It’s always disconcerting to me just how focused both organizations and individuals are on “weaknesses” in the context of competency assessment and performance reviews. It’s all about what needs to be improved, what are the flaws, what are the derailers. Who’s going to be enthusiastic about a process that is guaranteed to give bad news?
It’s especially disconcerting since evidence abounds that the foundation for individual success lies in capitalizing on one’s strengths, and that workplaces allowing an employee to work to their strengths are happier and more productive places. Gallup has a nice recent article on this very topic.
Which isn’t to say that weaknesses should be ignored. It’s these areas that can trip us up and send us off the tracks, but without strengths to draw on it probably doesn’t matter. We won’t be on the tracks in the first place.
During assessment feedback and related coaching I encourage individuals to think about a development plan, things they’d like to do to improve their performance or prepare them for future challenges. The development plan should cover the near-term, the next few months, although it is often helpful to have a longer term vision. And the plan should probably not include more than two or three specific elements, quite possibly only one.
The questions I encourage people to ask themselves as they consider their development priorities often go like this:
- What are my strengths relative to the career path I’m targeting? How can I build on them, make them stronger? And how can I leverage them in the service of my own career success and in the service of my organization?
- What are my weaknesses relative to that career path? What can I do to prevent these weaknesses from being a barrier to my success?
There are two important points here. The first is that it’s critically important to leverage strengths, use them as the basis for success, while also working to build them up. The second is that weaknesses need to be managed; it may well be that they’ll never become strengths, but it’s important to find ways of ensuring they don’t become barriers to success.
Missing from this formulation is the importance of identifying and developing competency potential — areas that show up as assessment strengths but haven’t yet been manifest as actual performance strengths. That’s a different story, but an important one.