Part Two: Weakness Can Be Our Strength Overplayed

Richard Baines

June 18, 2024

Have you ever experienced the manager who is lightning fast at decision-making but sometimes fails to collaborate and take others with them on the journey?  Or perhaps the colleague with exceptional powers of empathy and collaboration, who may struggle to make a decision at all? 

We all know it’s important to recognise and use our strengths in order to succeed. However, overplaying our strengths can be counterproductive and actually make us less effective.  This is something that can be easy to see in others but not so easy to see (and manage) in ourselves. 

Welcome to part two in our Insights Discovery Series where we look at how to use Insights Discovery  to build self-awareness; increase our understanding of others and develop the skills to adapt our interactions for greater success. This week we are looking at the vital link between our strengths and weaknesses and how to avoid one becoming the other!

Understanding the relationship between our strengths and weaknesses AND developing the skills to avoid one overplaying into the other is key to personal effectiveness, no matter what your role. 

So how does it work and how can Insights Discovery help? 

The starting point is self-awareness, quickly followed by self-control. Coincidently, these are the first two ingredients of emotional intelligence (EQ). Let me explain…

We can use the Insights Discovery colour model to better understand our likely strengths and possible weaknesses based on our preferred mix of the colour energies as shown below: 

The key here is to notice the relationship between the strengths and the weaknesses of each colour. The weaknesses all tend to relate to the strengths being overplayed!

For example:

• Fiery Red confidence may be seen as arrogance. 
• Sunshine Yellow flexibility may lack discipline and focus. 
• Earth Green democracy may result in indecision. 
• Cool Blue analysis may turn to action paralysis. 

So there is a virtual ‘tipping point’ in any given situation and/or interaction where our strengths may overplay and start to work against us. This self and situational awareness is an important first step in managing our strength/weakness relationship.

Recognising your possible weaknesses

If you already have a Discovery Profile, you can review the page highlighting your possible weaknesses and see if you can recognise when they occur, why and what the implications might be. 

If you don’t have a profile, you can easily do the same exercise using the graphic above. Just pick one or two weaknesses that resonate under your dominant colour energies and do the same exercise. (You can of course also use team/colleague feedback to further inform this exercise!). 

OK, I recognise where my strengths might become weaknesses in certain situations, what can I do about it?

Now we have the self-awareness element covered, we need to deal with step two. Self-control. 

Unchecked, we tend to be at the mercy of our behavioural preferences.  Our emotions and preferences control us, as opposed to us controlling them.  Sometimes this is fine.  Other times it works to our detriment.  Either way, what will be, will be… 

To take our personal effectiveness to the next level, we need to be able to control (rather than be controlled by) our behavioural preferences.  However, adapting behaviours can be tricky so here are a few tips for success:

1. Identify the trigger or scenario where you are most likely to overplay a given strength. (This helps you to be ready!). 
2. Identify one alternative behaviour that will stop the ‘overplay’ scenario happening   and consciously work on that until it becomes comfortable. 
3. After applying the alternative behaviour, reflect on the outcome. Ask yourself, ‘what did I do differently?’.  ‘Was it effective?’.  ‘How can I do it better next time?’. 
4. For further guidance, ask for feedback from others. After all, they are your target audience!

Let me share a personal example:

• My dominant energy is Earth Green. 
• One of my strengths is listening. 
• When I ‘over-listen’, I can fail to contribute, be ‘crowded out’ by louder personalities or even be seen as passive.
• To counter this, I actively push myself to share a thought, an idea, a question or a comment as early as possible in any situation where I might ‘over-listen’.  Interestingly,  once I’ve contributed, I tend to keep contributing (within reason of course but you know what I mean). 

So, in summary:

☑️ Our potential weaknesses often stem from our strengths being overplayed. 

☑️ Recognising when this is happening is the starting point (self-awareness).

☑️ Adopting simple strategies to ‘counter the overplay’ is the key to success (self-control).

☑️ Practise makes perfect – behavioural change takes time but the rewards are great.

If you’d like to know more, click on the link below to visit our dedicated Insights Discovery web page