When we talk about individual performance, we often talk about weaknesses. Some may say to work on weaknesses and make them strengths others say to not waste your time and try to minimize the times where your weaknesses will show. What to do can feel overwhelming sometimes. Another thing that I feel is confusing is, when is something a weakness of ours and when is it something else?
A good friend of mine, understanding my interest in Soul Purpose, sent this video from the good people at Dos Equis:
The logic of “The World’s Most Interesting Man” is sound in the regard that there are the things that we all struggle at being good at and will probably never be good at. In this regard, as the man says, don’t do it or to lesser extreme, try not to do it very often. The time that you take to improve a weakness is small when you consider that the same time to improve a strength can lead to exponential growth with much less effort.
In this day and age I would be careful what you consider a weakness. There are a few questions that you can ask to assess why you are weak in certain areas.
- Is your weakness due to lack of experience?
- Is your weakness due to lack of knowledge?
- Why do I consider a particular activity a weakness?
- Can I demonstrate to myself in numerous instances where I have been weak in this area?
Lack of experience and knowledge can be overcome with work. We don’t become great at something just because we are born with it. Leadership is a skill that we often hear attributed to being “born” with. While I do believe that some are more inclined to be leaders than others. Leadership still needs to be cultivated and learned. Being a manager in any work environment is a great example of this.
When we take our first leadership position, we often make a lot of basic fundamental mistakes in managing people. Mistakes such as, assuming everyone will work, think and act like us at work; not always being tactful in our approach; not quite understanding how to truly connect with the people that work for us, etc. These are all mistakes that many new leaders make but for those that have the passion, learn to overcome. What happens if we just give up when things stop going our way? Experience and some coaching in these areas as well as consistent practice of sound management practices can help us be better managers.
Make sure that when deeming something a weakness that there is some real assessment into why that is so. This assessment should include a list of strengths as well as resources that we have so that we are laying all of our cards out on the table. Look at what training has been done, books that have been read and what examples we have that justify weakness. Passion is a key word in our assessments. How passionate are we about the subject matter to overcome our deficiencies?
Should we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses? Absolutely. We just need to make sure we aren’t giving up on ourselves too easily and that we have thoroughly assessed the situation.
Comments are closed.