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We tend to have an infatuation with trying to fix our weaknesses. It’s been deeply ingrained into our psyche from childhood.

Did you ever come home from school with an “F” on your report card? If so, how did your parents respond?

I still remember the tongue-lashing I got from my dad when I came home with an “F” in math in fifth grade. He made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that his son would not come home from school a “failure.” I recall no encouragement for the brighter parts of my report card. All the attention went toward obliterating the weakness.

The Gallup organization surveyed a large sampling of parents and asked them a question:

If your 15-year-old student comes home from school with an A in Math, a B in Science, and an F in Geography, which grade deserves the most attention?

What do you think the overwhelming majority of them said? Yep, you guessed it; Geography.

But what if the better approach is to highlight the student’s strength, Math, and encourage her to focus more attention and effort on advancing more rapidly in that subject? It’s not that the “F” doesn’t need to be addressed, but the best way to help the student is to encourage the strength and manage around the weakness.

In Part 2 of this series, I made a case that we improve ourselves by focusing on strengths, not weaknesses. Our talents exist because there are neural pathways in the brain that are more efficient and over which more information will naturally flow.

Weaker neural pathways can be strengthened, but it can be a very laborious process and one that is not very enjoyable. Strengthening neural pathways that are already fully established is typically a much more efficient use of time, and often more fun too.

All of our super powers have a dark side; our kryptonite. Our strengths tend to have corresponding weaknesses. As I shared in Part 1, my Command theme is the polar opposite of my wife’s Empathy theme. I naturally tend to push through to the fulfillment of my goals, while my wife is much more mindful of what other people are feeling. While I need to manage around my lack of empathy, I must also face the fact that I will never be as intuitive as my wife.

5 Strategies for Managing Around Your Weaknesses

So how do we manage around our weaknesses? Here are five strategies:

1. Try to get a little better.

There are some activities that we just can’t get around. We need to be effective at communicating our ideas, we need to be good listeners, we need to organize our lives so that we can be faithful at keeping appointments, and we need to take responsibility for our own performance. These tasks will be naturally easier for some people than for others, but our lack of talent is not an acceptable excuse for the outcome of the weakness.

I’m not a very disciplined person by nature. In fact, being spontaneous is a lot more fun for me. Part of me enjoys pushing the limits of the gas tank on my car to see how low I can go without running out of fuel completely. My wife is just the opposite. She starts to plan refilling once the tank goes below half full.

I may thrive amidst a lack of order, but I’ve learned over time that living on the edge often results in mistakes, double-booking appointments, and yes, even running out of fuel and being stranded on the side of the road. I’ve had to learn to get a little better at organizing my life.

2. Design a support system.

Another way I manage around my lack of discipline is by creating systems to keep important tasks from falling through the cracks. In my day-job, I mentor property investors. I’m great at helping my clients get results during our one-on-one appointments, but following up on them and making sure they continue setting appointments with me is a little more challenging.

I’ve created a support system through my contact manager that helps me with the follow up. After I complete a phone appointment, I make my notes, then I enter a date that I expect to speak to them again. If they fail to set an appointment with me by that date, the system automatically emails them a reminder. If they still don’t set an appointment within another week, then I get a reminder that pops up saying to give them a call.

It makes me look really organized and disciplined, when in fact, it’s just the support system doing most of the work.

3. Overwhelm your weakness with a dominant strength.

When my wife was in labour at the hospital with our second child, she had a midwife that she deeply connected with through the experience. This midwife was there throughout the labour, and was very warm, caring, and gentle in her demeanor. My wife loved that.

Just before it was time for my wife to deliver the baby, it was time for a shift-change, and that midwife left for the night. The new midwife assigned to take over was a little old Filipino lady. She was all business, and seemed to lack empathy or concern for my wife’s emotions. This was really difficult for her, and it started to stress her out.

But then it was time to start pushing, and this Filipino midwife’s strength kicked in. She completely took control of the situation and started telling me wife exactly what she needed to do. She sounded a bit like a drill sergeant, but it was just what my wife needed.

By the end of the whole experience, after our little one was born, my wife thought this lady was the greatest midwife that ever existed. She had overwhelmed her weakness with her dominant strength.

4. Find a partner.

This is the most obvious and often most effective solution. Find someone to partner with who is strong where you are weak.

Another one of my talent themes is Activator. I love to take action once I have an idea, but because I lack Analytical and Strategic talents, I tend to take action without sufficient due diligence. In business, it’s therefore wise for me to partner with those who are strong in this area where I am weak.

Because Analytical people might tend to over-analyze and struggle taking action, they can also benefit by partnering with me.

Understanding your talent mix, as I mentioned in Part 3, can really shed some light on which of your weaknesses need to be managed around. As you can see in the following image, I’m heavily weighted in the “Executing” and “Influencing” columns.

I tend to focus on working harder and leading people. I’m naturally weaker in the “Relationship Building” and “Strategic Thinking” domains. I need help from others to work with people and work smarter.

Knowing where your natural tendencies lie can help you know whom you should partner with. The StrengthsFinder 2.0 book also offers some recommendations for who to partner with, depending on your most dominant talent themes.

5. Just stop doing it.

This one is a last resort, but could be potentially liberating. This could be necessary if you are in a role that demands a particular talent, but you don’t have it. You may quit the role altogether, or perhaps try a less drastic strategy.

There’s a helpful example in Now, Discover Your Strengths of a manager who goes to her team and confesses that she severely lacks empathy. She might say,

“I am going to stop trying to fake it. I will never intuitively know what you are feeling so you are going to have to tell me. And you can’t just tell me once; you need to keep reminding me.”

While her team members would continue to see her as flawed, at least they would find her to be more authentic.

Can you think of a weakness that you need to manage around? Which strategy would work best for you? Leave a comment to let me know.

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Why not take the StrengthsFinder assessment yourself?

Anyone can purchase access to the 100-question StrengthsFinder assessment for only $15. It also comes with a digital copy of the book StrengthsFinder 2.0, which gives an introduction to the program and explains each of the 34 talent themes.

Here’s the link: https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/Purchase/en-US/Product

If you do decide to take the assessment and you’d like some feedback or have any questions, please send me a private message on steemit.chat. I’d love to connect and help you any way I can.

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Follow me to catch the final post in this series.

Sorry for the delay posting this. As I mentioned last week, I was preparing to present this StrengthsFinder training at a workshop with my clients. The events in Sydney and Melbourne were fantastic, and we all learned a lot about how to apply our strengths to property investing, and life and business in general.

Here’s the final post in this series:

• Unleash Your Super-Power, Part 5: Building Strong Team Relationships

If you missed any of the previous posts, here are the links:

• Unleash Your Super-Power, Part 1: Why you MUST Discover Your Strengths
• Unleash Your Super-Power, Part 2: Where Our Strengths Come From
• Unleash Your Super-Power, Part 3: How to Live Your Strengths

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Recommended Reading

• First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Gallup Press
• Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, by Marcus Buckingham

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@jasonstaggers

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image credits: kryptonite, synapses, get better, safety net, strong man, partnership, talent mix, stop, books