Episode 29: Amplify Your Strengths & Manage Your Weaknesses
We spend so much time and energy trying to fix ourselves. We are obsessed with self-help! But what would happen if we redirected that energy to amplify our strengths? The things we are already good at?
The answer is an Upgraded life, career, and business!
In this episode, we talk about:
Why focusing on our strengths is a better use of our energy
How to decide which strengths to develop
Ways to manage our weaknesses
Full Transcript:
Welcome back to the Upgraded Career podcast. I'm your host Nicole Case, and last week we heard from Aliyah Kiwana on the power of our strengths, but what about our weaknesses? Right? One of my least favorite interview questions is, what is your weakness? It is boring, it's outdated, and it really doesn't get to what you're trying to find out.
[00:01:28] I mean, I'm not very good at basketball, but. Is that really an issue in the context of our work? Um, so if you are a leader, if you're a hiring manager, please stop asking this question. It's a really, it's a really. Again, silly, outdated, boring question. What you really wanna know is, is this person self-aware enough that they don't absolutely know everything that there is, right?
[00:01:51] Because no person possibly could. So is this person humble enough? Is this person self-aware enough that they, that they know they don't know everything? And are they resourceful enough to figure it out? Do they know when to ask questions? Do they learn from their mistakes? So a better question would be, tell me about a time when you failed, or tell me about a time when a project was going off the rails and you pulled it back around.
[00:02:16] Or it just went off the rails. And what did you do? Um, or, you know, tell me about a time when you got negative feedback. Something like that. I mean, we spend so much effort, particularly when we're growing up, trying to be good at everything, right? We're being told, get straight As, get on every sports team, be voted president of student council, be on all the volunteer things, achieve all the things, and get all the awards.
[00:02:40] I remember, my gosh, I remember being told when, when. Um, I was in high school that we would have a better chance at getting accepted into college if we were quote unquote well-rounded. And I would definitely say there's some truth in that, particularly early in your career. You know, you're, you're having a variety of experiences, you're trying on different things, you know, that helps bring clarity to what we like, what we don't.
[00:03:06] Um, and it can help us really see where we have those natural strengths and interests. But those of us who are. Super driven and ambitious. We sometimes think that we need to be awesome at everything, especially those of us who own businesses or are people leaders, and we've got our teams looking to us for the answers, you know, to make decisions, right?
[00:03:29] But. That is definitely not what is going to upgrade our performance, our careers and our businesses, focusing on our weaknesses and focusing on all the things and trying to spread all of our energy around so that we are quote unquote well-rounded is a really actually great way to burn ourselves out.
[00:03:49] There was a study done by the state of north of Nebraska back in the fifties, and they wanted to know how to increase the reading, speed and comprehension of students. So they pulled together, um, groups of 10th graders in the same classrooms, and they ran them through a. Different speed reading programs and part of the classrooms were split with, um, already top learners or gifted readers, you know, whatever, whatever they used to describe them.
[00:04:21] And then the other half of the classroom were lower readers for their grade or, you know, not gifted readers, or either they were kind of average readers or they were having already had lower comprehension and. What do you think happened in this study? Again, we put students in a classroom that kind of had polar opposite in terms of their strengths.
[00:04:43] One group of students were already demonstrated that they were really good at this already, that they were already. Already speed. Readers with comprehension and the other half of the classroom were struggling with this. They, they were not great at this. So what do we think happened at the end of the study, after we put them through the same program in the same classroom?
[00:05:01] What do we think happened? Well, what happened was that the students. Who were lower readers already did improve their reading comprehension. Um, they improved it by about 66%, which is great. That's amazing, right? You know, if you're a parent or someone with, with young kids that you wanna, you're trying to help them, you know, improve their reading.
[00:05:22] Like to hear that someone who's struggling by putting them through a focus program can, can increase their reading comprehension by 66%. That's a huge deal, right? So, So what happened to the other students? The students who were already. Higher readers or gifted readers, what happened to them? And anytime I talk to clients about this or, or anytime I'm doing a workshop, I come into a company and I'm doing a workshop with a team, I a I share this study and I'll ask this question, what do you think happened to the students?
