Challenging strengths and weaknesses
We all know strengths are something you're good at and weaknesses are something you're not so good at. What if that's not the full story?
I want to share two ideas that challenge this story:
1) Strengths and weaknesses are not what you're good or bad at. Instead - strengths are something that lights you up, boosts your energy, and brings you joy (while you can not be so great at it). Weaknesses are something that puts you down, depletes your energy, and kills your mood (while you can be really good at doing it).
We can be stuck doing the things that we are good at. While our excellent work may be useful, we don't consider what doing this thing does to us internally, whether it is aligned with our energy.
Author Marcus Buckingham spoke of this perspective. It gave me insight into what I've always considered to be my strengths. It gave me surprising permission to let go of the things I’m good at but rob me of my energy in unhelpful ways. I can be good at it, but it is not my “strength”; it's actually a weakness.
Similarly, if something brings us joy and lights us up, it is OK to struggle with it, to not be the best at it. Having that internal fire will make us more resilient in the long run pursuing that “strength.”
We can be more careful of the advice “lean into your strengths”, because it may be something that's hurting you on the inside. Instead, lean into what lights you up and gives you energy, even if you have to work harder to achieve it.
2) It's all relative. Strengths and weaknesses are relative to a job. They depend on the context of the job.
Management author Robert Kaplan says that what your strengths are in one job may be a weakness in another job, and vice versa. It helps to think of these traits as fluid and dependent on the role we are in, rather than a fixed trait that is universally “strong” or universally “weak.”
We are quick to categorize. We like to label people as a good this or a good that. We self-appoint as being a bad this or a bad that. We fail to recognize that maybe we are bad at something in the context of a particular job. If we are put in a different situation, we may not be so bad at that thing. Maybe it's changing the age group you teach. Maybe it's adjusting the size of the team you have. Maybe it's switching up your work hours. Whatever it is, maybe a shift in context is all we need to make a weakness a strength.
The truth is we think a lot about strengths and weaknesses, when looking for a job and when hiring someone for a job, or just thinking about general career advancement.
I'm curious about how these two ideas apply to our lives and leadership - to rethink what are our actual strengths and weaknesses based on how we feel, to free ourselves from a fixed mindset of our traits being always good or always bad.
How could you rethink your strengths and weaknesses to maximize your work experience? How could you see the people you lead differently with these perspectives?
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