Should we promote employees' strengths or improve their weaknesses?

3 reasons to focus on promoting strengths

Many managers agree with the idea of ​​focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses because they believe this is an important step in creating a more positive work environment.

Sales Director shared: “Helping employees identify their strengths and giving them opportunities to do what they are good at will directly impact their positivity. They feel happy, satisfied, satisfied and proud... I believe that the positive emotions from focusing on promoting these strengths will help awaken motivation and potential, helping employees develop better instead of criticize and promote improvement of their weaknesses.

Another reason I advocate for strengths-based management is that people only succeed by leveraging their strengths. Take baseball as an example. It is often the case that a really good pitcher is not a great hitter. If they focus on their weaknesses, they will spend more time improving their batting skills. However, baseball coaches realize that this is a waste of time. They would win more games if the pitcher focused on what he did best and spent time perfecting his magic pitches.”

Head of Administration Department said: "Focusing on weaknesses can weaken people's strengths. Trying to improve a weakness leads to negative emotions and crushes self-confidence. Lack of confidence in one issue will easily spread to other areas. Employees will feel worse about themselves in general and begin to doubt their abilities even in areas where they are strong.” 

And the arguments for why should focus on weaknesses as well as strengths

“Many good managers find ways to build on their employees' strengths while also devising a plan to overcome weaknesses.”

“More and more businesses are choosing not to acknowledge their employees' weaknesses and instead focus entirely on building on their strengths . Overall, I think it's sound advice. But, I still don't feel comfortable. Something makes me believe that this is not the complete picture. If asked whether I should focus on my team's strengths or weaknesses, I would definitely answer: Both because both have value.”, Human Resources Director confided.

“In theory, focusing solely on employee strengths sounds like a simple task, but in reality it is much more complex. For example, there will be cases where a salesperson is very good at closing quality deals but does not know how to approach finding potential customers while these two factors are inseparable in sales work.  

If we only focus on promoting our strengths in closing deals, the employee will not be able to fulfill all their job responsibilities. We hire people to do the A to Z job, not just one part. Of course, we need to promote strengths as much as possible, but if weaknesses prevent employees from completing their work, we need to help them improve these problems."

Sharing the same opinion: "If we only focus on strengths and ignore improving weaknesses, it will prevent employees from becoming more comprehensive. Rarely is there a job that only requires one skill. This means that if employees cannot excel in many areas, they will have difficulty in most aspects of their work.

Let's take the role of a graphic designer as an example. Becoming a graphic designer requires more than just creating attractive designs. You need a deep understanding of the brand to ensure the design is in line with the selling proposition, which means research skills are crucial. Additionally, you need to understand how the designs will be used to adapt accordingly, which means an understanding of social media and marketing is also a useful tool. Missing one of the above factors is the reason why you have to correct it over and over again and affects overall productivity.

It's clear that we need many skills to get the job done and need to improve if there are areas of weakness. This does not mean that employees must be good at everything, no one has strengths in everything. It's simply about making the bad things good enough that they don't negatively impact your ability to do your job properly.

In short, although it is important to double down on an employee's strengths to move to the next level, we should not ignore weaknesses but need a balance between the two."

How about you? Will you focus on promoting your strengths or do you think your weaknesses are as important as your strengths when building a skill set to help your employees become more professional?