employees. I can add value to my customers and I can lead my organization or I can lead my family. I can mentor my kids so I don’t have to reinvent myself every time I’m in a different situation. I just use that formula. And that’s been pretty good. And by the way, I did not figure that on until I didn’t know when I was 18 who I was or what I was passionate about, but it takes some time to figure it out.”
Whether you design a workplace culture or not, you will have one. According to Tom, workplace culture is the DNA of every organization. It always finds its way into the organization, whether you like it or not. The best way to create a culture that represents your values as a leader is to intentionally and consciously design it. Tom explains: “Culture is not a poster on the wall. Culture is a great tool that anyone in the organization on a computer janitor, the CEO, if you shared a common culture, which is based on common values, you should be able to walk into the CEOs office and say, ‘Hey, Tom, you know, what you just did does not reflect our values and culture.’ Because it’s not a personal attack on Tom. It’s basically, ‘Look, we agreed on these shared values. We agreed on the culture, how we’re going to conduct ourselves as an organization, and you didn’t abide by that.’”
There are three phases of leadership: understanding how to lead yourself, understanding how to lead others, and developing future leaders. Everything within an organization starts from above, and you can tell a lot about a company by looking at its top leadership. Leaders play a crucial role in an organizational structure, so it’s essential to create strong leaders who share your values and lead by example. Tom talks about the three phases of leadership. “If you want to be a great leader, again, it’s not about you; it’s about somebody else. But start with yourself to see if you can lead yourself, which is not so easy. Developing followers is not that difficult, right? The most difficult part of leadership is being okay with somebody that works for you that you will eventually work for. So, develop future leaders. Look, some people have an issue with that. Some people are afraid to hire really good employees because they feel threatened by them.”
Are you growing in your strength zone? In his newest book, Tom talks about the concept of growing in your strength zone. Once again, it all comes down to figuring out what you’re passionate about and what you’re good at. According to Tom, everyone has something they’re good at. It’s just a matter of determining your talents and playing to your strengths. “If you can work in that, and people can see you thriving that, they will have a lot of respect for you because you’re good at it and you love doing it. The unfortunate thing is a lot of us are doing things that either when I good at or when I’m passionate about you know you go to a nine to five job you may be good at it but you hate it. So life is too short. Find something that you’re passionate about something, find something that you love, and find something that you’re good at.”
Top Quotes
“As a CEO, you’re only or your biggest task is to create an environment for success for your organization. So what does that mean? That means, make sure everybody understands what the culture and vision of the organization is, making sure that they understand their portion on how they deliver on that. And then really equipping them, whether physical assets, training, whatever for them to be successful and just being there to support them throughout the way to make sure that they are successful, and their success results in your success.”
“People will not buy into you if you don’t have a strong identity, if you don’t know what you’re about. And especially in a small organization, the organizational culture really is your character as a startup founder. You founded the company, you started the company, hired one employed, then two employees and three employees… And your character defines what the culture of that organization is because you’re the head of that organization. And if people don’t buy into you, and they don’t buy into your character, and they don’t buy into what you’re doing, then they will come and leave.”
“There’s a lot of narcissism in leadership. People have a tendency to become leaders and rise to leadership roles, maybe not great leaders, but they rise to those leadership roles. And it becomes narcissistic in the sense that they think they achieved that, they think it was all about them. Everything that they did, got them where they are and that is partially true. But that is not at all true. And if you realize that the reason you are there is not because of yourself but because of a team of individuals or group of people that supported you. Then, I think the light starts going on to say. ‘Look, this is not about me.’”
“Culture is just the character of an organization. So character and culture is the same thing. Character goes for an individual, culture goes for an organization. So if you start with a person’s character, how do you come up with your character? Well, it’s based on your values. […] The organization agrees that these are shared values that we’re going to have, whether that may be entrepreneurship, whether that may be honesty, whether that may be integrity, maybe giving back to the community…”
“Your culture is your DNA of your organization, and if you don’t consciously live that culture, you will have a culture that will find its way into your organization. And you may not like it, because it’s not a culture that you believe in or it’s not what you want, and maybe it’s a toxic culture to your organization, but you only have yourself to blame because unless you pay attention to it, and groom it and having it really become your DNA of organization, then you got a problem.”
“If you know who you are, if you know what you’re passionate about and you know what you’re good at. And you could apply that to yourself or to your business. That works well for your business, that works well for yourself. And if you live your life with those three, imagine those three circles and they intersect so if you live your life with clear answers to those three questions, I guarantee you will be successful and you’ll be happy. Now if you can actually find the market to buy that product, you’ll also be rich.”
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