The flawed Human

Very well Mr. Sobczynski, but let’s talk about your flaws. If you were to pick, what would you say is your biggest weakness?” This might be the most unifying question, when it comes to doing job interviews: the agonizing weaknesses-question. Well is it actually that agonizing? Let’s be upfront with this, no one and I mean nobody (barring some kind of exemption for self-sabotaging) has ever answered this question honestly. It’s not that people are lying as a reflection of their character, not at all. The thing is, the weaknesses-question is one of those unwritten social constructs we as a society have agreed upon, that we all will lie about. There is no recruiter out there, who expects a true answer from a candidate. One thing is a universal truth, we do under any circumstance talk about the flaws in our character, especially not at crucial times like applying for employment.

But there are nevertheless two ways of going about answering the question!… See if you can recognize yourself in one of the following.

#1

First is the studied answer, which makes you seem self-aware. It gives an impression of having a deeper understanding of what makes you “tick” as a person. Not being part of that group, but I am a huge fan of people who can execute this well. Sure, we all know that we are discussing a BS question, but you have taken the time to study this part, like a well prepared actor, executing like a pro.

#2

And then there is the rest of us. You could call us, the continuously-surprised-crowd. We get flashed by the question EVERY SINGLE TIME! We stare around the room, looking for some salvation from this attempt of deconstruction of the persona we have built, in this particular interview so far. At some point we realize, that the person across the table isn’t really expecting any revealing truth. You utter: “If I (reluctantly) had to say that I have a weakness, it would be……” and here both roads meet again, if you have prepared or not, you will most like answer one of the following:

• I am a workaholic
• I have problems letting go
• I am TOO passionate (I have used this one, and even I know, that it′s BS)
• My ambitions dominate other colleagues
• (Insert your own negatively structured self-aggrandizing comment here)

The thing is, these are the only expected answers to these questions. So if you get one of these making it past your list, you are safe, and the interview can continue.

This is where I interject the story about an interview that made all of the above so obvious to me, that I’ve been dismissing the question ever since.

Real life example

I was looking for some administrative assistance in my team, and I was hoping it would finally give me the chance to leave some of the daily operational work behind. Unfortunately, I was relatively new at this position, and I somehow had to work around the fact that my predecessor hadn’t really budgeted any new team members in the department.

In Germany there is a very cool option you can use for that, called student employees. Basically, a university student can do a full-time job and get paid the minimum wage. So if you are lucky you will get someone bright on the verge of writing their Bachelor thesis, who is just weeks from being a very expensive professional.

For the following I will change the name, as I haven’t really gotten permission from my past employee and my now friend, to use his real name.

I never got to do any searching, before Patrick suddenly showed up at our door, asking if he could do student work at our company. Not really having a strong enough resumé you could work with (which is normal for somebody still studying) I thought, it probably wouldn’t hurt to do the interview.

It was moderated by our very skilled HR-Officer called Joan (not her real name either!) with me sitting next to her.

Lunch stealing

Patrick came into the room, 192 cm tall, millennial hipster beard, really impressive. We then started by going through the motions. We did the introductions, talked about the role, went trough his resumé, and finally came to the question. What happened next, I will never forget, as that one specific minute has imprinted itself into my memory. “Great!” Joan said continuing: “Now Patrick, tell me about your weaknesses” Patrick looked Joan straight in the eye, and totally seriously stated: “I mean if I had to choose a weakness to reveal, it would probably be the fact, that I occasionally steal lunches from my colleagues, but don’t worry, I am really close to getting that one under control!”

As I mentioned before, Joan wasn’t really expecting anything else other than one of the phrases mentioned earlier in this article! She was stunned, slowly looked up from her notebook, looked at Patrick, looked at me, looked again at her notebook, contemplating the idea of actually writing Patrick’s answer on the sheet of paper, looking back at me….

I immediately recognized, that Patrick was putting everything on the line, with a really well-crafted ice-breaking joke. 15 very long seconds went by, where Joan was frantically trying to gauge, what was going on – looking stunned. At that point I couldn’t hold it anymore, I started laughing, 5 seconds later Joan, understanding what happened, also started laughing. Joan was and still is 2 years younger than me, so its not that she is in any way conservative, she has a great sense of humor. It was the setting that threw her off. She had done hundreds of interviews, she was a HR factory, going through the process so many times, that it by now was routine.

What Patrick did, woke her up out of this “automatic” processing she had been doing for so long.

Patrick was hired, stayed for nearly two years, and is now a very successful logistics manager at a renowned German industrial giant.

