Generalist vs Specialist

By my mid to late 30s I used to say “I’m a Specialist Generalist”, as my role was to grow the assets of a family-owned business holding company and we invested in widely diverse business sectors, countries, sizes of businesses. The common theme was our focus on growing the valuation of all those businesses.

This meant that, with all that experience, I felt comfortable that I could play that strategic role with pretty much any business.

Fast forward nearly twenty years and my last decade and more has moved that experience into coaching and, increasingly, into supporting leaders.

Guess what, I often am asked to link the two, by helping leaders elevate from good to great to elite, all the while with a focus for them on a “What’s Next” that, yes, is centred on building valuation of their business through asset growth.

What businesses do I work with? Any, as long as they are those kinds of “good to great to elite” leaders.

I suppose you could say I am a specialist in terms of the focus on the types of leaders I work with, but to my clients they work with me largely because I am a generalist and bring a wide variety of experience and knowledge to help them look at things from different angles. Perhaps still a specialist generalist!