Personal Development Program: Should You Improve on Weaknesses?

Dec 5, 2010
Jerry Lopper

Personal Improvement of Weaknesses - anonymous

A personal development program often attempts to address personal weaknesses, hoping to elevate them to the level of strengths. Learn why this is a mistake.

When your thoughts turn to personal improvement, personal growth, and setting forth on a personal development program, how do you decide where to put your efforts? You might be inclined to work to improve on a personal weakness, but is that the best place to start?

You're probably well aware of your weaknesses. Your boss, a spouse, friends, and parents are often quite adept at pointing out your areas for improvement. If you work in a medium to large sized organization, you're probably involved in annual performance evaluations that are only too quick to point out your weaknesses, though probably stating them as areas for improvement or opportunities to grow.

Personal Development Goals

With others calling attention to your personal deficiencies it can be tempting to arrange a personal development program around these areas for improvement. But this can be a big mistake according to the latest scientific research.

Researchers from the field of positive psychology who study the causes and contributors to human well-being recommend only minimal attention to improving personal weaknesses. Though it seems intuitive to work to improve on weaknesses, from a cost-benefit standpoint working to improve personal deficiencies is a poor investment of time, energy, and money.

Positive psychology researchers such as Alex Linley Ph.D., author of Average to A+: Realising Strengths in Yourself and Others (CAPP Press, Coventry, England, 2008) and The Strengths Book: Be Confident, Be Successful, and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You (CAPP Press, Coventry, England, 2010), indicates working on weaknesses is "...wasting people's time on trying to ...excel in things at which they are inherently poor."

A preponderance of research findings show that humans are at their very best when utilizing their strengths. Utilizing strengths correlates with high quality, productivity, creativity, and personal fulfillment. Using one's strengths is energizing, whereas using weaknesses is energy draining. Flow — also known as being in the zone — is a phenomenon associated with high productivity, creativity, total absorption and interest in an activity to the extent that you lose total track of time, even forgetting to eat and sleep. Flow results when utilizing your strengths in favorite activities.

The time, energy, and money expended on improving personal weaknesses is unlikely to elevate them to the level of strengths. Though some improvement is likely to result from concentrating to improve a weakness, the effort involved will probably result in only minor improvement. It appears that a personal weakness will always be a weakness, and your weaknesses will always lag your strengths in producing high quality work, creativity, productivity, and inherent satisfaction.

When to Improve Weaknesses

When should you focus effort to improve a weakness? Experts suggest doing so to avoid failure in some area of your roles and responsibilities. If you should be so unfortunate as to have a job that depends on an ability that is your weakness, maintaining employment will probably require that you bring this competency up to minimal standards. It makes sense to expend this effort, but in the long run you'll want to take steps to align your means of earning income with use of your strengths.

Robert Biswas-Diener, author of Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching (John Wiley and Sons, 2010) suggests looking at weaknesses and strengths this way: Your greatest success will come from utilizing your strengths, while your weaknesses will likely be associated with failures. Improve your weaknesses to the extent they can currently cause failure in your activities, but capitalize on your strengths for greatest growth and success.

The Role of Weaknesses in a Personal Development Program

Positive psychology researchers recommend dealing with weaknesses primarily by working to minimize dependence upon them. Effort expended to improve inherent personal weaknesses is unlikely to turn them into personal strengths. For greatest personal growth and career success focus on strengths.