Strengths & Weaknesses

One’s strength is often one’s weakness.

When dealing with people over many years I have often found that a person’s strengths are tied to their weaknesses. The opposite also seems to be true—that a person weakness will point to their strength. By example:

A person who is good at many things will tend to be less productive when required to do only one thing.

A person who is good at working in a team will be less efficient working alone.

Leaders must lead and only are good subordinates when allowed a great deal of independence. Fortunately or unfortunately true leaders are only about 5% of the population.

This is a difficult observation to work with, but I have found it useful when mentoring. The danger is that people are complex and that there can be more than one inversion. Consider a person who doesn’t do well as a team member. It could be because the person works best when in control of their own piece of the project, or because they are easily distracted by other team members, or because they have ideas that are so original that others can’t seem to understand them, or because there is a personality conflict, or they have a different level of experience, or they don’t fit into the majority culture.

This is another example of a concept that can’t defined in a procedure. Only experience and the abilities to listen, observe, and adapt will move this concept from “curious observation” to “useful concept”.