Do you know your personal strengths? A very easy question, but if I would be the interviewer in an job-interview, what would you answer? Can you name your biggest personal strengths instantly?
Why it’s Good to Know Your Biggest Personal Strengths
Knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses can help you a lot in choosing the right career or making good decisions. Because if you are able to focus what you do around your personal strengths, you have the chance to create something remarkable, while making it look like it’s almost effortless for you.
Your biggest personal strength is what is easy for you. [Tweet this!]
And probably not easy for everyone else. This is what you do best and where your real talents are. If you want to have a comfortable life you should focus on using those strength to the fullest, because that’s where you have an competitive advantage and where you can create the most value for other people.
Also, similar to knowing your personal values, knowing your strengths and weaknesses raises your self-awareness and gives you clarity.
Define Your Personal Strengths
When you try to find your own strength, think about what comes naturally easy for you. And don’t choose attributes that you would like to have or that you admire. This is a typical trap. Especially avoid those which seem hard to do for you.
Instead choose those that are describing your core. What is so obvious that you almost doesn’t notice it in you anymore, since it is like your very nature?
Here are some examples of typical people’s strengths:
| Action-Oriented | Adventurous | Analytical | Artistic |
| Athletic | Authentic | Caring | Clever |
| Compassionate | Charming | Communicative | Confident |
| Courageous | Creative | Curious | Determined |
| Disciplined | Educated | Empathetic | Emotional Intelligent |
| Energetic | Entertaining | Fast | Flexible |
| Focussed | Good-Looking | Helping | Inspiring |
| Intelligent | Leadership | Learning | Motivated |
| Optimistic | Open-Minded | Organized | Outgoing |
| Patient | Precise | Responsible | Self-Controlled |
| Speaking | Spontaneous | Social / People Skills | Strategic Thinking |
| Team-Oriented | Thoughtful | Trustworthy | Visionary |
| Warm | Willpower | Wisdom |
Choose those that fit your strengths and then compare them against each other to bring them into an order. 1 is your biggest strength and 5 (or do 10 if you like) is at the 5th place. When you compare them ask yourself: “What can I do better?”
My own biggest personal strength are:
- Strategic Thinking
- Focussed
- Learning
- Creative
- Seeing the Essence (This is my “Unique Strength“)
- Open-Minded
- Inspiring
- Visionary
- Willpower
- Confident
I would love to read your own list in the comments below!
It can also be interesting think about a big strength you have that is relatively rare in most other humans. For instance strategic thinking is a relatively rare quality, while for instance confidence or creativity is not really. So when you are thinking about your career, maybe you should build your work around those personal strengths that you do possess but most other people don’t. Then you can create the most value for others.
It’s also important not to confuse strengths with likes. What you like to do is not necessarily what you do best. It can be, but it’s not a given. Of course, for a successful career you want to combine these two in order to overlap your strengths with your passion.
Find Your Personal Weaknesses
Equally important as knowing your personal strengths is knowing your personal weaknesses. Those are attributes that you will have a hard time when doing it, it’s difficult for you. That’s why you should try to let people who are better than you do this.
Everybody has weaknesses. It’s a natural thing, humans are not perfect. So don’t be embarrassed to look at your weaknesses. It will help you to improve yourself to know them.
And here are some examples of typical people’s weaknesses:
| Aggressive | Arrogant | Bossy | Chaotic |
| Close-minded | Complaining | Contemptuous | Controlling |
| Cynical | Fearful | Greedy | Hesitant |
| Ignorant | Impatient | Impulsive | Indifferent |
| Insensitive | Intolerant | Irresponsible | Lazy |
| Lethargic | Loose-tongued | Mistrustful | Moody |
| Naive | Negative | Obstructive | Passive |
| Prejudiced | Reckless | Rude | Selfish |
| Shallow | Short-sighted | Shy | Sloppy |
| Stubborn | Slow | Strict | Undisciplined |
| Vague | Wasteful |
There are probably more, so don’t hesitate to use them and write them into the comments.
