When Your Strengths Feel Like Weaknesses
By Steve Gahagen
I was recently facilitating a workshop where one participant indicated that her number one strength, empathy, always felt like a weakness. If you feel like your greatest talents are actually liabilities you’re not going to lean into them and be uniquely you. Instead, you might shy away from playing to that strength. Unfortunately, she isn’t the only person I’ve met who saw a strength through a lens of weakness, as a problem to manage more than a strength to leverage.
Often, this occurs when we are mocked, or even disciplined, for using our strengths. For example, someone with strong empathy can be labeled as too emotional or caring. A kid highly talented in communication may be disciplined for talking too much. Someone with strength in strategic thinking usually needs time to process and could get a bad grade for class participation, while they’re actually fully engaged and annoyed with the people who think out loud. If you’re told repeatedly that your strength is a weakness you will eventually believe it, especially as a child.
Obviously, if you’re strong in communication you have to learn to listen to others rather than talking all the time. If you’re competitive, you need to learn to lose with grace. But if we’re uncomfortable with our strengths, it might be helpful to reflect on whether we received negative messages while growing up.
As parents and educators, we want to create environments in which young people can flourish. Those areas in which we find kids difficult to manage might also point to their strengths. It could be a life-changing win to help them see it. Some of the greatest artists and innovators were outliers who didn’t fit in, not because of their weaknesses, but because of their talents.
Questions to Consider:
Have you ever received negative messages related to your strengths?
Is there a strength you don’t particularly love? If so, why?
Call or text someone to share how one of their strengths in particularly inspiring to you.