The Mouse or the Loud Mouth?

While listening to Margaret Heffernan's "Dare to Disagree" TEDTalk a couple of weeks ago, I highly appreciated the example she shared to highlight how people with complementary skills make the best and potentially the most successful duos.

This reminded me of an old school lesson. I neither remember the book nor the author, and no way the year of school. But, I remember the zest of it, golden identifiable traits of a real leader. A good one:

1. Encourages the Mouse : We all know those people, many a times with really cool ideas, with squeaky low voice, who hardly ever manage to build up their confidence and raise their voice. 

2. Keeps a check on the Loud mouth: And then comes another lot, who relish the idea of talking so much that mouses hardly ever would take the pain to put their point across, when they are around.  At times, they prove to have the skills to embellish utter non-sense ideas/vision and even succeed selling them.

There is a third and probably easier(inexpensive) way to solve this problem in certain cases. Team up  a mouse with a loud mouth(now that may not work always, and we may always argue about who gets the attention or the credit, but that's not the point). At least this ensures, that all the ideas are always out there on the table to have a word on. Eventually, they may understand the worth of each other's positive qualities, may be even tips, tricks and techniques for working over the grey areas . 

As they say, one should rather try to play on strengths than fixing up weaknesses. It's good enough to be aware of and manage them, and manage them well!