Entrepreneurs have deal-doing insight.

Good salespeople have deal-doing Insight, which can be defined as:

• a natural, deep capacity to understand people and situations,
• a tuned intuition that identifies patterns & trends, and
• an ability to see gaps and know ways to fill them.

True entrepreneurs and top-notch salespeople possess a set of natural talents that work together to create insight strength.

As one example:

Consider Ideation and Intellection...the ability to imagine ideas and the ability to think about and understand ideas. These are two distinct aspects of Talent: that is, to a degree they can be viewed as distinct. Ideation and Intellection are 'intertwined'. Many people tend to be 'set' in one mode or the other. As a result - few people possess the ability to shut off Intellection in order to free up Ideation. Few people possess the ability to set aside judgment and replace it with open-mindedness or free-flowing creativity. Indeed, very few people can switch back and forth between Ideation and Intellection. Most people get stuck in thought ruts...thought habits.

Q: Can a person develop Insight Strength?

A: Absolutely - Yes!

Here's a great way to start - read some of Edward de Bono's work.

Applaud curiosity.

Spend more time with inwords.

Remember - deal-doing insight can be converted into fortunes. 

New Things are the key to interesting and positive work experiences.

People feel good when putting their strengths to work.

People do not feel good when working outside of their strength zones.

People feel particularly bad when they are putting their weaknesses to work.

When people feel bad they do poor work and get poor results.

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If people are not meeting their business goals then work to understand their feelings. If people are not meeting their business goals and they are feeling good then there’s a high probability your plans must be improved.

If people do not feel good at work then there’s a high probability their roles do not align with their personal strengths. If this is the case then the best strategy is altering their roles to align work actions with their personal strengths.

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Helping people understand then use their strengths at work is the quickest, least-expensive, and most-productive thing you can do to improve your business.

As you gain a clear understanding of each person’s strengths:

• Engage strengths at work, wherever possible,
• Avoid using weaknesses at work,
• Cover weaknesses with strengths,
• Build strengths-based strategic plans, &
• Enable your people to take strengths-based action.

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 Personal Strengths: the #1 key to profitable and sustainable business.

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Don't go against the grain; stretch in the direction of your strengths.

Engineering teaches us about tensile forces and shear forces.

Tensile forces are forces that stretch things. For example, if we hold two ends of a rope in our hands and pull the rope then the rope is under tension...and it stretches. The more force we apply the more the rope stretches.

Shear forces are forces that cut. For example, if we take a pair of shears we can cut through the cross-section of the rope.

It takes much less force to shear the rope than it takes to pull both ends of the rope and break it into two pieces. Engineers would say it takes less shear force than tensile force to cause the rope to fail.

In layman's terms: the rope likes to stretch in the direction of its strength and the rope is less tolerant when the force is applied against its grain.

People have strengths and weaknesses. With respect to strengths and weaknesses, each person is unique.

People can stretch and grow in the directions of their personal strengths...and people do not do well when we apply force against their weaknesses.

In business, we need to make sure we know people's strengths and weaknesses...this, of course, is better than assuming people's strengths and weaknesses or not bothering to understand people's strengths and weaknesses. This applies in the broadest of terms: it applies to industry-technical strengths and weaknesses; it applies to interpersonal/communication strengths and weaknesses; it applies to situation-strengths and situation-weaknesses; it applies to individuals and it applies to work-teams.

We should help people stretch in the direction of their strengths...this inspires people and provides them the opportunity to be self-motivated and to excel.

We should work to use one person's strengths to cover another person's weakness...this is better than cutting against the grain.

We should anticipate situations that resonate with strengths and situations that resonate with weaknesses.

These are important leader and manager responsibilities.

PS: instead of saying tensile stress, some engineers would call it normal stress. That makes for an even more compelling argument. When we stretch in the direction of our strengths...that's normal. When we cut across our weaknesses...it hurts.

PPS: this overlaps the fact that constructive criticism is an oxymoron. Most of the time, criticism hits people right on their weak spots.