In the post Are Your Strengths Under Your Control? (31 January, 2007) "Ed" makes some important points about how an individual's strengths can become weaknesses if these are carried to excess. He suggests, for example, that self-confidence (a strength) can become arrogance (a weakness) if taken to an extreme. This is an important - and often overlooked - dynamic in individual and organizational performance.
Where I would depart from Ed's perspective is in the conclusion that he draws from this about weaknesses as a whole. Since strengths overplayed become weaknesses, he contends that nobody inherently has any weaknesses - these are all strengths that have been taken to excess. The human tendency to talk about the world in bipolar, black/white, good/bad terms - valuing certain attributes and decrying others - increases the likelihood that strengths will be overplayed and weaknesses downplayed or denied altogether.
However, as Peter Drucker said in The Effective Executive, where there are peaks there are valleys; the idea that there are people who have only strengths and no weaknesses is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence. His point was that if we want to excel in certain things we need to accept that we are likely to shortfall in other things. This does not mean, of course, that we need to shrug our shoulders and accept such weaknesses as 'necessary evils', but it does mean that we need to view ourselves and others in the round - 'warts and all'. The challenge, as Drucker saw it, was to make strengths productive and weaknesses irrelevant. He argued that this was the rationale for, and the essence of, organization. Properly designed, the combined strengths of the organizational 'components' (whether individuals or organizational units) would compensate for their separate weaknesses.
From a 'paradoxical thinking' perspective, though, we can build on Drucker's argument by working to ensure that our unavoidable weaknesses are expressed in the most positive ways possible. That is, owning our weaknesses but expressing them in ways that support our strengths and which strengthen (or at least don't undermine) our relationships with others. If, for example, we see one of our weaknesses as being an aversion to risk-taking, we can take steps to make sure that this is genuinely expressed, say, as a constructive challenge to change and not as blind resistance to it.
Ed might argue of course that the apparent weakness of an aversion to risk-taking is simply prudence (a potential strength) taken to the extreme. However, I feel that rather than reframing weakness as an overplayed strength it is better to recognize it as an inherently human characteristic and as the inevitable price to pay for excellence in other areas. At the same time, we should strive to reframe the way that our weaknesses are expressed, so that these can come to complement our particular strengths.
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