Should You Develop Your Leadership Strengths—or Fix Your Weaknesses?
by Shannon Anderson-Finch, Konrad Lenniger and Michael D. Watkins
To be more effective as a leader, should you focus on building your strengths or fixing your weaknesses?
This question confronts everyone who is serious about accelerating their development. Your answer shapes whether you thrive in new roles, derail at critical transitions, or plateau despite your potential. Yet most leaders lack a systematic approach for making this choice. Without clear diagnostic criteria, you either follow your instincts or focus on whatever feedback feels most urgent. Neither approach consistently maximizes your growth.
Some experts argue that leaders who deliberately build on their signature strengths create greater momentum and engagement. Others contend that it’s more important to address weaknesses since they can derail your team and career. Our advice is not to choose one approach or the other but to diagnose what your specific situation requires by asking four key questions, identifying both superpowers and dangerous derailers as well as untapped potential, considering your context, and then taking action.
Four Questions for Self-Diagnosis
Work through these questions systematically before deciding where to focus your development time and energy.
1. What does success require in my role?
Identify the capabilities you need to perform effectively. These requirements establish the baseline below which you cannot fall. Role requirements vary significantly by level and function. A first-line supervisor needs strong execution and team management skills. A division president needs strategic thinking, stakeholder management, and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information. A chief technology officer needs both technical credibility and the ability to translate tech strategy for nontechnical executives.
Beyond your own perspective, seek your manager’s view on what truly matters. The two assessments often differ in revealing ways. Your manager may emphasize capabilities you have underweighted or dismiss concerns that have consumed your attention.
2. What are my current capabilities?
Rigorously map your strengths and weaknesses against role requirements. This is harder than it sounds. Many leaders struggle to identify their key assets because what comes easily often feels ordinary. An exceptional leader who builds trust across diverse stakeholder groups might see themselves as just “good with people.” A leader who synthesizes complex information quickly may not realize the ability is unusual.
The challenge intensifies as you advance. Senior leaders often receive filtered feedback. Direct reports hesitate to identify weaknesses. Peers avoid difficult conversations. Unconscious incompetence, not knowing what you do not know, is especially dangerous because blind spots can affect entire teams. So actively seek unfiltered input from people willing to be candid. Consider structured feedback processes, external coaches, or trusted colleagues outside your reporting relationships.
3. What is or can be compensated for?
Identify which weaknesses you can address through team design, partnerships, or support systems. Not every flaw needs personal development. Task-based skills can often be delegated. Differences in cognitive style can complement each other. Gaps in functional expertise can be addressed through hiring. A visionary leader who struggles with operational details might work effectively with a chief operating officer who excels at execution. A technically talented executive who finds stakeholder management challenging could partner with a chief of staff who handles cross-functional relationships. Some gaps demand your direct attention, however.
4. Where is my untapped potential?
Identify capabilities you have yet to develop or discover. This differs fundamentally from fixing weaknesses because it involves exploration rather than remediation. Untapped potential refers to opportunities that you have not yet explored because you have been highly effective at leveraging existing strengths. A leader who succeeded through strong analytical thinking might not have realized they can also inspire others through storytelling. Someone who built their career on execution excellence may not have ventured into strategic visioning. This becomes especially important during transitions when you need skills you have not required before.
Three Categories for Development
After completing your diagnostic work, focus on three categories. The rest can often be managed, compensated for, or deprioritized.
Superpowers
These are your exceptional strengths that set you apart from peers, areas where you show energy and consistency, perform in the top quartile, can cite specific business wins, and offer something others cannot easily imitate. Small investments in these capabilities frequently produce significant improvements because you are leveraging existing excellence rather than building from scratch. So you want to double down on your superpowers. Find ways to deploy them more frequently and in higher-impact situations.
Dangerous Derailers
These are unmanaged weaknesses that cause negative ripple effects on your team and others, occur frequently enough to be seen as a pattern, cannot be offset by team design or support systems, damage trust, psychological safety, relationships, and teamwork, and risk your current or future success. Addressing these derailers must take priority over everything else.
Untapped Potential
Many top performers have never explored certain capabilities because their current strengths worked so well or they were too busy trying to fix their flaws. But it’s also important to think about where you do have untapped potential to grow especially when your business is shifting in ways that require new capabilities, you are moving to a role requiring skills you haven’t previously needed, or you have adjacent strengths.
Context Factors That Shape Your Focus
Three factors typically determine how you divide your time between further developing superpowers, fixing dangerous derailers, or exploring untapped potential.
Role Requirements
Ask yourself: Where can I deploy key strengths to outperform in this job? Where am I falling at or below minimum standards? What else could I be doing to enhance my own and my team’s performance? What will truly move the needle?
Career stage
In early to midcareer, you can continue to succeed and climb mainly by enhancing key strengths. As you rise into more senior roles, you’ll have to address weaknesses that were previously tolerable. For example, a vice president ascending to the C-suite cannot avoid enterprise strategy even if execution has always been their strong suit.
Job transitions
Timing within career moves is also critical. During onboarding, focus on deploying existing strengths to build credibility and untapped potential you might seize. Once established, shift attention to both strengths and significant derailers. If facing remedial pressure, address serious issues directly. Many leaders wait too long to tackle development priorities.
Taking Action
The answer to the “should you work on your strengths or your weaknesses?”debate is to diagnose what you need when. That judgment starts with the four diagnostic questions. It continues with disciplined focus on three categories: superpowers, derailers, and untapped potential. Context shapes how you balance these priorities. Master this framework, and you will accelerate your career.
Fonte: hbr.org
