Embrace your Weaknesses
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Are you thinking about your weaknesses in the way a high-flyer does? Many successful people have strong personalities – with both great strengths and major weaknesses. What have these successful people learned about how to view their weaknesses?
Quickly jot down 3 of your weaknesses before moving on – what have people criticised in the past? Also identify a number of acknowledged strengths.
How do you feel when you think about your weaknesses? Most of us feel at least a little frustrated, demotivated and defensive. Rarely does thinking about weaknesses create the surge of development energy that talking about our strengths does!
The sad truth is that many people are held back from achieving their dreams by well-meaning managers who feel that our weaknesses will prevent us from achieving our goals. Weaknesses therefore dominate development discussions and talent reviews – with managers focusing on what’s missing rather than the great strengths we contribute.
So, what’s the high-flyer way to look at weaknesses?
Don’t get disheartened by your weaknesses – embrace them. Admit them openly, apologise if necessary, manage them to control their impact – and ultimately, they may be part of why you’re great at what you do!
Quickly jot down 3 of your weaknesses before moving on – what have people criticised in the past? Also identify a number of acknowledged strengths.
How do you feel when you think about your weaknesses? Most of us feel at least a little frustrated, demotivated and defensive. Rarely does thinking about weaknesses create the surge of development energy that talking about our strengths does!
The sad truth is that many people are held back from achieving their dreams by well-meaning managers who feel that our weaknesses will prevent us from achieving our goals. Weaknesses therefore dominate development discussions and talent reviews – with managers focusing on what’s missing rather than the great strengths we contribute.
So, what’s the high-flyer way to look at weaknesses?
- Do your weaknesses stem from the same personality that drives your best strengths?
Every strength has a flipside weakness. People who are very flexible and great at reacting in the moment may find it difficult to plan and progress in a very organised way. Innovative people think outside the box – and find it hard to stay INSIDE the box and follow rules and procedures meticulously. Decisive people have an energy to act that stops them being good listeners. Tough-minded people are rarely diplomatic. It’s going to be really difficult to fix a weakness that is the flipside to your strength, and you may never be any good at it. If you have a weakness that is not down to inexperience, but to core personality, what else can you do? - Can you manage the weakness by enlisting others’ help?
If you have a weakness, it has consequences – it can slow you down, trip you up, or irritate others whose support you need. You can’t just ignore it and say “Oh, that’s just me”. If, as in the example above, you are not diplomatic – how could you work around this to minimise the impact?- If you’re senior enough or have enough budget, it’s often straightforward: you can hire someone who is diplomatic, and use their skills!
- If you’re not lucky enough to have that option, can you enlist someone with skills in your area of weakness to help you out? For example, I’ve seen tough-minded, assertive people work with a diplomatic colleague to set up a signal at meetings to say “You’re now starting to antagonise someone” – in one case, the colleague would offer mints to their neighbour as the private signal!
- If you are bad at proofreading and attention to detail, can you do a trade with someone else in your team – your hated work for their hated work?
- Can IT and systems help you?
If you are disorganised, can IT help you – perhaps there are apps or systems that can help with reminders and alerts? In my case it was discovering a book, a methodology and an app which allowed me to manage my weakness in being organised and getting all my tasks done, that allowed me to improve over time. - Can you explain yourself to others?
Help others to work with you by explaining your weakness, and labelling them. It can reassure people if you tell them how you work and show you are aware of your weaknesses, but work to control them. You can admit that you are about to be blunt, but that you don’t mean to be rude or upset them. You can alert them that your work style might look chaotic, but that you have built a strong reputation for delivering on time and to high quality. All of this helps to minimise friction – as long as you really do have the weakness under control! - Can you drive your career into roles where your weakness is not important?
I was recently working with a manager who had consistently been told that diplomacy was a weakness for him. He was becoming discouraged because he couldn’t work out how to address this. It dawned on us that actually the right answer might be to do nothing – he was working in Procurement, and how many companies want Procurement teams to be diplomatic when the need is to push through a 20% saving on an external contract, or tackle underperforming suppliers? Clearly there are some roles where being blunt could be a disaster – but there are other roles where a direct approach saves time, and is a positive benefit. - Are you resilient enough to never give up?
If we want something enough, we all have a level of resilience bordering on the obsessive, and if there’s a way to achieve our dreams or deliver something we believe in, we will find it. It might not be the way others do it, but does that really matter? If you look around you at people who have the same job title, often they spend their time in wildly different ways – and yet they still get the job done.
Don’t get disheartened by your weaknesses – embrace them. Admit them openly, apologise if necessary, manage them to control their impact – and ultimately, they may be part of why you’re great at what you do!