When 'focus on your strengths' backfires

 
“Don’t focus on your weaknesses. Focus on your strengths.”

That was the answer from a female executive at my book launch, when I asked: “What advice do you wish you had heard earlier in your career?”

I nodded and thought, ‘yes, this advice worked for me’.

The advice that helped me build my career

I can read a room quickly: I notice when the energy changes, when someone disagrees silently or when a discussion starts going in circles. That makes me good at facilitating workshops.

When I noticed this about myself - 3-4 years into my career - I started building on it. I took several training courses, including a Scrum Master certification, and practiced it more and more. That meant I was able to go from individual product manager to a Chief of Staff secondment - because the CEO had been at my team workshop and wanted me to facilitate his C-suite strategy days in the same way. Today, as a consultant, I still facilitate strategy workshops for C-suite teams.

Focusing on my strength as a facilitator gave me a career path no one could copy easily.

Then my flute professor disagreed

Recently, I had a lesson with a flute professor at a top Conservatoire. He told me:

“At your level, you need to find what’s going wrong. Focus on the 5% you can improve. That will make a massive difference.”

We worked on a small change in my hand position. I could feel the difference within the lesson.

That got me thinking. Musical expression is my strength. But if I ignore my hand position (my weakness), I can practise expression as long as I want - the overall quality will not improve. The weakest link in the chain sets the limit.

Now translate that to your career. You want that promotion. What if you are ready in every way but one?

So is “focus on your strengths” actually useful advice? Or just a nice proverb?

The answer has two parts. Let me show you both.

Part 1: Your strengths get you ahead

Your strengths are what get you promoted, recruited, and remembered. No one can copy you when you are ‘being you’, at your best.

That is why the first step is to become aware of them. Here is a simple exercise, taken from my book The 5 Keys To Your Potential (page 30). Aarti, the mentor, is explaining it to Tina, her mentee:

“One great way of finding out your strengths is to do the Seven Stories Exercise. A great mentor taught this to me many years ago.

You write down seven achievements that you’re proud of and some context about each of them – so they become little stories. And for each of them, you ask yourself, ‘What made you successful? What skills did you use?’

Finally, you look across all of them to find patterns. These often point to your strengths. For me, the collaboration aspect popped up in several stories.”

Think of Angela Merkel. She was never a loud or charismatic speaker. Instead she built on her training as a scientist and became known for being data-driven, pragmatic, and great at negotiation. She didn’t try to become someone else.

Part 2: Some weaknesses cancel your strengths out
 

Here is the caveat I learned in that flute lesson.

Some skills are what I would call “hygiene factors”. In a product, these are the things you simply expect. Without them, the product is useless.

Imagine you are buying a car. You expect it to drive in rain and in sunshine. You expect the steering wheel to work. If those things were not true, you would never even consider the car, no matter how shiny and expensive it looks.

The same is true for us at work. Some weaknesses mean people will not see you as a leader - even if your strengths are exceptional.

These are career-limiting weaknesses. Two examples:

You do excellent work, but you only share what the team needs to finish the task. You give little context about your results. I know I used to work like this. The problem: no one knows what you are capable of. Your strengths stay invisible, so they can’t get you promoted.

Or you are highly action-oriented. You rarely stop to look at the bigger picture, set a strategic direction, or think about long-term goals. People will value you as a doer. They won’t see you as a leader.

How researchers found the “fatal flaws”
 

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, two leadership consultants, wrote a fascinating article about this in Harvard Business Review. They collected 360-degree feedback on more than 450 Fortune 500 executives, then looked at the 31 who were fired over the following three years. What did those 31 have in common?

They found ten “fatal flaws”. These leaders didn’t collaborate, lacked energy, lacked clear direction, and more. I have linked the full article below.

This is a great list to check yourself against. If one of your weaknesses matches a fatal flaw, it will hurt you in any environment.

But be careful: not every weakness is real

Before you rush off to fix something, one word of caution.

We often make a mountain out of a molehill. You don’t want to spend months fixing a ‘perceived’ weakness instead of an actual one.

Here is an easy test. Think about the feedback you get in your reviews. It might be vague, like “work on your visibility” or “become more strategic”. But if the same theme keeps coming up from different people, across different reviews, that is a signal, that it is probably a hygiene factor, not noise.

If a comment only came up once, from one person? Probably a molehill.

So, is the advice helpful?
 

Yes, absolutely. Focus on your strengths. As long as you keep your career-limiting weaknesses in check.

Your next step:
 

1. Do the Seven Stories Exercise to find your strengths.

2. Read through the ten flaws (article linked below) and ask yourself: Does one of them remind you of feedback you’ve heard?

3. Before you fix anything, ask one trusted colleague or mentor: “Is this really holding me back?”
   
   

PS. The Seven Stories Exercise is just one of the tools in my book 5 Keys to Your Potential: An Actionable Guide for Women in STEM. Aarti and Tina walk through all five keys together: Confidence, Resilience, Power, Authenticity, and Care. If you want the full journey, you can get your copy here.

PPS: Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders – Zenger & Folkman, HBR