Strengths and Weaknesses

 
Do you wonder why the thing that you like most about your mate, family member, co-worker, or friend is also the thing you like least about them? It is because our weaknesses are our strengths overextended. These are the same qualities on different ends of a spectrum.

You were attracted to him because of his “take charge” personality, but you discovered that he is controlling.

You like her when she is eager to please and avoids conflict, but not so much when she is a passive, pushover.

You were attracted to him because he is so “expressive”, but you discover that under pressure, he has a temper.

You like his strong will but don’t like his stubbornness.

You were attracted to her because of her “laid back” personality, but you discovered that she is lazy and unmotivated.

 You love how meticulous and orderly she is, but she has such unreasonable standards and unrealistic expectations that she seems so hard to please.

Does any of this sound familiar? You could probably identify the statements above with someone that you know.

Before you get the idea that your friends, family, and others with whom you interact are the only ones who swing on the pendulum of being attractive and being annoying, know that we all have a basic personality structure that can be seen as different sides of the same coin.

It seems that our strengths shine through when things are going smoothly, life is good, and we are happy, motivated, and energized. Conversely, our weaknesses tend to rear their ugly heads when we are stressed, unhappy, tired, feeling threatened or insecure, and life is not so good.

In light of these strengths and weaknesses, how do we effectively get along with others? We recognize that the qualities that annoy us are also actually the qualities that we love about them. We accept that they, too, have weaknesses (and strengths) like us. We lovingly and kindly remind them when they are teetering toward the weakness end of their spectrum. We acknowledge our own frailties, and admit when we are treating others unkindly or exhibiting poor behavior. We extend grace and forgiveness to others. We take the high road. We do not return weakness with weakness, but respond from our strengths. To more effectively interact with others, we can evaluate & assess, acknowledge & admit, and normalize & adjust our strengths and weaknesses.

Evaluate & Assess. List your personality strengths and weaknesses. Be honest with yourself. Poll others close to you. Think about how you respond the best and worst to others and situations. Think about when you feel good about an interaction with someone else and when you feel bad, and how your own actions contributed to those feelings. Think about how you act under stress and pressure. What do you do in crisis mode? Once you have listed your strengths and weaknesses, you can likely pair them, realizing that the two are really the same personality trait that is exhibiting itself in a more negative or positive way.

Acknowledge & Admit. Once you have identified your strengths and weaknesses, you must acknowledge that you have them, and admit to yourself and others that they do exist. This requires transparency, honesty, courage, maturity, and humility. For some of us, it is just as hard to acknowledge and admit our strengths as it is our weaknesses. We might fear being over-taxed, over-worked, over-used, underappreciated, disliked, avoided or neglected because of our strengths. We can also fear that if we acknowledge and admit our weaknesses, we might alienate others, lose friends, miss opportunities, or seem like a failure. Acknowledging and admitting your strengths and weaknesses means taking responsibility for your actions and responses, and accepting fault and blame as appropriate. When we acknowledge and admit our strengths and weaknesses, we are self-censoring, introspective, apologetic, forgiving, and humble.

Normalize & Adjust. After you have evaluated, assessed, acknowledged, and admitted your strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to normalize them into overall personality traits, and make the necessary adjustments to optimize and maximize your positive character traits and minimize your negative character traits. If you have paired “take charge” personality and bossy, your normalized personality trait would be leader. If you have paired outgoing with too talkative, your normalized personality trait would be people person. If you have paired meticulous with control freak then your normalized personality trait would be perfectionist. You get the idea. Once you’ve done the pairing and normalizing, you want to make adjustments to your responses to people and situations in a way that draws on your strengths not your weaknesses. Your ultimate goal in this phase is to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, while embracing your core character traits.

Don’t let your interaction with others be a “coin toss” with them not knowing which side of your personality to expect. Assess, evaluate, acknowledge, admit, normalize, and adjust your personality strengths and weaknesses to become more effective in your personal relationships.



Jacinta M. Gray,
The Couch Coach