Turn Your Weaknesses into Strengths

Everyone has weaknesses. It is important for you to be aware of your weaknesses. This acute sense of awareness, has uniquely allowed them to turn their weaknesses into strengths.

Identify Your Weaknesses

    Defining your weaknesses is a difficult process, but very important if you want to have a successful career.

It’s hard to admit our own weak points, but you can use these few tips to get started:

   Ask Someone You Trust About Your Weaknesses –Ask someone you trust such as, a friend, a family member, a manager, or even a trusted coworker. Tell them the reason you want to understand your weaknesses so that they are more candid with you.

What do You Find Hard to do? – Sometimes a weakness can be disguised as something you find unappealing. Try to search for things that you might not like to do, and ask yourself if it is because you truly dislike it or because you find it hard to do.

      Analyze your strength and weaknesses –this makes you uncover some things about yourself that you would not have spotted otherwise.

         Here is how the Analysis works:
– Write down a list of your personal strengths including things you can do better than others and the advantages you have over others.

– List all of your weaknesses, i mean things that you find difficult, then your personal traits that might hamper personal relationships.

– Think of the Opportunities you can exploit to your advantage, things that you may be an expert in that others are not. Take a look at your strengths as these could very well end up being an opportunity.

–Take a moment to think about any threats that could pose a hazard to your career.

Turning Your Weakness into a Strength

Once you’ve identified your weaknesses, it’s time to turn them into strengths by doing these few things:

1.    Actively work to improve your lagging areas by taking courses, seminars, or tutorials. Improving your skill set is a lifelong process that you should reevaluate once a year. What skills do you need? What skills do you need to improve?

2.    Assess your weaknesses, and see if it’s opposite can be identified as strength. Sometimes a perceived weakness hides some of your greatest strengths. Here are a few examples:

                         Disorganized — Creative

                         Inflexible — Organized

                         Inconsistent — Flexible

                        Obnoxious — Enthusiastic

                        Shy — Reflective

                        Irresponsible — Adventurous

                       Intimidating — Assertive

                       Weak — Humble

                      Arrogant — Self-Confident

3.    Overcompensate – become so absurdly awesome at your strengths that your weakness can be ignored or delegated to someone else.

    While it’s true that you can uncover some of your greatest strengths by taking an in depth look at your weaknesses, you also may want to assess how to use your weakness to your advantage.