How to Discover and Leverage your Strengths and Weaknesses

As a parent, it’s always fascinating to see your children grow and develop, and it’s amazing how different siblings can be. You might have one child who is extroverted, confident and quick-thinking, while the other child is quiet, thoughtful and artistic. Sometimes siblings are so different it’s hard to believe that they are related – that they share the same mother and father! But all children have their own strengths and weaknesses. It is important to respect that and nurture the child’s talents, while gently encouraging them to improve in areas where they don’t have a natural strength. But do you know what your own strengths and weaknesses are? Do you think you see yourself as other people see you? Do you understand your personality to the same extent that you understand your children’s?

We are all unique

There is no point feeling arrogant about our talents, nor is there anything to be achieved by feeling ashamed of weaknesses. Every human is unique with a unique set of gifts and flaws, but understanding yourself is essential to succeeding in this world. It gives you an insight into how you relate to other people. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses also helps you to understand how you react in different situations.

Ask yourself these questions

How do you identify your strengths and weaknesses? Here are some questions to help you do that. First question: what do you like to do? What are you really good at? This will give you an indication of your strengths. You may love to paint, and so are clearly an artistic person, or you might be someone who delights in cleaning and organising your house. You may be a natural organiser. Next question: what do you avoid doing? What do you find boring and tedious? Did you hate maths at school? If that is the case, you probably don’t have a head for figures. After assessing what you are good and bad at, name the strengths and weaknesses revealed by those activities, for example, if you love to experiment in the kitchen you have strengths in creativity and even resourcefulness.

Ask family and friends

In trying to ascertain your strengths and weaknesses, you might also want to ask close friends and family what they believe are your positives and negatives. However before you do this, be aware that you might not like their answers. You are doing this as a get-to-know-yourself exercise. Don’t be tempted to argue or try to convince your friends that’s not really you. Take the feedback on board, and spend some quiet time reflecting on their perceptions, but don’t let it get you down. Everyone has faults!

Who do you admire?

Another way to identify your strength is to look at people you admire in the community. What are their key strengths? Chances are you also possess these qualities, but perhaps not to the same extent. You could also look at “value word lists”. These are easy to find online. Value core lists name principles, standards, and qualities. Download a list with at least 50 words. On a piece of paper write down the qualities you possess and the qualities you lack or don’t have in spades!

Focus on your strengths

Once you have a list of strengths and weaknesses, you then need to look at how this list can help in life. Should you focus most on the strengths or the weaknesses? Always focus on your strengths! You need to follow your strengths and look at ways you can use them more on a daily basis – especially at work. If you are a careful methodical individual, you could offer to help a colleague who overlooks the small stuff. Be tactful, but ask if they’d like you to look at a document that’s causing them grief.  If you are creative, get involved in an artistic project at the office.  It might be something small, like designing a poster to promote a charity morning tea, but it is still a creative outlet and you will find it rewarding.

Don’t deny who you are

It is just no good denying who you are. Many people in the arts – painters, actors and writers – say their career was not a choice but a calling. Painting, acting and writing was what they were born to do, and even though they will never be rich practising their craft, they are being who they are meant to be. If you are an artistic soul, I agree that you need an outlet for your creativity, but you could also consider a career that would generate a secure income and allow you to use your skills. For example a talented drawer, could look to a career as a draftsman or architect. A writer could enter a career in publicity, writing web content and media releases. You still have the option of pursing ‘pure art’ in your spare time. It is essential that you stay true to who you are.

Delegate

In life we should give everything our best shot, but sometimes that means delegating work to people with strengths in that area. There is no shame in paying someone to do a job you are not good at. In the long-run it might be more profitable to save yourself the time and stress, and get the job done right by someone who has a talent in that field. Always remember that you can’t be good at everything. So don’t dwell on your weaknesses, and torture yourself doing a job you have no natural aptitude for.

Final thoughts

It is vital that your life aligns to your strengths. If you are an ambitious person, you are not going to be happy if you are struck in a dead-end job. If you are an extrovert who loves talking to people, working from home won’t agree with you. In identifying your strengths and weaknesses, sources of unhappiness in life might also be revealed to you. For example if you love an intellectual challenge, you may find staying at home with young children very difficult. This does not mean you are a bad parent. It means your needs are not being met. Perhaps you could go to a book club one night a week. That would give you an intellectual outlet then staying home with the kids might become more enjoyable. Could you return to work on a part-time basis? Again, accept who you are. It is no good trying to jam a square peg into a round hole.

Understanding who you are, will also help you better relate to others. You may find that you struggle to relate to your in-laws, who all work with their hands, while you work in an office. That is okay. You do not have to feel inadequate because you are not an outdoors type of person. Just accept that you again have different strengths.

We often gravitate to people with similar strengths, but if you are working on a project, it’s good to have a team with complimenting skills. You might be recruiting a new staff member. Your instinct is to hire someone like you – a “mini-me”, but what you may need is an individual with the opposite skill set. If you are someone who is good at seeing the big picture, but you find attending to small details boring, then you need to hire a person who loves dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s!