Most sports equipment, like a golf club, tennis racket, or baseball bat, has a certain point that, if hit by the ball, will give the player the optimal result. Hitting this sweet spot produces a long drive down the fairway, a quick crossover return, or a home run hit. Every sport has a sweet spot of some sort. If you’ve experienced it, you know that when you hit the sweet spot, you barely feel it. The ball goes where you want it to go, even further and faster. There is nothing better than that!

But what about the sport of leadership? Aren’t we professional athletes in our own right?

Those in professional sports practice more than 90 percent of the time and actually “play to stay” less than 10 percent of the time. As professional leaders, we are almost always “playing forever.” Therefore, it is particularly important that we take the time to plan and ensure that we are optimizing for our sweet spot.

Did you know that the average person possesses between 500 and 700 different skills and abilities? A common defining moment for people is finding that skill or ability that is right at their sweet spot. As leaders, we also have a great opportunity to help our employees find their sweet spots.

The first step is to ensure a good fit between an employee’s natural abilities and interests and the requirements of the job. This would ensure the “highest and best use” of his talents toward realizing our high-definition vision. Wouldn’t we love to have every member of the team working at their sweet spot? We would always be in “the zone” and work would feel like play.

Our ability to match sweet spots to job requirements is the best predictor of job success and ultimately excellent performance. It all starts with a time to plan the use of talent on our team.

Let’s not forget ourselves in this pairing process. Gaining insight into our own sweet spot as leaders helps us better determine how to design roles and deploy talent on our team. For example, if my sweet spot is the conceptual design of complex deals, I’d better make sure I have a strong analyst on my team. If my sweet spot is looking at lots of details and numbers, I want some big picture and conceptual thinkers on my team.

Want to know an easy way to find your sweet spot? Look at the intersection of these two questions:

1. What am I absolutely passionate about?

2. What tasks are very easy and natural for me to perform?

Most of us vividly remember the moment we found our professional sweet spot. Others told us that we made it look easy, really excelled, and seemed like we were having a great time. Think about the last time others made these comments to you. What were you doing? Like finding any sweet spot, it pays to answer these questions for a while and practice our answers before we can deliver a winner.

Ralph V. Gilles understands this process. He dropped out of college and spent most of his time, by his own admission, lounging in the basement of his parents’ house, eating granola, watching reruns of “Dukes of Hazard,” and lamenting the sorry state of cars being made. in United States.

Growing up, Gilles was typical of most kids playing with Hot Wheels and Formula 1 car models. But, as a teenager, he also had a great talent for drawing vehicles. In fact, his aunt wrote a letter to then-Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca telling him that she should hire her 14-year-old nephew.

A Chrysler executive responded and recommended three design schools. Shortly after, however, the letter was lost and forgotten. Meanwhile, Gilles, a car freak, completed high school and enrolled in university to study engineering, but dropped out quickly. His reason: “He was depressed and really wasn’t sure he wanted to be an engineer.”

As he continued his granola routine, “Dukes of Hazard” in the basement, Ralph’s older brother Max remembered the letter from Chrysler. He remembered that one of the recommended schools was the Detroit College of Creative Studies. Upset that Ralph was wasting his time and talent, Max pressured his brother to apply to the local school, even though the application deadline was only a week and would require 10 sketches.

At that point, the whole family got involved, making Ralph coffee so he could complete his sketches, encouraging him and helping him in any way they could. By the end of the week, Ralph was covered in pencil lead, but the sketches were complete, so his mother sent the package to school the next day.

Today, Ralph V. Gilles is recognized as the innovator of the Chrysler 300 sedan and the Dodge Magnum Wagon I, as well as being responsible for the 2002 Jeep Liberty, 2003 Dodge Viper SRT-10 and various prototypes. Dubbed the Chrysler Group’s newest favorite, Gilles has won numerous national and international accolades. He has since been promoted to Director of Design at Chrysler.

If we constantly misidentify key points, we’ll find our team stuck in a funk, like Gilles.

If we correctly match the key points of the employees with the requirements of the job, we will all live the sweet life!

Today’s fast-paced, efficiency-focused organizations make it especially difficult for leaders to ensure they are always a good fit. It is common to find employees taking over from positions that have been eliminated. If downsizing isn’t executed carefully, the remaining employees can find themselves underemployed and consumed by “residual” tasks that eat up their time but don’t put their minds to good use.

These situations start a cycle of “lower and worse use” of talent, resulting in a downward spiral of self-doubt, anxiety, and frustration. If you’ve ever experienced this, you know that it feels more like a sour patch than a sweet spot.

To avoid this cycle and the resulting decline in team performance, we can plan our teams’ work to optimize sweet spots by:

– Combine tasks that require similar skill levels, so we can more easily match an employee’s sweet spot with the requirements of the position.

– Automation of repetitive tasks.

– Streamline inefficient processes and eliminate redundant tasks that prevent us from obtaining the greatest and best use of our talent.

– Outsource tasks that require a high level of human power but have little impact on our organizations. Stay within our own sweet spots and let other vendors use their sweet spot to serve us.

Take a moment to optimize your team’s sweet spots, including your own. It’s a defining moment for most people when they can walk into work on Monday morning and say, “That’s sweet!”