Here are my personal top 5 weaknesses:
- Lethargic
- Ignorant
- Slow
- Stubborn
- Hesitant
So I have to work on those weaknesses in order to not make them matter too much in my life. Everybody has 1 or 2 weaknesses that you have to keep in check. If you don’t they will produce negative consequences and may even disrupt your efforts while you use your personal strength.
So identify them, and if you are brave enough, write them into the comments below as well! :-)
Should You Improve Weaknesses or Focus on Strengths?
That’s a tough question. In general it’s much better to focus on using your personal strengths and try to control your weaknesses. A good business strategy can be to focus your energies on your strength only and try to outsource or delegate tasks that would bring you into your personal weaknesses.
On the other hand, facing your weaknesses can have a lot of potential for personal growth. If you are not good at something, improving even slightly can have a nice positive impact on your overall quality of life.
An example would be if you are a lousy cook, improving your cooking skills slightly could give you benefits in everyday life. You don’t have to be a master to profit from cooking. Same would be if you are not good at sports. Starting to run can be really helpful for your overall health, although you will never run a marathon or start at the olympic games.
I remember a documentary about Michael Jordan where it said that Jordan was never good at shooting from the distance, but he improved it to a master level by constant practice. Same with his defensive game. It said “He asked what are my weaknesses and how can I make those my strength?”
Well… I would say these where no real weaknesses, they just weren’t his absolute strengths in the game. Still, by almost fanatic practice he improved even this part of his game. It may would have given other results if he would had to play chess against Garry Kasparov on the basketball court… ;-)
Conclusion
So knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses can give you a lot of insights in understanding and changing yourself. And it will help you to make the right decisions.
Please do the little exercise and reveal your own personal strengths and weaknesses. Write them into a comment and I might comment back on them later.
I think my two biggest weaknesses is my arrogance and impatience.
It’s difficult sometimes to filter myself and watch my boastfulness. My confidence then slowly becomes that of arrogance even when I’m not trying to be. I’m working on it and it is getting much better, but I am well aware of the fact that it is a minor problem.
I also expect too many results too quickly. It’s a good sign of ambition which I guess I can say is one of my strengths, but impatience can be a hit to the ego. I feel discouraged at times due to my impatience, but I’m getting there.
There’s no shame in being hesitant, Myrko. As long as you remember to take action when it counts. :)
Yep, and I have (or maybe had, being more experienced now) a similar issue with expecting results too fast. It leads to frustration, one of my “favorite” emotions. But over time you learn to deal with your weaknesses much better, so it happens less frequently for me now.
Btw. my girlfriend says my biggest strength is Calmness.
I wonder if this is true of if this is just in opposition to her biggest strength ;-)
Hi, a useful exercise for us all, many thanks. When I take a look at myself, I realise that a lot of the extremes of my younger self have calmed down although some of my behaviour, I realise, must seem a bit polarised to others. Sometimes I am calm, focused, warm and and creative. On a bad day, my perception of the world slips and I end up in the most foul, negative places where I am cynical, moody, selfish and lethargic and quick to point the finger to my circumstances. Weirdo!
However, I can recognise the things that worked in the past (job that I found fulfilling and discipline through kung fu) and am working to knit them back into my life.
Have a good one and I hope you get some interesting responses!
Good feedback James. Indeed we fluctuate a lot. Depending on our moods weaknesses or strengths show themselves.
Strengths:
1. Intuition – is not on the list but does it count?
2. Research
3. Adventurious
4. Authentic
5. Wise
Weaknesses
1. Chaotic
2. Organizanized (is this one?)
3. Impatient
4. Undisciplined
5. Undisciplined.
Intuition counts for sure! Is your second weakness Organized? Don’t think that’s a weakness !? :)
The problem is recognizing the weaknesses and stopping them before they create problems. I am spontaneous and creative. I also tend to be reactive and impulsive. Sometimes that as served to get me into a lot of trouble but also been helpful!
