Depending on who you talk to you most likely get a different answer. You might hear, ‘your weaknesses are holding you back so yes, you should improve them.’ Another might say, ‘forget about your weaknesses and focus on strengthening your strengths.’ Which advice should you follow? Well, really it depends – whether you want to focus on strengthening your strength or developing your weaknesses will depend on the situation and the goals you have set yourself.
Each week I talk to prospective clients in a 15-minute discovery call and often they tell me that they need to overcome their weaknesses to further unlock their potential. And yes, that could be a strategy but often it’s not what they need to do. After some discussion, I usually find myself advising them to stop being over-dependent on their strengths, which prevents them from developing their weaknesses.
No matter who you are, or what job you do, you do need a benchmark of skills to function well at home and at work. Without the benchmark requisite skills, you will inevitably struggle, however, if you’re reading this, it’s a safe guess you have the minimum skills required.
What happens when you focus on your weaknesses
Your weaknesses have become weaknesses for a reason. Just like any other muscle in your body, a lack of use or not moving a muscle in a particular way prevents any muscle strength or definition. Your skills are no different.
To focus on working on your weakness you need a set of already developed skills that include self-compassion, self-insight and positive self-coaching. These three skills are needed especially when situations using your weaknesses don’t go according to plan or you make a mistake. Remember developing a weakness is a form of learning and you need self-insight to recognize and reflect when your efforts haven’t worked. You need self-compassion to remind yourself this is what it’s like to improve a skill – not everyone gets it right the first time. And you need positive self-coaching to pick yourself up and take the learnings from the situation so you can do better next time. Now imagine if you didn’t have these three skills, what would be like for you if your self-talk was continually reminding you of your mistakes with corrective feedback? Some of you reading this would feel worse about your abilities and your confidence would decline, you may even give up, because after all you should be able to do this – right?
What happens when you focus on your strengths
Your strengths are strengths because they either come naturally to you or you have practised them to such an extent that they have become automatic. That also creates a problem for you as they become your solution of choice at every turn. They could promote a narrow perspective, limit the outcomes and further weaken your relative weaknesses.
I remember working with someone who never made a deadline, yet he could charm anyone with his relationship skills, and it was those skills he relied on to work to his own deadlines and keep his job! While it took some time for management to work out he struggled to work to deadlines, his peers had quickly worked it out and lost respect for him reasonably early on in his role.
Your strengths have a use-by date or put another way their effectiveness can get to a point where the pareto principle applies i.e., any more strengthening of your strengths will leave you with little to no increased impact.
It’s not always advisable to further develop your strengths. It may be advisable to recognize when they are being overused and figure out why and what other approaches can be used instead.
So, choose wisely on your approach to self-improvement i.e., strengthen your strengths or work on your weaknesses. The most successful people maximize their strengths while addressing their relevant weaknesses.
How to be discerning about how you handle your strengths and weaknesses
1. Surround yourself with strengths that cover your weaknesses. Well-constructed teams can be powerful when they are put together with this in mind. If you have the opportunity to hire people with the strengths that you lack, do it. If none of those options are available to you, you would be wise to set up routines or systems that can mitigate your weaknesses.
2. Weaknesses are only relevant if they contribute to your goals. Examine your goals and determine what skills you need to be successful. Consider what you are lacking and ask yourself how your strength can support developing that weaker skill. Ask yourself, how can I work around my weakness? Ideally you need to avoid worrying about irrelevant weaknesses.
3. Is your weakness impacting you negatively in multiple ways? For example, procrastination, an inability to make decisions, and a lack of following through on your decisions are weaknesses that affect more than one aspect of your life. If that’s the case, then it is prudent to spend the time and effort to correct as these weaknesses can even take away from your strengths.
4. Get a second opinion. Scientists have discovered that people are often blind to their weaknesses. And even when they do identify their weaknesses, they grossly underestimate their severity. If you are unsure of your weaknesses or need some assistance determining its impact, then ask trusted friends and colleagues. When you hear the same weaknesses mentioned repeatedly, you can be quite certain that these are genuine weaknesses that would benefit from your attention.
5. Your strengths make you uniquely valuable. Your strengths determine your value in the workplace and in life. They define what you can bring to the world at a high level. Only focus on strengthening your strengths if it enhances your value to the world and brings you closer to achieving your goals.
6. Your statistics speak for themselves. Wondering whether you were right or wrong is not the question. The question is, ‘why does this keep happening to me and how can I get a better outcome next time?’ Often, it’s unproductive to apportion blame or feel persecuted. It’s much more productive to look at your contribution and how you can leverage your strengths or improve a weakness to get a better outcome next time.
7. Keep your ego out of it. It’s human nature to want to spend time doing the things you’re good at and avoid areas of weakness. Avoid allowing your personal preferences to make these important decisions. Spend your time and energy wisely.
Everyone is blessed with strengths and burdened with weaknesses even if you are unable to recognize them now. How you manage your strengths and weaknesses determines your ability to thrive in the world. When allocating your time to increasing strengths or minimizing weaknesses, choose carefully. Address weaknesses that are systemic or stand in the way of achieving your goals.
After all, it’s not about whether to further develop your strengths or improve on your weaknesses, it’s smarter to consider how you can best spend your time to maximum effect.
If you can recognize that the way you are behaving is getting in the way of you achieving your goals, then book in a confidential call to discuss how you can navigate your challenge with the minimum disruption and maximum effect.
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