Embracing strengths, ignoring weaknesses
jasonleow • 5 Sept 2024 •
I always believed in the weakest link principle when it came to human performance. I learned this in sports, rock climbing, and I think it applies to work and entrepreneurship too. The theory is that your performance is emergent on the mix of qualities you have, with all the qualities forming a chain of ‘links’ together, and you are only as strong as your weakness quality, just as a metal chain is only strongest at it’s weakest link.
So for work, I always focused on and worked hard on my weaknesses, to get better, get stronger, despite it.
One of those weaknesses is public speaking. Basically anything related to standing on stage, facilitating, holding conversation, conducting training, being a trainer/educator. Basically, most of what I do as a design consultant. I got good at it over the past ten years, but the dread of having to do it, the butterflies in the stomach before every event, never went away. Never.
I thought it would naturally fade away as i got better. But no. Even with external competency, the inner world never got better. As much as I loved the social impact of my work as a design consultant, the poor fit in that aspect always grated at me over the years.
Lately I’ve been thinking… There comes a time when the return of investment of effort into it starts to no longer make sense. It’s been ten years. Nothing changed inwardly. Why should I continue working on this weakness?
Why should I continue to accept it as an unavoidable part of my career?
I’m so done now trying to overcome this.
I accept this strategic ‘failure’.
I’m done forcing myself into it.
Instead, I want to embrace my strengths more. Just do what I’m great at, and ignore what I’m bad at.
Maybe if I’m employed it’s harder to say that to your boss. But as an indie hacker, solopreneur, there’s some choices I can make to amplify strengths. Sure for some things it’s unavoidable… like marketing. If you’re weak at marketing, you still got to learn it somehow. But even in those situations, I believe you can find opportunities where you can leverage your strengths, due to the sheer range of options available in entrepreneurship.
Shy? Introvert? Feel dirty to self promote? Don’t like building an audience? Then don’t. Use SEO. Pay for ads. Sponsor other influencers. Write content.
Thankfully, there’s usually more than one way to Rome, when it comes to entrepreneurship.
Embrace strengths.
Ignore weaknesses.
Comments
After being a trainer for 10 years, you never got used to it – this surprises me!
@haideralmosawi 100%. Focusing on weakness as improvement doesn’t require taking a hit on our confidence.
@poppacalypse Really goes to prove that I’m not made for it
Focusing on our weaknesses robs us of the confidence we should have in our strengths. And the more confident we are in our strengths, the easier working on our weaknesses becomes, provided we don’t let our weaknesses define our character.
I think about this a lot when it comes to habits: we tend to focus on the habits we find difficult to develop and ignore all the easy habits we can incorporate in our lives to make them better. Let’s start with the easy and accessible, then see the extent we can grow into the bigger, more challenging habits. In my experience, this makes the challenging habits a lot less challenging!