We all have the message that we’d better utilize our gifts and strengths well, and build our work and lives around those original parts of us that constitute our gifts. Thank you Gallup and Marcus B.
There is an annoying paradox here though, one that the sunny-sider strength-finders are missing: There is beauty and growth, lots of it, in your weaknesses.
Yes, we can waste time and energy not using our strengths. But to not plunge into a weakness when you need to, in order to develop or use a part of you that needs work, can be just as big a mistake.
I am regularly with leaders who are not great at conflict. They have worked themselves up to average. If they didn’t dig into that weakness and at least get to the ok level with conflict, they would not get to the level that the rest of their performance and character could take them.
Sometimes life needs us to use those sides of us that are not naturally developed, because for some reason that is where the action is. Not to do so can be a failure of courage and a denial of our duty to round out the persons we are.
To illustrate with a few examples:
In the book A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle’s young heroine must use her stubbornness to save her brother from the evil villain. The stubbornness is often her vexing flaw, yet at this moment in the climax of the story, it is the inner resource that makes the difference, and she puts it into play just when it is most needed.
And a personal example for me. I have had a lot of practice with this one since I got the book contract for The Power of Your Past about a year ago. I am not given to details by nature. Yet try to write a book without being attentive—super attentive–to the details of language. So I dive in again and again, in spite of looking at some paragraphs 25 times before, into sentences and the thoughts they convey. I work on the side of me that will never be great and that absolutely needs attention now.
What weaknesses do you need to put into play right now? No, don’t build your lifework around them, but yes, discover those flaws, use those weaknesses. They are all you, and may save a project, even a relationship, when you most need it.
