The Power of Weakness

In the privacy of our own thoughts, we know that we have a weakness. We try to sound confident when we talk to others, but at the end of the day, no one is perfect. As leaders we must face not only our own weaknesses but the weaknesses of everyone on our team. John C. Maxwell talks about “The Law of the lid”, the way I would explain it would be, your team can only go as far as the ability of leadership.  If I expect my team to run a mile as a group in under 10 minutes, but I can only run a mile in 12 minutes, then my team can not make up for how slow I am. If I need to teach my team something, but I don’t have a clue what I’m teaching, they will never learn. So, hopefully we are always working on our personal weaknesses. So, if we have made the commitment to work on ourselves, that means we need to start focusing on the team. So, what do you do, if you have a team member who isn’t working on their weakness? I think the first thing you need to do is decide on how much is this weakness hurting the team. If math is my weakness, but to do my job I hardly ever have to use math, then I can actually go a long time without working on it before it may actually hurt my team. On the other hand, if I am scheduled to teach kids how to swim, and I don’t know how to swim, this is an immediate issue, and I can’t continue until I learn the skill of swimming. I would imagine for most scenarios it’s somewhere in between never needing the skill and I am in immediate danger. I think in most cases we probably have at least six months to work on a weakness and get it to at least an average rating. So, if I have determined what someone on my team’s weakness is, and I have decided that I have six months to figure it out, how do I get them to realize they need to work on it? Too often we hear someone acknowledge that they have a weakness, but they think that they do not have the ability to fix it. If no one is perfect, then isn’t it ok that I have a weakness? While it’s a strong point, it takes us back to the law of the lid. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect, but I also can’t have someone in leadership who is holding back the team. So now I need to find a way to get them to work on the issue, but maybe not let them know that is what is happening. If I need someone to go learn a new skill, maybe I have them go “help” or “observe”. If they think that they are just going over to watch, they won’t realize that they are actually learning at the same time. What if I need someone to be a more vocal leader? I think I would start out by asking them questions in front of people. The biggest issue with someone who doesn’t talk enough is that they don’t feel comfortable talking, and everyone else has no clue if they know anything. If we start asking them questions in front of people, they will get more comfortable a little bit at a time and everyone else will start to realize that they actually do know what they are doing. I think that the other huge positive about addressing a weakness is that once you can show them how they have improved, you can show them that anything is possible. What they once thought of as impossible, has now become possible, so what else can we accomplish? So many people are afraid of admitting to having a weakness, I heard someone say a long time ago, that we might as well admit we have a weakness because everyone else already knows. Think about that, we fight every single day to not show what we are struggling with but everyone else has already been talking about it for a long time and wondering when we are going to try and address it. The more we try and hide it, the more it looks like either we have no clue that we aren’t good at a certain skill, or we must not care that we have a weakness. I’m not saying that we need to be proud that we are bad at something, but let’s embrace the fact that we can see the shortcomings of ourselves or our team. We all know a person or a team that thinks they are perfect. When we find ourselves in those situations, we start finding enjoyment in every mistake that they make. If we aren’t careful, that could be how someone looks at us or our team. Let’s be open about what we need to work on and see the power of having a weakness!