Strengths v Weaknesses: Where Should You Put Your Focus?

I was chatting with a fellow consultant/coach last night about our respective approaches to coaching, and the conversation turned to strengths and weaknesses.

He spent 17 years flying fighter jets in the Marines before joining the business world, and he told me that his approach was initially shaped by that experience. The military focuses on identifying and eliminating weaknesses, and there are two good reasons for this. The most obvious is that a weakness can quickly kill you or the people under your command. But it’s also important that people operate to at least a basic uniform (no pun intended) standard, so that everyone knows what to expect from each other and so that “parts” can be easily interchangeable. (In the interest of accuracy, we didn’t actually discuss the second point; it’s something I thought of while writing this post.)

But when he went to business school, he told me, he was told that focusing on eliminating weaknesses limits a person to mediocrity at best. They told him that if you truly want to achieve your full potential, you need to focus on your strengths. And when he began his first civilian position at Amazon, they told him to figure out what his “superpower” was and focus on that. Use your superpower to differentiate yourself and put your best self into your work.

There’s a definite appeal to that idea; the economic theory of comparative advantage probably applies to individuals as it does to nations. Even if you’re better than everyone else at everything, the system produces more value when each participant does what they do best.

I’ve covered this topic at length already, so I won’t repeat all my arguments, but let me share quickly the example I told him about. I was asked to work with the CFO of a large private company to improve his communication skills. He was  extremely competent in his job, but he had one weakness that was limiting him in his current position: he was a weak presenter, and the reason this mattered is that in his current position he had to present monthly to the Board of Directors. Despite his unquestioned knowledge, they didn’t have faith in him because he was rambling and hesitant.

If he had tried to pump up his “superpower” of detailed knowledge, he would have only become more wordy and made matters worse. Fortunately for him, someone pointed out the weakness and got him professional help. Those are actually easy issues to fix, and he saw almost immediate improvement. More importantly, the board saw immediate improvement.

So, I guess the lesson is that you should definitely develop your superpower, but beware of kryptonite!