Potentials

Because I have s background in human nature, academically and professionally, I usually, once or twice, discuss this subject in my finance classes. This year, however, I thought I should go beyond the surface simple and drill deeper than: we all have strengths and weaknesses.

The starting point is a realization that we are all born with potentially different skills, talents, and shortcomings. The operative word is potentially. When we are two years old, we don’t know if we’ll be good at engineering, writing, math, or art. We only have the potential to do some things better than others. As well as enjoying some things better than others. And not only content skills, but some have the potential to be more effective in dealing with people or being an effective manager of people and projects.

And then there’s the dreaded: weaknesses. Weaknesses are only potential talents and skills that haven’t been developed. Not focusing on details was an early weakness for myself, and I was called out for it. In time I became a bear on details. That way if you ever mention a weakness in an job interview you should be prepared to say how you have striven to correct it, or don’t mention it at all.

We are all born with different potentials, that’s what makes for a complex and interesting life, personally and socially. What you do with your complex set of pluses and minuses is up to you. But the premise is that we are improvable. There nay be barriers in front of us, but we can tackle these challenges, which is a separate skill in itself. Resilience, hard work, focusing, and the like, are anther set of skills most don’t appreciate. These too are improvable.

So, for me, the next time I discuss strengths and weaknesses I’ll be able to go beyond the confines of the job interview to the larger subject of one’s life.