Flaws

So in the story, Patrick poked at the this established weaknesses-question construct, knowing very well, that it might not have ended well. He risked it, and presented us with some more depth to his character. By showing us that he had humor (which in our organization was badly needed at the time), the willingness to poke at established social structures and simultaneously not being afraid of pushing people out of their comfort zones, he was exactly what my department needed. And although people not always understood what Patrick wanted to change, out of respect for his character, they did their utmost to try. I personally didn’t have that ability to get people to follow me, out of anything else than fear, I improved my management skills by observing Patrick.

Did you see what I just did in the paragraph above? Yeah, I admitted that I had a flaw, something I was until very recently, pretty terrible at.

So why is doing that a taboo? Why is it, that talking about our REAL weaknesses, or flaws is frowned upon in business context?

Well here is the thing: The last 20 years have been insane, when it comes to pace. The technological revolution has been a roller coaster for most people… Never in human history, has an individual human being been forced to adapt and re-adapt as quickly as in the early 21st century. So as a consequence, this also became the standard in hiring. You not only had to master skills, that 5 years ago didn’t exist, you also had to be immune to the consequences of the fast pace. So you not only had to be extremely skilled, but you also had to be mentally tough.

For 8 years we managed well (or at least faked well….) being mentally tough, until the Great Recession in 2008.

Being mentally tough was suddenly a critical skill to have, and those who didn’t posses that skill, were suddenly finding themselves without jobs, or worse beaten by burnout…

I personally remember 2009, as one of the worst years of my life. Going to work, went from being something you did from nine to five, to an exhausting psychological warfare.

On one side I had colleagues being laid off, while on the other side, colleagues who got to keep their jobs, were caving under the pressure of work and existential stress. Showing any signs of weakness in 2009, meant you not having a job by the end of the day.

The Recession did eventually pass, the taboo on having weaknesses did not…. well until…

Elon

One of the earliest adopters of “the fail-story” I remember, was Elon Musk telling the world that before SpaceX reusable rockets became a viral wonder, there were numerous failed attempts, devastating mistakes, near company ending flaws in their design.

It’s not that other important thought leaders didn’t talk about failing, the difference was, that Elon celebrated the very human thing, that failing was and still is.

Stories of failing became part of every success story, the narrative that failing is acceptable, inevitable and normal, liberated a whole generation of young people, who until then didn’t dare to talk about their personal and career shortcomings. 

Soon the world embraced it, and we now know, that no human is perfect, and that only handful of people are successful on their first try. Most important, we as humans are flawed, we all have shortcomings, we have to, and can work on.

Late adoptr

It was a meeting with Christopher where we were going, through my standard three-month employee review, that it dawned on me. (It has to be mentioned that Christopher was very kind reviewing my performance, way better than I thought of myself.) As we were speaking on areas, that I needed to work on, I realized, that what he was saying was actually a flaw of mine.

FOCUS

So here is the thing: I am going to be open about it. Because, as any of us, I have some flaws – two in fact! One was the one Christopher pointed out to me (to be honest, my wife has done it as well at least a thousand times. But when you hear it in relation to your WorkLife, you can do nothing else than admit that you have it). This flaw was FOCUS: the thing is, I tend to jump from task to task, taking on way to much. Ending up, not concluding some of tasks I’ve initiated and this flaw goes a long way to explain another flaw of mine, this one I’ve recognized myself.

Retaining relationships

Within the last couple of months, I have evolved into a really skilled networker. I never intended to learn this skill. Until the day I joined adoptr, where we decided to make networking a part of our strategy. So I learned it, forced myself to attend Meet-Ups and other events, and learned to throw myself into conversations with strangers.

I love it now, networking has enriched my professional life greatly, and I am happy, that I went Gung-ho on learning the skill.

But here is the thing; I am 35 years old, and I have near to no friends. Its not that I never had friends. Through my life I had dozens, even a handful of close friends.

Well here is what happened, I have moved a ton of times through my childhood, and then again in my adult live. I have lived in 7 different places as a child, and 7 different places as an adult. I have had some great friends along the way, some of them I really miss today, but in the end this flaw has ruined these friendships.

I was never the one to stay in touch, dropping by, going to a reunion, remembering birthdays, just some of the skills you desperately need to retain relationships.

Couple of weeks ago I decided, that although I’ve probably screwed up my personal relationships for good (except my loving wife, which now doubles as my best friend), I will not let this flaw, become a problem for adoptr, I will not let our now well-established network suffer because of my flaw.

In different ways I am addressing this problem. I am not only tending to my network, through different methods and tools, I have started working on my lack of focus through meditation. Its all in its early stages, but I can report, that I am starting to notice a difference in my behavior.

The most important step I’ve made personally, is admitting that I have these shortcomings, cause by doing so I have realized, that I alone have the power to overcome them.