Often, weakness is viewed as something to be eliminated. If it cannot be removed, many people will choose to deny its existence. However, this perspective can lead to an exacerbation of the weakness. When you’ve identified a shortfall in your professional endeavors, it’s important to accept it and work to manage it. You can’t always climb right over the mountain. Instead, you have to find a way to get around the mountain.
Embracing Weakness
Business coach Allison Tabor says that most people are uncomfortable embracing their weaknesses. People will try to fix what they feel is their weakness, but this is, in fact, the opposite of how you should approach the situation. Instead of worrying so much about your weaknesses, you should instead ask yourself where your strengths lie.
If you can embrace the fact that you have weaknesses and move on to focus on your strengths, you’ll waste less time trying to accomplish the things you struggle with and more time focusing on the things you know you can do to help your business succeed. Tabor also believes that if you begin to recognize where your own talents lie, you’ll only grow more in those particular areas. Focusing on her strengths instead of her weaknesses allowed her to become more effective, therefore increasing her results.
Seeking Assistance
Of course, you can’t always ignore your weaknesses. If you’re running a business, you likely manage a team alongside it. If a task must be completed, but you worry about how well you can complete it yourself, see if there is somebody else on your team who can complete the task effectively. The best option is to have them do the task so you can put your time and energy into the areas where you excel. If you can’t afford to have all of the tasks you struggle with done by another member of the team, start with the task you struggle with the most and assign that to somebody. That will leave more time for you to focus on other things while the business grows.
Running a business means accepting your faults. While this is never an easy thing to do, the sooner you’re able to identify your strengths and weaknesses, the more successful you—and your business—can become.