24 May Know Your Weaknesses: The Sherpa Guide to Managing Yourself
The Sherpa Guide to Managing Yourself
Getting to the next level in your career takes more than skill, more than will. You need to manage your business behavior, and the behavior of others. The more you understand yourself, the more you will manage the way you communicate, lead, and work with others.
Discovering Your Weaknesses
Here’s how we define a weakness:
Any behavior that negatively affects the way you lead, manage, communicate or work with others.
Examine these questions. See if you can identify or relate any of them to your business behavior.
- Do you talk too much? Talk too fast?
- Are you intimidating?
- Do you micro-manage?
- Do you have problems making decisions?
- Do you avoid personal contact with important people?
Have any of those things ever held back your performance? Weaknesses in behavior can affect every relationship and every interaction you have, limiting your success.
In order for you to work on improving your weaknesses, they have to be stated concretely and specifically.
Consider this: Is your weakness observable? If a weakness is not clearly observable or measurable, you can’t do anything about it.
Subject your defined weaknesses to these questions and see if they hold up:
- Can you see it in action?
- Can you identify how often it happens, and when?
- How do you know this is truly a weakness?
- What have others said about your weakness?
Do you need to clarify what your weaknesses really are?
Sometimes, a weakness can be stated too broadly. Now that you have stated a weakness, simplify it, so you can actually work on it. Here are some examples:
| Vague statements of weakness: |
True behavioral weaknesses: |
| I am not good at time management. | I am constantly overwhelmed, because I can’t say “No” to new work.
|
| I can be intimidating. | My body language is wrong. I cross my arms and talk too loudly.
|
| I don’t trust others.
|
I micro-manage everyone by checking every detail on every project. |
| I avoid confrontation. | I panic or shut down when confronted with an error I’ve made, or faced with a difference of opinion.
|
| I judge people. | I do not listen, and I ignore input from people I don’t like. |
If you want to make progress in your business behavior, you need to know exactly what you need to work on. The clear and precise statement of a weakness sets you up to succeed as you development replacement behaviors. How will you start identifying your true behavioral weaknesses today? Try digging deep to identify yours or connect with us and a Certified Sherpa Coach will help you do so.
Like what you just read? This is an excerpt from the book: “BE . . don’t do: The Sherpa Guide to Coaching for Managers” by Brenda Corbett & Judith Colemon-Kinebrew. This book is available on our Sherpa Store and also available on Kindle. We also have a program based upon the coaching principles in this book. Learn more about our Coaching Skills for High Performance program here.
Want to connect with a Certified Sherpa Coach to help you with your weaknesses? Sign up here for more information: