In order to be a great team player, it’s crucial to have an unbiased awareness of what you’re good at and what you suck at. As a legendary entrepreneur and YouTube star, Gary Vaynerchuk, says: “Self-awareness is being able to accept your weaknesses while focusing all of your attention on your strengths.” In the modern era, we’re conditioned into improving our weaknesses rather than doubling down on our strengths. When you follow this path, it’s hard to rise above mediocrity.

However, when you’re brutally honest about your weaknesses, you can finally accept them and hone other skills that will make you extremely valuable to your employer. Teams benefit when individual members are fully aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but it’s especially important that leaders understand the key attributes of their subordinates. Good leaders know how to delegate effectively, while bad leaders give the inappropriate work to the wrong workers. If you’re a good copywriter, you might excel at crafting thoughtful words in solitude, but perform badly when forced to interact with clients face-to-face. Likewise, a good salesman can easily build rapport with prospective clients, but they might not be good at producing well-researched blog posts for the company’s website. With this in mind, if you read most job descriptions, you could come to the conclusion that companies are only looking for outrageously extroverted salesmen – for every single role!

Valuable team members should be experts in their chosen disciplines – they shouldn’t be expected to switch roles with one another when there isn’t a major overlap in competencies. For the same reason that Hightower plays as a linebacker and Brady plays as a quarterback, putting individuals in roles where they can fully utilize their talents is essential if you want your team to function optimally.