All through school we are told to work on our weaknesses. While this sound like great advice, there are thought leaders out there that would disagree with this adage. The efforts of schools are to make sure that you are not utterly deficient in a foundational skill. However, for those in the workforce, working on your deficiencies only to make you mediocre at a skill is wasted effort. Utilizing your strengths and becoming a leader in that area is much more productive and provides opportunities of great success.
All through school we are told to work to improve our weaknesses. While this sound like great advice, there are thought leaders out there that would disagree with this adage. The efforts of schools are to make sure that you are not utterly deficient in a foundational skill. However, for those in the workforce, working on your deficiencies only to make you mediocre at a skill is wasted effort. Utilizing your strengths and becoming a leader in that area is much more productive and provides opportunities of great success.
A weakness can be defined as a task or activity that saps your energy, essentially making you weak. A strength is something that gives you energy, and basically makes you feel strong. We take jobs where we use our strengths. We leave jobs where we are forced to use our weaknesses. In his book, Good To Great, Jim Collins presents several companies that went from market performing to market beating by focusing on their core competencies. These companies focused on their strengths and not their weaknesses. They removed the products and operational tasks that were not their core competencies. That is how they went from “Good” to “Great”.