Clara Tanone - Q13: Is it better to work on your strengths or to work on your weaknesses?

[Clara Tanone]

Hi,

 

If you could only pick to either work on your strengths or your weaknesses but not work on both, which would you work on?

 

Is there a yes or no answer to this question?

 

Thanks,

Clara Tanone

[fiveworlds]

You can't learn everything. Most people have to know how to cook and how to manage resources even if they are bad at it.

[zapatos]

I recently took a course that addressed this question from a business perspective and the answer was unequivocally to work on your strengths, or more importantly, those strengths that make you stand out.

 

The purpose of the course was to help develop outstanding performers. In the research done by the people who developed the course, they found that the most successful people had a small number of outstanding strengths that allowed them to succeed where others failed. It didn't matter whether or not that person had weaknesses, as long as they weren't disastrous weaknesses that caused others to run and hide from him.

 

If you have no disastrous weaknesses, and no outstanding strengths, it was determined that your best chance of success would come from taking your best strength and developing it to the point where it was outstanding. Others will happily put up with some weaknesses on your part of you have outstanding strengths.

Edited November 23, 2015 by zapatos

[MigL]

Work on your weaknesses when you're young.

 

When you get old like me ( 50s ) you have only strengths, and don't need to work on anything.

( well, maybe my modesty )

[CharonY]

Define "better".

[MonDie]

I wondered about strengths compensating for weaknesses, but I could come up with no good examples.

[playground]

Nope, I also go with the weaknesses, as it is good to build that up again and again and maybe also your strenghts get more and more by doing that?

Hmmmm ... hard question to answer ...

[TheGeckomancer]

If one worked only on their weaknesses, after a time those weaknesses would become strengths, the strengths you used to have would become your current weaknesses by comparison, and you would start training those.

[MonDie]

If your weakness is actually something that just doesn't interest you, it may be an inefficient application of effort. Effort goes a long way if you're interested.

Edited November 28, 2015 by MonDie

[dimreepr]

It depends on a few things:

 

Ones ambitions; if one is trying to achieve a PHD/career then its ones strength that’s needed.

 

Time of life; if one is a tenured prof and looking to find a wife then one had better work on that innate social awkwardness.

 

For most of us; it’s a complex mixture of the above, if you're lucky...

[Nouveau]

There is a different way to consider this, if you can step away from the notion of strengths and weaknesses and start from the point of attributes which shape the person then a better perspective can be achieved. There arn't actual strengths or weaknesses per se only attritubes that we choose to define dependant on given situations, e.g. someone may not be good working as part of a team or group, conversely the flipside is they are better at working by themselves, thus neither is as a specific weakness or strength but each would have their own merit in particular situations.

 

Laziness is another good example, many would certainly consider such a trait is a weakness, however this again can have the flipside in meaning that simplicity is easier to achieve and that a worker who may consider themselves lazy may not over complicate their work as a result.

 

Rather than having a specific goal of choosing to improve either your strengths or weaknesses it seems a more successful approach might be to work upon maximising the benefit you can achieve from all your attributes. The most successful people are the ones able to make use of all their attributes.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Nouveau

[zapatos]

Just because working by yourself is a strength does not mean that the inability to work in a group is not a weakness. They don't cancel out.

[Nouveau]

Neither are stengths or weaknesses, each is simply an attribute to be made the best possible use of. Weakness implies failure, but if an attribute can be put to good use it isn't a failure. It's about understanding and adaptability. The better you are at understanding the easier it is to adapt your attributes, the more you are able to adapt your attributes the more skills and abilities you can gain from them.

 

Just to clarify, having an inability to work well in groups is a negative product of either a specific, or a combination of attributes, but it isn't the actual attribute itself. A positive product of the same combination of attributes may be a better ability to work by one's self. Two possible outcomes and each determined by how the attributes are being used. The goal is always to successfully use and further develop the positive outcomes from which ever attributes a person has.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Nouveau

[zapatos]

Neither are stengths or weaknesses, each is simply an attribute to be made the best possible use of. Weakness implies failure, but if an attribute can be put to good use it isn't a failure. It's about understanding and adaptability. The better you are at understanding the easier it is to adapt your attributes, the more you are able to adapt your attributes the more skills and abilities you can gain from them

No, weakness implies a deficiency or shortcoming, not failure. But recognizing a complementary strength you have does nothing to ameliorate the weakness as you are suggesting. It remains a weakness. If the job description requires 'ability to work in a group setting', you will not get hired by telling the hiring manager that while you cannot in fact work in a group setting, you can make up for that deficiency by working alone instead.

[Nouveau]

Why would you choose to ignore the possitive outcome derived from applying for a position where being better at working alone proves advantageous. Predicating your senario on an assumption of a negative outcome that ignores the obvious positive benfits just appears to be a defeatest attitude and totally incongruent with becoming really successful.

The difference between being a really good poker player or a very poor one isn't the strength or weakness of the cards that each receives, the difference comes in how they get the best possible outcomes from those cards. It's the same with people, it's not about strengths or weaknesses but how you develop your ability to obtain the best possible outcomes from whatever combination of attributes you may have.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Nouveau

[zapatos]

Why would you choose to ignore the possitive outcome derived from applying for a position where being better at working alone proves advantageous. Predicating your senario on an assumption of a negative outcome that ignores the obvious possitive benfits just appears to be a defeatest attitude and totally incongruent with becoming really successful.

The difference between being a really good poker player or a very poor one isn't the strength or weakness of the cards that each receives, the difference comes in how they get the best possible outcomes from those cards. It's the same with people, it's not about strengths or weaknesses but how you develop your ability to obtain the best possible outcomes from whatever combination of attributes you may have.

Maybe you are right. I just heard the local university hospital is looking for a new anesthesiologist. My background is IT but I'm not going to let that hold me back. They may think my lack of medical training is a weakness but I'll show them that my training in IT is really a strength for that position, and they should not ignore the positive outcome for the patients that will be derived from my advantageous ability to debug code.

[Nouveau]

Perhaps they just think you're applying for the wrong job and recommend you for a position in their IT department where you can make the best use of your skillset and experience, thus giving you a more positive outcome.

[zapatos]

Perhaps they just think you're applying for the wrong job and recommend you for a position in their IT department where you can make the best use of your skillset and experience, thus giving you a more positive outcome.

Maybe they will. But that will not change the fact that the ability to care for a patient under anesthesiology is a weakness of mine.

[Nouveau]

But then does that also mean that every single other type of job in existence that you don't have the ability to perform are also your weaknesses. If indeed that is the case then surely you will require an awfully long time answering the, have you any weaknesses question during job interviews.

 

Once you can stop thinking purely in terms of weakness you can start to think of how to get the best from what you have, the idea of weakness is an illusion predicated on the notion of a situational disadvantage, however if you change the situation then you can also change disadvantages to become advantages and thus become useful to developing your success.

.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Nouveau