You’ve probably been given some bad leadership training somewhere along the way.
In fact, you may have been taught one of the most common leadership ideas in business:
A leader’s job is to help people improve their weaknesses.
It sounds reasonable.
But it’s one of the most damaging assumptions leaders carry with them.
Here’s how I was inadvertently taught that lesson and what I’ve been working to unlearn ever since.
My Experience with the Old-school Approach
If you’ve spent any time during your career in a business that uses an “old school” performance review system, you may have felt the same way I did during my annual performance review discussions with my boss.
Every fall, I would sit down with my manager, usually in her office.
And since I was an employee in a very large corporation, I would use the exact same performance review form as thousands of other employees.
You know the style.
There’s a place for your name and job title.
Then each of your goals is listed with a rating of how you did on each one using a scale of 1 to 3, or 5, or 7, or 13 depending on the year.
Followed by a section that starts with your strengths. And ends with the part I simultaneously didn’t want to see but also desperately wanted my supervisor to jump to immediately.
While my manager worked her way through each goal and shared her input, I struggled against the annoyingly powerful distraction of worrying about what was coming.
When she finally reached the moment I had been anxiously awaiting and yet dreading, my heartbeat accelerated as we began the section titled:
Areas for Improvement
Or, as I interpreted it in my mind: Greg’s Weaknesses.
Despite my mature, experienced, and incredibly kind leader’s encouragement not to focus my attention on these things, I still did.
She understood what I want to help you understand, just in case you weren’t as fortunate as I’ve been to have outstanding leaders who’ve helped me see leadership in a more productive way.
Nevertheless, my mental energy was being sucked, uncontrollably it seemed, into figuring out how I could turn my weaknesses, I mean “Areas for Improvement”, into strengths.
The words of praise and encouragement about my performance and strengths were a whisper in my mind compared to the screams about what I didn’t do perfectly.
And keep in mind that my boss wasn’t the one putting a disproportionate amount of attention on my weaknesses. (Dang it!) Correction: “Areas for Improvement”.
I was.
Now that may just be me and my experience.
It’s true that I’m a recovering perfectionist and tend to be more than a little hard on myself.
But I suspect I’m not the only one who’s felt this way.
In fact, you may think I wrote this about you.
Or your situation may have been considerably worse.
Have you had a boss who believed that it was their responsibility to spend nearly all of your performance review time talking about what you’d done wrong?
They didn’t buy into the “Areas for Improvement” whitewashing either. They told you what they really meant:
“You need to change your weaknesses into strengths!”
If that’s the case, I’m sorry you had to go through that, and I wish your supervisor would have known more about how people work and how individuals and teams are most successful.
But they were most likely told the same thing I suspect someone somewhere told you:
A leader’s job is to help people improve their weaknesses.
If this is what you’ve been taught, I want to encourage you to consider a different perspective.
Fixing Weaknesses Doesn’t Work
Your boss who highlighted your weaknesses was probably doing what their boss had done with them. They were focusing on identifying and emphasizing what their direct reports needed to improve.
In some ways you can’t blame them because the idea seems reasonable.
If we help employees fix their weaknesses, performance should improve.
But the research tells a different story.
- When people spend most of their time trying to correct weaknesses, progress tends to be slow.
- Energy and motivation drop because the work feels draining rather than energizing.
- And even with improvement, the best outcome is often just reaching an acceptable level of performance.
Organizational psychology research consistently shows that people improve faster and perform better when leaders develop their strengths rather than focusing primarily on correcting weaknesses.
I found that insight helpful when I first learned it.
For a while, I assumed the lesson was simple:
Focus on strengths instead of weaknesses.
But as I gained experience as a leader, I began to notice something important.
Strengths Still Don’t Solve the Problem
Even leaders who embrace the “focus on strengths” philosophy often continue to see people on their teams struggle with the same problems.
For example, imagine a capable employee named Hunter.
Hunter is more than competent.
He’s intelligent and people-smart. He’s a hard worker and has an owner’s mindset that makes him deeply committed to the business.
And yet certain parts of his job still seem unusually difficult for him.
Hunter procrastinates.