[00:05:52] What do you think happened to the scores? And inevitably people are like, well, the students who either had lower reading comprehension, their um, scores improved just a little bit, or they improved a lot. And the students who had like really, really high. Reading comprehension. Their reading comprehension went down because they were influenced by the slower readers in the room, or they maybe it stayed the same.
[00:06:14] It really didn't do a whole lot. Well, what the study shows is that the students who were already higher readers improved their reading by 828%. Like holy crap. Right? That's a huge, huge number. So what this study is telling us is that, yeah, we certainly can improve our weaknesses or, or improve areas that, you know, we're not so good at.
[00:06:39] We can certainly do that, but holy cow, if we would just focus on the areas that we're already good at or we already have a natural strength, What we could potentially accomplish, right? By really focusing our time and our energy around. Improving or amplifying the things that are already strengths for us, because we are not meant to be amazing at everything.
[00:07:04] We're just not. So in order to really upgrade your personal performance, your life, your business, it's really to focus on your strengths instead of trying to, you know, make sure that your weaknesses are. Up at that same level. By focusing on our strengths, we're naturally gonna have higher energy, right?
[00:07:27] You can do a task that you're good at and enjoy with so much less energy because it's so much easier for you. Right? And then we're gonna have higher energy, so we're gonna be just more satisfied in our careers. Right? And Sure. Doing something really hard, like, you know, if you can think back on a time where, You were able to accomplish something you weren't sure if you could, or you were able to improve in an area that you struggled in that sure, that definitely feels good, but long-term sustained satisfaction in our work, in our businesses comes from our day-to-day work, the things that we're working on day-to-day.
[00:08:06] And again, if we are able to lean into our strengths more often in our day-to-day. Just the more satisfaction that we have and what happens when we are more satisfied again, we have more energy and we are more productive. Right? Again, you're going to be able to get more done because you have more energy and you're more satisfied and you just, you know how to do this thing in the most effective way because it's a strength.
[00:08:32] Therefore, you can do more of it or, Because you're able to get it done faster, you're able to rest, which is also amazing and incredibly important when we're talking about uplay upgrading our career and our businesses. And then finally, when we focus on our strengths, that gives someone else the opportunity to do what they do best.
[00:08:54] So, I recently hired someone to help me with creating the marketing materials for this podcast. I'm the one who creates the strategy on the podcast. What is it that I'm gonna talk about? I'm the one that's, you know, Plans it all out. I'm recording it, obviously I'm the one that's recording it. I edit it, I publish it, and when all of that's done, then I send a copy over to her and then she does all of the amazing work, pulling out the pieces to highlight with the graphics and the short videos and you know, all of those things that you're, that you see on social media, those things.
[00:09:31] That's her area of strength. That's what she loves to do, and she shared with me, she's like, this is one of my favorite things that I get to do is take someone else's. You know, thoughts and really just pull out the, the really great pieces in order to get more people to see it and have more people be impacted by it, right?
[00:09:50] Because I can be saying the most brilliant, amazing things over here, but if you don't hear it, if you don't, if you don't know that it's out there for you. Then I'm not gonna be able to support you in whatever it is that I'm, that you need support in. Right? So her area of expertise, her strength area, is again, creating those graphics, creating those videos for me and, um, and all those other things.
[00:10:12] And again, she se sh she has shared with me that this is some of her favorite things to do. For me. Being in Canva, creating graphics in this way is incredibly tedious and I want to claw my eyes out. Can I do it? Yes, and I did it for a long time. At the beginning of the podcast I was doing it, but I realized that my time at Energy was just better spent actually creating a high quality podcast, creating high quality content in this way, and then putting the final edits on the, the marketing materials.
[00:10:43] For me, it's way easier to tweak a couple of things than to like stare at a blank canvas after I've already spent hours on the podcast itself. So if I would just. Hold on to this particular task or particular, um, type of work and like take a bunch of online classes on how to create a bunch of reels on how to, you know, use Canva and all of this stuff.
[00:11:08] I could spend time doing that and I'm sure I could get better at it, and I'm sure I could get faster at it, but at the end of the day, I'm, I'm robbing her of the opportunity to have her business and to do the work that she really enjoys. So how do we even like get to this place where we are deciding what to focus on?
