Insights Into Emotional Intelligence: Four Ways To Conquer Your Greatest Weakness
Chris Westfall Contributor
Day 9: Address your shortcomings. This post is part of Forbes' Career Challenge: Position Yourself For A Promotion In 15 Days.
In order to conquer your greatest weakness, emotional intelligence (EQ) is a requirement. According to three internationally recognized experts in the area of self-leadership, a deeper understanding of yourself, and your emotional state, is vital to conquering your weaknesses. EQ measures your awareness of your feelings—what causes them, and why. More specifically, EQ refers to the ability to identify and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. When addressing your shortcomings, what is your greatest weakness—and how can EQ help you to identify yours?
Step 1: Identify Patterns Determine Your Greatest Weakness
"Something's not working," says Jeanette Bronée, a TEDx speaker and culture expert who has spoken in Brazil and the U.S. Weakness isn't about an isolated incident, but a pattern of behavior that creates undesired results. You may not be a great skier, but that's not necessarily a shortcoming—until you get on the slopes. Desired results, and the lack of attaining them, point to weakness.
"We're trying to cover up, or compensate, for a weakness," she says, pointing to a way to see the unvarnished truth. "If we are covering up a weakness, there's a good chance that we feel triggered, reacting to what we've always done." Bronée defines being triggered as being lost in an ineffective pattern of thought, rather than figuring out how to solve something based on current circumstances. "Memory," she explains reflectively, "means we can always have a deliberate choice about what we're going to do with it." EQ allows us to choose our actions based on awareness, not triggers.
Weakness is, first and foremost, a pattern of belief or behavior that creates undesired results. For example, this Forbes post on finding your greatest weakness explains that it's not a sign of weakness if you can't reach the top shelf in the warehouse. The weakness occurs if you aren't willing to go get a ladder and take the first step. "A weakness," Bronée explains, "can be a belief that we can't handle something. Being mindful of what's not working, that's not weakness—that's empowerment." Interestingly, beliefs are choices. Beliefs can (and often do) change. Awareness of undesired patterns is the first step to breaking them.
Step 2: Give Yourself Permission To Look At Your Greatest Weakness
"It makes it easier to trust yourself when you know where you can't," says executive coach and Creating the Impossible author, Michael Neill. Perhaps you've been given feedback about a weakness, and what you were told was somewhat less than kind. Defensiveness destroys dialogue, especially in a review or evaluation. Yet without insight into your weakness, it's difficult to see your strengths.
Neill says that dropping your guard is the first step toward picking up something useful. "There's no value in feedback if you don't want it—or if you only want it if it's good." He points to justification and defensiveness as other signs of weakness, because the message that will not be heard isn't going to be very useful.
"Weakness can be seen as an opportunity to grow—and maybe identify what we don't like about ourselves," says Holly Duckworth, author of Everyday Mindfulness. "Weakness can be the world asking you to do something you've never done before." The real risk, according to Duckworth, is ignoring the opportunity to grow. Giving yourself permission to see weakness as an area of growth could be what's missing.
Step 3: Emotional Intelligence Loves Weakness—Here's Why
Typically, we hate our weaknesses (perceived or otherwise). How can EQ turn the tide? "If you can fall in love with the area that you see as a weakness," Neill explains, "it will not stay as a problematic weakness.
"You will outsource it, you will put attention on it or you might just get good at it." Action was the antidote for his coaching business: Neill didn't like sales ("I thought I wasn't good at it"), but he wasn't stuck in that pattern of thinking. When he decided to love sales, he realized he needed to get more involved, more hands-on, so that he could make better hires and become a better leader. Today, he outsources much of his selling, but only after his perceived weakness was transformed into a place of strength. Seems that love really does conquer all—even your greatest weakness.
Step 4: Rushing To Judgment Can Also Be A Sign Of Weakness
"There's a big difference between identifying your greatest weakness, and fixing it," Neill is quick to point out. "Most people jump to fixing so quickly that they don't really see what the shortcoming really is." Weakness, Neill says, is always going to be a symptom of thought. "'How do I fix it?' is the wrong question," Neill contends. "You first have to ask why are people saying this—why is this a problem?" Bronée agrees. "You've got to ask the right why. We're often very shortsighted, and that's a huge weakness in leadership."
Looking at your "Why?" might not be comfortable, or pleasant, in the context of your greatest weakness. But it is important. Judgments will always creep in—self-judgments, or defensiveness, or both. It's only natural to have a personal reaction to weakness. EQ means knowing that you're going to get upset when confronting your shortcomings. Understanding that it's okay to get upset might be the best way to keep from rushing to judgment, or blocking the feedback you need to hear. Beating yourself up or taking a defensive posture to beat up others doesn't play to your strengths. Take time to sit with your feelings of defensiveness or judgement, and feel all the feels. EQ helps leaders to see weakness in a new way, and that's the first step towards new strengths. Before you start fixing things, start listening and find out why you've got a problematic pattern. Because when it comes to identifying your greatest weakness, the only way you can see it is when you get out of the way.
Ready for the next challenge? Click here for Day 10: Avoid the "Peter Principle."
Miss a challenge? Click here for Day 8: Reskill and upskill.
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Chris Westfall
I write about the changing nature of the leadership conversation, and how communication creates the connections that matter. Recognized as the U.S. National Elevator Pit...