You Probably Don’t Know Just How Good You Are

Over the years I have read a lot by Peter Drucker on his ideas about leadership and organizational management. I would probably do well to go back and think on what has said again.

With that in mind, I wanted to draw attention back to an entry I wrote about his short essay, Managing Oneself. If you have to choose between them, read Drucker’s piece.

One of the things he says is that people often don’t really know what their strengths and weaknesses really are. The first step one often needs to take is to discover these things for themselves.

As I wrote in my entry a number of years ago,

“Drucker gives a number of interesting examples of how men like Patton, JFK, Eisenhower and Churchill were hampered by situations which emphasized their weaker areas.”

Many tests, especially those administered in schools, measure our skills according to a very narrowly defined set of standards that may not have any relevance to our post-graduate lives.

Knowing that, it really is often incumbent upon ourselves to discover what we are good at, how and in what situations we work best, what our values are and how we can contribute. Managing Oneself strives to teach you how to do just that.

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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