Why Talking About Your Weaknesses Makes You A Better Leader

I’ve been working with a global corporate client in the past month and had a fascinating conversation with a high potential talent leader regarding the concept of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Their challenge was a high level of discomfort around acknowledging to themselves - let alone others - the areas of their communication and influencing skills that needed to improve.

During an intensive skills development workshop that included a typical business simulation, their influencing skills were tested, and the experience revealed their strengths as well as their weaknesses. When given constructive insights around how to close these gaps, how did the leader respond? With a high degree of defensiveness, sprinkled with some misdirected frustration.

This response got me thinking. What is it that this leader was afraid of? Every successful and competent professional has weaknesses in relation to specific skills. Absolutely no-one in business - much like life - is perfect at everything. And, in breaking news, others in our organisation – and perhaps even our clients - already know this. How can I say this so confidently? Because we’ve already shown our weaknesses to them in different situations.

Leaders who demonstrate ‘executive presence’ are comfortable to talk about their gaps. In so doing they model the behaviour we want to encourage in our people – namely that we all have room to continually learn and grow. Company offices are filled with values that the organisation holds dear, and words like ‘integrity’, ‘clear’, ‘open’ and ‘trusted’ are amongst many that can adorn the walls.

However values live in daily behaviours. If we are to be credible, authentic, trusted, or respected, we need to be comfortable to ‘own’ our weaknesses. That is not to say that we do nothing about it; far from it. As leaders, when we talk about not only our weaknesses, but also what we are doing to improve them.