@Rittie, that’s right. I think keeping your weaknesses in check is one acceptable way to go. Sometimes it’s the only way. Working on them to a certain degree can in fact elevate your strengths even more, since they get more room and are not disturbed by behavior that stems from your weakness.
I am curious where you got your lists of strengths and weaknesses from. They are pretty good, I especially liked the list a couple weeks back of character attributes. I had been looking for such a list for quite a while.
An antidote about strengths and weaknesses: Bob Knight, legendary basketball coach and horse’s rear, has a simple philosophy that he used at Indiana University (Indiana happens to be my home state) to bring the best out of his players. His philosophy was to eliminate weaknesses in his players being that when all the weaknesses were gone what was left was the best that they could be. I took this as a form of gospel and I have found this to be more or less true. Or I should say that as I have eliminated or smoothed out my weaknesses my strengths began to become more apparent. Had I focused on the other end, strengths, then I would of found myself tripping over my weaknesses and my strengths would not have as much strength in them, and therefore not as noticeable. So basically I have begun to discovered who I am by challenging myself about my weaknesses. I still loath paperwork. Organization is as alien a concept to me as string theory: fascinating to read about the possibilities/potentialities, but as remote as the North Pole.
@Zack: These lists started as I was thinking about what my own attributes were. Then I added more and more of what I found via additional research, while trying to keep the list as tight as possible, avoiding synonyms or very similar attributes like “Selfish” and “Egoistic”.
Working on your weaknesses is worthwhile. It balances your character, removes the otherwise hard edges, which makes life easier for you and makes you a more enjoyable person to be with. And then, exactly as I said it before in the comment above already and as you put it: “…as I have eliminated or smoothed out my weaknesses my strengths began to become more apparent.” – so yes, I think working on your weaknesses makes total sense. Your biggest successes will probably still come from using your strength then.
Vincent-
I could of written your post. I’ve employed one to two sometimes three people for over a decade and I have watched my employees break under the pressure of my arrogance and impatience. It is really amazing the power of words motivated by impatient arrogance. It is very easy to belittle someone with that combination. I’ve learned to replace my arrogance with laughter and teasing and my impatience with impatience. So now I motivate with impatient teasing which is a monster of an improvement. It doesn’t belittle which allows a person to listen when you are trying to correct a weakness.
Good luck
I should say the “opportunity to listen…” When someone is being belittled they might as well be being punched in the face- they are in a self-preservation mode and are in no place to listen to any sort of corrective criticism.
My strengths 1. Helping 2. Humble 3. Action Orientated 4 Curious 5 adventurous
My weakness: 1. Undisciplined 2. Chaotic 3. impatient 4. Impulsive 5 Ignorant
My Strengths are :
1) Intuitive
2) Thoughtful
3) Adventurous
4) Courageous
5) Flexible
6) Compassionate
7) Open-Minded
8) Optimistic
9) Organized
10) Willpower
My Weaknesses are:
1) Intuitive
2) Wasteful
3) Vague
4) Impulsive
5) Stubborn
6) Cynical
7) Intolerant
8) Lazy
9) Mistrustful
10) Passive
Strength and Weakness the same. Interesting, but yes, that may be true!
Another good post, Myrko! One rarely takes the time to look at oneself, although I agree that it’s a very useful thing to do really!
My strengths:
1. Intuitive – difficult to define really; I have found that it’s sometimes telepathy in my case; anyway, it’s definitely my biggest strength, although I have to learn to trust it more!
2. Emotional intelligent – similar to the above, perhaps.
3. Organized – can sometimes be difficult for less organized colleagues…
4. Self controlled – I can make myself produce and drink fresh veggie juice every morning.. ;-)
5. Creative/Artistic – perhaps this should have been higher on the list; it’s a very fulfilling and enjoyable part of me.
