shrink the gap between strengths and weaknesses.
by bill reeb
there are many self-development books and advisors that proclaim that you should focus on your strengths, develop your strengths and don’t worry about your weaknesses.
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this is a great story to tell because it is one everyone wants to hear. who wants to be told that they should work on what they feel inadequate about in themselves or their abilities? in other words, it is easy to get people pumped up about spending time concentrating on what they do well and discard what they do poorly and leave it for someone else.
i am not suggesting that you need to be good at everything and i absolutely believe you should develop your strengths. but my experience is that people naturally do that – everyone wants to show off and challenge their exceptional skills and attributes. strengths get used, and therefore developed, because they are the most satisfying to engage. so, your strengths will naturally get stronger. however, i believe that if you don’t constantly develop your weaknesses, the small gap between your strengths and weaknesses will slowly grow into a giant chasm that will ultimately become your personal albatross.
let me share a couple of stories. it is common for me to see both new and experienced students emphasizing their best martial arts techniques during warmups and class. why? the answer is simple: you get immediate positive reinforcement when you do something well (for instance, instructors making positive comments or your seeing that you are better at something than others around you), and negative reinforcement when you do something poorly (like being embarrassed as you fall on the floor attempting a technique or someone coming up to correct you).
consider this scenario. john, my mentor, will give us an exercise to do in class, which could be as straightforward as repeating a specific kick over and over. everyone almost instantly gravitates to using his or her good leg for kicking (yes, in martial arts as in life, we all seem to be blessed with one limb that is seemingly more responsive to our mental instructions than the other). then, after minutes of positive experiences with the good leg, students will switch and start kicking with the other leg (the bad leg). for obvious reasons, this effort is not nearly as gratifying and it doesn’t take long before students will switch back to the good leg to work on it some more. it is funny; when john walks back into the training area, almost everyone switches back to kicking with their good leg to optimize the possibility for public praise and minimize the need for correction. the result: the good leg gets stronger at a much faster pace than the bad leg, which creates a larger and larger gap in kicking ability between them.
the problem is that while your strengths may give you the best chance for success, your weaknesses just as quickly will provide openings for failure. or, put another way, while your strength may be powerful, your weaknesses will make you vulnerable. in martial arts, your strengths often allow you some quick short-term victories, but with a good opponent, it is your weaknesses that will ultimately determine your fate.
playing basketball, i was a guard – a short one – and could dribble confidently only to my left. guess what? as soon as my opponents realized this, the defenders would overplay me so that i had to go to my right, which quickly minimized the impact i could make in the game.
i am not suggesting that your weaknesses need to be improved so that they are equal to your strengths. what i am saying is that if your weaknesses are too weak, your strengths won’t be able to compensate for them. in basketball, i didn’t need to be a great dribbler with my right hand. i simply needed to be good enough that when i was vastly overplayed, my opponent’s defensive maneuver would become an opportunity for me.
as well, strengths become weaknesses when overly relied upon.
one of my clients is the best negotiator i know. he is so good at it that he negotiates everything, from the deals he cuts with his suppliers to the agreements he makes with his customers and the arrangements he has with his employees. however, he overuses his strength – as do many when they are uniquely talented at something. watching him operate on one hand is a thing of beauty.
on the other hand, he couldn’t create more chaos if he lit himself on fire every morning. one-off deals are constantly made, with individualized timetables, expectations and rewards. so, while his strength is putting together teams and offerings that are exceptional, his weakness is that it is almost impossible for him to align his extraordinary resources to support the changing goals of his company. everyone is operating to maximize the particulars of his or her own one-off deal, which requires the organization to relentlessly work around and overcome, which turns out to be more costly and far less efficient.
when you consider that the risk you are trying to manage is the size of the gap between your strengths and weaknesses, it becomes easier to put in the effort to ensure that you are not overly exposed. leverage your strengths, but vigilantly develop your weaknesses so that you can at least maintain the skill gap between them. the most direct way i can say this is
your strengths will help you win, but it is your weaknesses that will ensure you don’t.
assess yourself on whether you regularly strengthen your weaknesses.
circle how you feel you are doing. on this subject, i:
- need a lot of work
- need a little work
- am okay
- feel good where i am
what weaknesses have i been overlooking that need attention and improvement?
what gaps between my strengths and weaknesses position me to fail?