[00:11:28] Well, first we have to just. Identify what our strengths are, right? So like, like Aaliyah said last week, there's ways that you can identify what your strengths are, whether you do it with, um, by taking the Clifton StrengthsFinder um, assessment, which is an assessment that I use with my clients in our second session.
[00:11:47] No matter what we're working on together, I always use this assessment. Um, in our second session, um, or, you know, maybe you talk with others about what do you see as strengths for me or just you kind of look around to see the work that you're doing and the work that you're getting really great, um, feedback on and, and that you're enjoy doing.
[00:12:07] It's likely that those are probably what your strengths are. Then once you identify what those strengths are, then out of those, what are the things that you actually like doing, right? What are the things that that you actually enjoy? Just because something is a strength for you doesn't mean that you actually like doing it.
[00:12:25] Does anyone remember the movie Center Stage? This movie came out in the night, in the late nineties. It was about a bunch of, um, ballerinas in New York City. And um, and it was, I was utterly obsessed with this film. Like I watched it over and over again and I had this dream of being a radio city Rockette.
[00:12:45] In New York City, but I stopped growing, so I was not able to pursue, to pursue that, um, that dream because you have to be, I think like it was like five six or five seven, and I'm solidly five two. So anyway, but in this movie center stage, one of like the top best ballerinas in this program. Realize that she actually didn't like dancing anymore, that she did it for a really long time.
[00:13:11] She didn't have the heart to do it anymore, even though she was really, really good at it. So again, just remember that just because something is a strength for you doesn't necessarily mean that you actually like doing it. And that's okay. And then finally, out of those skills, whenever you figure out what are those strengths and then what are those things that you actually like to do out of those skills?
[00:13:32] What are the things that are actually gonna move the needle for you, right? What are, what are the, what are the strengths or the skills or the tasks that are actually really important in your job, in your business, that are actually going to make a really big deal or make a really big difference in your work?
[00:13:49] Right? So once you figure that out, that's where you focus your energy on. That's where you focus your personal development time, your training time. And if you're able to, if you're able to be able to focus your daily tasks on those things, right. But. Okay. That all sounds great, Nicole. But we all can't just do the things that we like and that we're good at.
[00:14:11] That's not how work works and that's not how the business, how businesses work, and that's certainly true, right? There are definitely times when we must do things that we aren't the best at. So, How do we address those things, right? So first, let's just acknowledge the things that we aren't great at or an area that's a weakness for us.
[00:14:33] Let's just acknowledge, hey, this is just not, this is just not something that's, that I'm really good at. That's okay. So first, let's acknowledge what those things are and then determine if they're really a problem. Are these needle movers? Are these big parts of your job today? Are these things that can really.
[00:14:51] You know, mess things up for you can really do some damage for you, right? Either within your performance or, um, just can, can really damage your business if you're not capable of doing these, these, these particular things. So if yes, if it's like, yes, these are things that we need to make sure that. We, we need to be able to do and be able to do well enough, then let's figure out how we can improve those things, right?
[00:15:18] Just those few things that are actually really important for our work, but let's figure out how to improve them. Just enough so that they don't get us in trouble. This is not a time to like go all in and go crazy on the personal development, on the training, on, on being obsessive with trying to improve this particular area because again, we just need it just to, we just need it to be improved enough so that we don't get in trouble.
[00:15:47] So like if we think back about those students and that study, Clearly these students need to be able to read. You know, we all need to be able to read and comprehend what, what we're reading, right, in order to continue to move forward in education and in work and everything like that. But that's not to say that we need to spend an enormous amount of time.
[00:16:08] You know, in this area maybe what are the other areas of strengths for these students that we wanna focus on? Are they better more with math and numbers and things like that? Is that something that they have a better strength in? And let's make sure that they can read and comprehend enough so that they can continue to be successful in school.
[00:16:30] But maybe then we focus them and, and their additional training on. Again, the math and the science are the things that, um, they're na more naturally good at. And I suspect again that they'll probably be more excited to do that work instead. Right. So, So again, let's figure out how we can improve those things in order to make sure they don't trip us up, or are we able to outsource that particular task in your business?
[00:17:00] Like I said, that I outsourced some of those marketing graphics and materials in videos. Um, you know, can I, can you outsource that or can you find something else, or find someone else at work that does that thing really, really well? For me personally, another thing that I'm not great at is Excel. I'm actually the opposite of the example I just gave that I, I am definitely more of a communicator.