6. Open minded – not something I was born with, but something life has forced upon me by making me gay, mixed race and foreign (although that last bit was my own choice).
7. Thoughtful – probably follows from being open minded; there are always several sides of a situation to consider.
8. Responsible – I probably have my parents to thank for that!
9. Empathic – could be linked to my (faint) telepathic abilities; it makes it easy to understand someone else’s point of view.
10. Caring – probably linked to empathy.
Some of my weaknesses:
1. Lethargic – a most annoying trait that I have to battle a lot!
2. Aggressive – not perhaps something people who know me would recognize because it’s well under control, but it’s there nonetheless. It’s mostly fear, really.
3. Fearful – I’m afraid of the cruel things people are capable of; it’s probably something I subconsciously ‘inherited’ from my mother, who spent several years in concentration camps during WW II.
4. Impatient – although perhaps mostly under control…
5. Shy – should perhaps be higher on the list; it has wrecked my life in many ways.
Thanks again!
Jor.
Hi Myrko
I have a presentation on Strengths and weaknesses in regards to personal development.. I intend to quote some of your writings (with reference to this website of course). Do you have any other specific tools that will allow individuals to utilise their strengths and improve their weaknesses.
@symjone, I can’t offer you special tools for that, but I believe reflecting on them is a first step which already encourages focussing on strength.
my strengths:
1.Good-looking
2.can be trusted – is not on the list
3.precise
4.Analytical
5.Open-minded
my weaknesses:
1.cant mingle around groups
2.inexpressive (while talking)- does it count?
3.lethargic
4.hesitant
5.insensitive
I’m a guy 22 Y-O. I’m working on the 1st weakness (mingle around group). Group? Yes, group is my biggest challenge. I’m trying to contribute something when everybody talking – I’m too quiet. I’m still struggling (within few years) but the improvement is just a little. Maybe because during childhood i’m kind of introvert.
Do you write any article about communication skills in conversation among group?
@Jonathan, I have this post about general communication mastery: http://www.myrkothum.com/how-to-become-a-master-at-communication/
What you say about non-expressive and group-isolation is a bit like the skill of social competence. But in order to develop it you also need to develop self-esteem and not take things to seriously. Most group talk is small-talk, just to enjoy the time and get to know each other in a convenient way.
I can identify with your weaknesses but as I was getting older I learned not to take the situation so serious and just let my need to enjoy myself (around other people) come through.
Trustworthiness got added as a potential strength to the list. Thanks!
MY STRENGTH:-
1.good looking
2.educated
3.intelligent
4.helping
5.thoughtful
MY WEAKNESSES:-
1.lazy
2.short sighted
3.loose tongued
4.undisciplined
5.impulsive
My two biggest weakness are that i think a lot about my future and get worrysume unnecessarily …i think i am not enjoying my present as i should and i think that is what would haunt me …say after some yrs down the line…it will be a good gesture at ur part if u can guide me through my weaknesses….
@Rishabh Jain: If you haven’t read it yet, I would suggest the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. You can realize that the present moment is really all there ever is, so that’s where you can access yourself and your life unfolding. I wrote about it here:
- What is The Present Moment?
- Clock Time vs. Psychological Time
- The Power of Now: Review of the Book by Eckhart Tolle
Hi there! I have nominated you for “The Very Inspiring Blog Award”! Read this post for more information about what you have to do to accept it! http://lorrainemariereguly.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/the-very-inspiring-blogger-award-links-to-sites-for-freelancers-writers-and-poets/
My strenghs are
1- speaking
2- Open minded
3-caring
4-Responsible
5-flexible
6- Trust Worthy
7-people skills
8-leadership
9-determined
10-self controlled
My weakness
1-Fearful
2- Strict
3- Emotional
4- hesitant
Any commments please?
Looks like you are very good with people.