Dangers Of Focusing Only On Your Strengths

Let’s call things by their true name. You have strengths, and you have weaknesses. In the last decade, you have probably noticed a visible move to shy away from talking about people’s weaknesses. According to many human resources professionals, you have strengths and opportunities. You have strengths, and you have room for improvement. It is all so positive that it may hide the fact that you genuinely are bad at something.

Focusing on your strengths in personal development is a smart way to achieve satisfaction with your work through mastery. However, it doesn’t mean you can ignore your weaknesses completely. For many jobs and even to survive in today’s world, you need to achieve a minimal level of competence in many activities that might be your weaknesses. You don’t need to become great at them. You need to be able to get the basics.

“For many jobs, you need to achieve a minimal level of competence in activities that might be your weaknesses.”

You might consider math your weakness. But you need it to survive. You need to be able to have a basic understanding of finances. You need to be able to count money. You need to be able to add and subtract. You don’t need to have university-level math skills, but you can’t be successful without the basic ones.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic provides a contrarian view on strengths-based development by pointing out some things that show that working on your weaknesses shouldn’t be forgotten. As Chamorro-Premuzic notes, there is not much scientific peer-reviewed research that would clearly show that focusing on strengths leads to higher performance than focusing on one’s weaknesses. Most of the available data are anecdotal.

“A strength-based approach to development can give people a false sense of competence.”

One of the problems with a strength-based approach to development is that it can give people a false sense of competence. If you focus solely on your strengths, you may forget that you also have weaknesses. You may stop listening to feedback that points out faults that are holding you back. This can be especially dangerous for leaders who tend to be, on average, more narcissistic and, therefore, more likely to have inflated egos.

Social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger came up with what is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. They suggested that people who are unskilled in a particular domain tend to overestimate their abilities for two reasons. First, because of their lack of skills, they reach erroneous conclusions and make wrong choices. Second, because of their incompetence, they lack the ability to realize what they don’t know.

“People who are unskilled in a particular domain tend to overestimate their abilities for two reasons: their lack of skills leads to erroneous conclusions, and they lack the ability to realize what they don’t know.”

Dunning and Kruger point to the case of McArthur Wheeler. In 1995, this fellow robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight without any apparent attempt of disguise. When he was arrested and shown videotapes from the banks, he was bewildered and allegedly said, “But I wore the juice.” Based on the idea of lemon-based vanishing ink, he believed that when he puts lemon juice on his face, it would vanish and be invisible to surveillance cameras.

Dunning and Kruger then performed several studies of this cognitive bias. It showed that people who scored in the bottom quartile on grammar, humor, and logic tests significantly overestimated their performance and ability. Interestingly, when their skills improved, it led them to recognize their shortcomings. The more they learned, the more they realized how little they knew.

“People are unable to correctly self-assess their skills and abilities. Even those with superior competence underestimate their competence as they wrongly assume that the task they consider easy to perform is easy for everyone.”

This explains why people are unable to correctly self-assess their skills and abilities. You would think that once people become competent, they are better at self-assessment. Unfortunately, even then, people don’t do particularly well. Those with superior competence tend to underestimate their competence as they wrongly assume that the task they consider easy to perform is easy for everyone. That it is not a big deal. Therefore they believe that their competence is nothing special. Though the experts still self-assess more correctly than those who are unskilled.

Chamorro-Premuzic argues that focusing on strengths leads to wasted resources on low-performing employees. There is enough evidence that shows the top employees significantly outperform the rest of the organization. Investing in them has the biggest return on investment (ROI). And he is right. The question is whether an ethical leader should care only about ROI or whether they should also care about the people. If you see it as your responsibility to consider the needs of all stakeholders, then it is your responsibility to take care of the needs of the owners and shareholders. That is where ROI comes to play. But it is also your responsibility to take care of the needs of the employees and customers, and that is where giving everyone the opportunity to improve comes to play.

As I have noted before, don’t waste your time and money on people who don’t care. Many of the low performers are there because they don’t care, so trying to improve their skills won’t lead to much success.

“Focusing on strengths can lead to a temptation of overusing them even at tasks where they don’t fit.”

The other reason why focusing on strengths can lead to trouble is that you may be tempted to rely on them even when it is not wise. You may overuse them. When you are really good with a hammer, everything becomes a nail sort of thing. The same as everything else in life, too much of a good thing can become toxic. Detail orientation is a wonderful trait until it becomes a perfectionist obsession. Listening to others is extremely important for leaders until it leads to not having an opinion of their own. Gathering data before making a decision is smart until it leads to paralysis by analysis.

Putting it all together

Anything you do should be in balance. Focusing on building your strengths is essential as it leads to mastery, flow, bigger achievements, and satisfaction with life. However, overusing your strengths can be dangerous, as well as not realizing that you also have weaknesses. You need to be able to assess your abilities clearly. Admit to yourself that you indeed have some weaknesses and analyze their impact on your life. You can probably live comfortably with most of them, but if there are some holding you back or closing doors for you, go and fix them. Don’t try to make them into strengths, as that would most likely be futile, but make sure you get the basic competence, so the weakness doesn’t drag you down.

More on topics of Career, and Leadership:

Too Much Self-Control Can Hurt You

The Power Of Gratitude And How To Show It

Stop Being Average! Make The Best Of What You Have.

To Be Wildly Successful Do This One Thing

People Don’t Want Feedback, They Want Attention And Support

How A Job Change Impacts Your Well-Being

15 Things You Should Do When Starting In A New Job

What Are Your Highly Valued Accomplishments?

How To Negotiate A Fair Salary In 8 Steps

Set This Type Of Goals To Be Happy

What are your thoughts on the topic? Is it better to focus on strengths or weaknesses when learning? Where do you get the fastest improvement? What leads to bigger long-term success? What is better for you and what is better for the company?

Originally posted on my blog about management, leadership, communication, coaching, introversion, software development, and career The Geeky Leader or follow me on Facebook and Twitter: @GeekyLeader

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