[00:17:25] I'm definitely better with, um, language and reading and writing and speaking. That's definitely more of my strength area. Numbers and math and things like that. Those were never my strength areas when I was in school. And once I got into the working world. I realized that as part of my role in hr, I needed to learn how to do use Excel.
[00:17:48] I needed to learn how to do pivot tables and how to do v lookups and stuff like that. And I did. It's part of, you know, my role in HR and looking at data, analyzing data and then, um, and then making decisions or influencing decisions based on what that data is telling us. Again, not super great or super fast at Excel, and I don't particularly enjoy spending all my time in there, but I had a role one time I was at a company.
[00:18:17] And one of my teammates, he was really, really good at Excel. And actually the funny thing is when we looked at our strengths, our our StrengthsFinder assessment, my top strengths, my top five strengths were his bottom. Bottom 30, like 30 some strengths. So my top were his bottom and vice versa. So my bottom strength, or my least strength, I guess number 34 strength in StrengthsFinders is analytics.
[00:18:44] And his number one strength was analytics. So once we realized that that, holy cow, we could be a really great team here, we were able to work it out that he was doing the heavy lifting on the slicing and the dicing of the data and you know, putting it. In a way that was easy to understand. And then he'd come in my office and we'd talk about it.
[00:19:06] We'd, he'd be like, this is how I did it. This is where I got that data, and this is how I, I sliced and diced it and all these things. And he'd be so excited to show me and like he'd have like a really great afternoon hanging out in his office doing all this Excel stuff. And so then again, when he'd come in and we'd talk to me about it, then we'd talk about what is it that the data is telling us?
[00:19:25] How do we need to. Present this data to our senior executives in order to influence certain decision making. Right? And so then I would be the one that would go and actually present this information and speak and, um, and actually do the more of the communication side of things. Again. Could he do the communication side of things?
[00:19:44] Could he go and present, presented Well, absolutely. But there was just a marked, marked difference between my skill in Excel, his skill in in Excel, my skill in. Communication and his skill in communication, and we just both recognized, hey, that's where our strengths lie and where we could, we were able to divide and conquer in that way.
[00:20:07] Now, today, again, I am in my business and I don't have, um, someone like him, uh, in my business today to help me with this. And that's okay. I know that I need to use Excel in my, in my to run my business. And there's some, you know, accounting things that I have to do and just some admin sort of stuff that I have to do that I just don't enjoy.
[00:20:28] And I don't frankly have the attention to detail to do very well. Just, um, Just yesterday I was putting together a contract for a corporate client. And again, I needed to read that thing multiple times to make sure all of the details were correct, the dates were correct in there. Um, I even had my husband look over it to double check just to make sure I didn't have any errors, cuz again, that's just not my area of strength.
[00:20:55] That's just that minutia detail is not. A great strength for me. My strength is going in and delivering the strategy and delivering the program that the company has hired me to do. Right? So, On days that I'm heavy in that type of work, I just plan for it. I just, I know it's gonna be an energy drainer day, so if it's possible, I schedule other energy givers for the day, right?
[00:21:21] Like, I'm gonna make sure I go to the gym, maybe I have lunch with a friend. Or like yesterday when I was working on this contract, I went to one of my favorite coffee shops and did it there just in a really, in a, in a place that I really enjoy being or, um, or maybe sometimes I'll make sure I'm just getting into my comfy clothes and I'm listening to music while and having a favorite beverage while I'm, while I'm doing this type of work, right?
[00:21:45] So I recognize that there's just parts of my business and parts of my work that maybe I'm not the best at. I don't have a natural strength in those areas. But I just, I figure it out enough in order to make sure it doesn't mess me up or it doesn't cause harm, right in, in what? In the work that I'm doing.
[00:22:05] So let's make sure that we are focused on amplifying our strengths and managing our weaknesses. And so if you like this episode, if you liked what we talked about here, I know that you'll also really like my weekly newsletter full of more strategies and inspiration to upgrade your own career or business.
[00:22:26] And you can get signed up by going out to nicole k speaks.com/newsletter, and you can get signed up there. And of course, as always, I'll be back here next week with a new episode. But in the meantime, remember that your career deserves an upgrade.
