When it’s a strength!

It’s my strongly held belief that there’s no such thing as a weakness.

And what’s more when I’m training people to manage others I encourage them to believe the same thing with a surprising level of success.

It’s very popular in the world of management to talk about strengths and weaknesses. It seems close to a commandment, etched into stone carried down from the mountain by Moses, that all members of staff shall have their strengths and weaknesses laid out before them at least once a year during appraisals.

As a manager I used to hate doing it and on the other side of the table I used to hate being subjected to it.
And I question the effectiveness of such an approach.

I find it far more profitable to build on people’s strengths. And that doesn’t mean dressing weaknesses up as ‘development opportunities’. Fair enough if someone needs to learn a new skill – like using Excel – that’s a development opportunity and by all means label it as such and send them on a course.

When it comes to a person’s individual qualities, I think labelling some aspects of their character as a weakness is rather insulting and implies that there is something wrong with them that they need to fix.

I prefer to think of qualities that we each have and situations in which we use them to greater or lesser effect.

For example, I can get quite passionate about issues and at times that passion is an excellent thing – it allows me to persuade and inspire others and get things done. At other times in my life I’ve been told I’m ‘too passionate’, people have felt intimidated and it’s been labelled a weakness.

So is my passion a good or bad thing?

I don’t want to lose it as a characteristic because there are times when it’s incredibly useful.

Well, if we think of our qualities as being on a dial that can be turned up or down, it becomes a much simpler proposition. At times my passion can be set high to inspire and enthuse others. At other times, when I’m not having the impact that I want I can dial it down a little – not turn it off.

This view on the world means appraisal conversations become much easier.

Rather than telling someone they have a weakness you can discuss particular situations and the setting on the dial, on a scale of 1 to 10, for example, for individual qualities that they displayed in that situation. It might be that they will benefit from turning some qualities up and others down – a bit like a mixer desk.

Working out an appropriate setting is much more productive than telling them that they have a weakness they need to fix.