Stop developing your weaknesses!
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When it comes to Personal Development Plans (PDPs), one thing is true of almost all Managers – they’re good at identifying weaknesses. But they don’t distinguish between two very different types of weakness. And this has led to a misplaced focus on bringing every weakness up to satisfactory performance, instead of helping people develop their strengths, or move satisfactory skills to excellent.
When we were developing Think Strengths (as part of training line managers to be talent managers) we identified two types of weakness.
- Inexperience weaknesses are those which occur because people are new to an activity, but which are likely to improve as they tackle the responsibility, learn the pitfalls, reflect on results, and develop through training, coaching, and feedback.
- In-built (or flipside) weaknesses are those which the person has tried to tackle, but where their performance never gets much better. With a lot of effort, they can turn in a mediocre result. These weaknesses may appear year after year on a PDP but never improve over time.
For example people who are very innovative are usually poor at following rules and processes. And in that instance, what would happen if you forced one of your best innovators to work on their ability to follow set processes? Chances are you’d make them unhappy and limit their strength as an innovator.
There is no point in developing a flipside weakness. Instead you need to manage it – to spot when it is likely to trip you up, find coping strategies, enlist support, build a complementary team (and if you’re senior enough, hire the right PA!).
Why aren’t we educating managers about the two kinds of weakness, and so that they make an active choice on whether a person should develop or manage their weakness? Why don’t we focus manager on helping people develop and use their strengths, to enhance their potential?
Take Away
“Tiger Woods has a weakness in his game; he’s 61st in sand saves. If he worked in corporate America, they would label his weakness in sand saves a development opportunity, and he and coach Butch Harmon would work on that weakness in the off-season. They didn’t do that. They got to the point where the sand saves were good enough so that they didn’t get in the way. Then they spent the whole off-season rebuilding his swing, which was his most dominant strength. Now, what’s interesting about that is, Tiger Woods won the British Open last year at St. Andrews. St. Andrews has more bunkers than almost any other course. There was only one golfer during the four days that didn’t get into one of them: Tiger Woods. His swing was so long and so accurate, he didn’t have to work on his sand swing. He was never in a bloody bunker! Not once.”
“Tiger Woods has a weakness in his game; he’s 61st in sand saves. If he worked in corporate America, they would label his weakness in sand saves a development opportunity, and he and coach Butch Harmon would work on that weakness in the off-season. They didn’t do that. They got to the point where the sand saves were good enough so that they didn’t get in the way. Then they spent the whole off-season rebuilding his swing, which was his most dominant strength. Now, what’s interesting about that is, Tiger Woods won the British Open last year at St. Andrews. St. Andrews has more bunkers than almost any other course. There was only one golfer during the four days that didn’t get into one of them: Tiger Woods. His swing was so long and so accurate, he didn’t have to work on his sand swing. He was never in a bloody bunker! Not once.”