I was having a conversation with a friend a couple of months ago and she was lamenting how her children don’t let things go and are constantly saying how things are fair because of this small thing or that small thing that happened ages ago. “They hold on to every detail,” she lamented. Then she said, “And I think they get it from me. I remember everything and keep revisiting and bringing it back up.”
I turned to her and said, “But you know what? That memory for detail… that’s what makes you amazing at your job!” I wasn’t just making that up to make her feel good – she has a job that requires her to hold lots of dates and times and rules and protocols in her head and she has to make these details fit together so that everyone can get what they want without violating any rules or incurring unnecessary expenses. This characteristic that she saw as a weakness was also a great strength of hers.
It reminded me of one time when a director gave me a compliment by calling me a very “nurturing” stage manager. (Let’s forget for a minute how sexist that compliment might have been.) She went on to say, “You really go out of your way to make sure all the singers feel comfortable and are able to do their best work.” I was really not sure whether or not I thought of “nurturing” as a good trait – in my mind, that instinct to be nurturing was also the same instinct that made me seek consensus, which would often lead to indecision. And I’ve always felt like indecisiveness was one of my weaknesses. I am always full of admiration of stage managers who just know the exact right thing to do.
Here’s a thought, though – what if our greatest weaknesses are also our greatest strengths? I don’t mean it in a falsely modest way – like how in job interviews you say something like, “My greatest weakness is that I’m a perfectionist.” Rather, it seems to me that framing personality traits as strengths vs. weaknesses creates a false dichotomy. In so many instances the things that makes us strong or successful can also be the things that blind us to other things and set us up to fail. Confidence and hubris, for example. Being kind and being overaccommodating. Or here’s a doozy – loving someone and being vulnerable.
Our characteristics are all two sides of the proverbial coin. They are who we are, how we solve problems, how we interact with other humans, how we place ourselves in the world, how we pace ourselves in the world. Simply… how our brain just works. Rather than thinking of these traits as a weakness or strength, maybe we can just think of our traits as how we translate personality into action, into who we are.
These traits – they aren’t “strengths” or “weaknesses” but rather the unique ways that we are human.
What “weaknesses” can you re-frame today?