Where should we focus our attention – on shoring up our weaknesses or on improving in areas where we are already strong? 

One of my favorite stories about the tension between focusing on strengths versus addressing weaknesses comes from the world of professional basketball.  Shaquille O’Neal was a dominant big man in the NBA but he had a profound weakness: he was a miserable free throw shooter.  When left all alone just 15 feet from the basket, he would hit only half his free throw attempts.  Most NBA players could do better with their eyes closed or shooting with their non-dominant hands.  Shaq was bad.  Really bad. 

Shaq’s weakness at the free-throw line left a lot of points on the table.  This problem only got worse once other teams developed the “hack-a-Shaq” strategy of fouling him every time he touched the ball.  Rather than let him score, they’d have one of their players foul him.  Once that player fouled out, they’d put another player in to do the same thing.  Of course, Shaq’s coaches tried to help him improve his free throw percentage.  But hours and hours of practice resulted in zero improvement.   

Finally, legendary coach Phil Jackson took a different approach to the problem.  Jackson decided that rather than focus on Shaq’s weakness, it would be wiser to focus on his strength, which was, literally, his almost super-human strength.  He had the other coaches work with Shaq on developing so much strength that even if he was fouled, he’d still score the bucket.  Then, if he made an occasional free throw, those points would be icing on the cake.  The strategy paid off and the team won three consecutive NBA titles. 

I doubt anyone reading this blog needs to improve their free-throw shooting.  But we all face the same overarching challenge as Shaq: when should we address weaknesses versus developing our strengths?   

Thomas is an excellent project manager for a large construction company.  His strengths include attention to detail, an ability to predict and minimize problems, and an incredible degree of time management.  All of this makes him great at his job.  Thomas also has a glaring weakness: he is not very good with people.  He can be impatient, non-communicative, and even downright rude at times.  His performance review highlighted “emotional intelligence” as one of his weaknesses and he admitted to me in our coaching session that he is “not very good with people.”   

What should Thomas do?  Should he attend seminars, read books, work with a coach, and try, try, try to improve his people skills?  Or would that be a royal waste of time, energy, and effort?  Would it be wiser to focus on getting even better at the things at which he’s already very good? 

My rule of thumb advice for clients is to focus on a weakness only if it’s the equivalent of a hole in the side of your boat.  An area of weakness is rarely going to turn into an asset.  To continue the boat metaphor, it’s unlikely Thomas’s people skills will become a sail (or a propeller) that helps him make progress.  But plugging a hole that could sink the boat is worth the effort. 

Thomas’s people skills were so bad that this weakness could potentially sink him.  It was worth the effort it took to not be so bad, but the goal was not to get truly good at the people skills.  Once we lowered the expectations appropriately, Thomas was much more willing to try to make improvements.  He learned to communicate just a bit more than he wanted and he also took just a bit of the edge off of his most biting comments.  Over the course of a few months, he went from terrible to mediocre when it came to people skills.  Given his other strengths, having mediocre people skills was more than good enough. 

Whether you’re thinking of your own strengths and weaknesses, or those of your clients, here are six truths that can help you give the proper attention to strengths and weaknesses: 

1. Most things are neither a strength nor a weakness.  Get out of binary thinking.  If a job requires you to be good at 20 things, most of those 20 will not be a strength or a weakness, but merely a competence.  It’s helpful to call things what they really are.   
2. Weaknesses that are in your blind spot are the worst.  Simply naming a weakness can often be half the battle in preventing a weakness from doing too much damage or holding you back more than it needs to.   
3. Your greatest productivity and performance will come from your strengths.  The 80/20 rule applies to an individual’s strengths.  This doesn’t mean you don’t do the other 80% of your job, it just means you don’t seek to truly excel in your areas of weakness or competence.  
4. Your own level of strength is not the measure of what you should expect from others.  It’s tempting to think that something at which you’re great should be attainable for anyone else.   
5. You may be too weak for the job.  If you’re not competent or strong in most of what the job requires, you might be in the wrong job.  I could be a 99% free-throw shooter, but I still should not play in the NBA.  While one weakness does not disqualify you from a job, neither does possessing one strength make you a fit for the job.  By the law of averages, most people cannot do most jobs well.   
6. Your greatest satisfaction will come from doing what you do best on a regular basis.  Shaq got to do what he was great at many times in every game.  If your strength only gets leveraged on rare occasions, you might be in the wrong role or you might need to reconfigure the way you go about your job.