Sometimes it appears as though he’s avoiding the work he’s been assigned to do.
Hunter has to put in far more effort than his peers to produce the same results.
When that happens, the natural leadership instinct drives Hunter’s supervisor to want to act. Just like it would for all of us.
Our first reaction is to fix the problem.
We assume our struggling employee needs more development, training, or coaching.
In other words, we go back to trying to turn weaknesses into strengths.
But what if the real issue isn’t a weakness at all?
What if the real issue isn’t Hunter’s ability…
but the type of work he’s spending most of his time doing?
The Type of Work Matters More Than the Talent
Every meaningful piece of work in an organization follows the same pattern.
Someone has to notice problems and come up with ways to solve them.
Someone has to evaluate these ideas and make decisions.
Someone has to rally people around a plan.
And a team of people has to work together to execute all the details until the project is finished.
These are all very different kinds of work.
And here’s the important part many leaders overlook.
People are not equally energized by all of them.
Some people naturally thrive when exploring possibilities and asking questions.
Others come alive when evaluating ideas and deciding what should move forward.
Still others gain energy from mobilizing people or driving projects across the finish line.
This is because we’re all wired differently.
None of us is designed to do every type of work required in an organization.
When someone spends most of their time doing the kinds of work that energize them, they usually perform exceptionally well.
Conversely, when they spend too much time doing the kinds of work that drain them, they struggle to deliver results.
And leaders, understandably, often interpret this as a weakness.
But it may not be a weakness at all.
It may simply be a signal.
An indicator that the work and the person are misaligned.
And it’s a signal you don’t want to misinterpret as a leader.
Here’s why.
Why This Matters for Leaders
When leaders assume weaknesses must be fixed, they often create unnecessary frustration.
They ask people to improve in areas that will never become natural strengths for them. Ever. No matter how hard they try to change in this “Area for Improvement.”
And even if the person’s actions appear to improve, the work will still feel heavy.
Forced.
That means they will be far less productive than they’re capable of being.
A well-intentioned leader may be getting better results from their “improved” employee, but it won’t last long.
Because the internal pressure of doing work they’re not wired for doesn’t go away.
It builds.
Slowly at first.
But steadily.
Until one day the discouraged team member hands you a resignation letter you didn’t see coming.
But when leaders understand how different people are designed to contribute, a different set of options becomes available.
Instead of asking:
“How do we fix this weakness?”
They start asking better questions.
Questions like:
- Is this the kind of work this person is naturally wired to do?
- Are we asking them to spend too much time in a part of the work that drains them?
- Could we redesign responsibilities so people operate more often where they contribute best?
These kinds of conversations often produce surprising results for someone who has been struggling.
Energy rises.
Ownership increases.
Engagement skyrockets.
And performance improves without adding more pressure.
I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of positive change I want to help the people I lead experience.
A Question for You
If you’re leading a team right now, here’s a question I invite you to consider.
Is there someone on your team whose “weakness” might actually be a sign telling you something important about the type of work they’re being asked to do?
Just something to think about.
Helping you lead with clarity and confidence,
Greg
P.S. One of the tools I often use with leaders to explore this idea is the Six Types of Working Genius framework. It helps teams understand the different kinds of work required in any project and how people naturally contribute to each stage. If you’ve taken the Working Genius Assessment, I’d love to see your results and learn a little more about you. Here’s how you can quickly and easily share your assessment with me.
If you’d like to see any of my previous newsletter issues, you can find them here along with other articles. And, if you’re not getting my weekly newsletter and would like to, just enter your info here.
Greg Harrod
Greg Harrod is a Business Coach and Strategic Communications Partner. Follow GregHarrod.com to learn how you can build clear communication, aligned teams, and simple rhythms so your business runs smoothly. Greg will help you learn how to go from daily firefighting to calm, confident leadership by sharing his 30+ years of experience leading teams and businesses.
A quick note about affiliates
Some of the pages on my website contain affiliate links to products, apps, and services. If you click through and purchase, I may receive a commission on the sale and you pay no more. My policy is to only affiliate with products and services that I believe will provide value to you.