Whether in school are workplace performance evaluations, there is much focus on strengths and weaknesses. You might work in a place that does verbal gymnastics to prevent using words like "weakness," so they might call it something else, like "opportunities for improvement." Whatever the verbiage, it's the same thing. There is a list of things you appear to excel at and a list of thing that you don't, at least not yet.
A few years ago, at a Learning and the Brain conference, Dr. David Rose came into deliver a keynote address, pitch hitting at the last minute for someone who was ill. While I would love to see the person who was slated to speak someday, Dr. Rose's speech was amazing. He had worked as a very young man for B.F. Skinner during the famous pigeon experiments. While I learned a lot from that portion, it wasn't the main thrust of his speech. Mostly, he discussed what it meant to have a disability and whether or not something that might be a disability in one situation could be a strength in another. He explained that he was tone-deaf. This might not be considered a disability, but most would likely think of it, at least, as a weakness. After all, it interferes with one's ability to identify voices and enjoy music.
Or does it? It turns out that there might be a situation in which it helps. He was attending a church in which the organ had fallen out of tune. The discordant tones were driving everyone else crazy, but he was happily singing along as he always had because his tone deafness prevented him from knowing the difference between an organ that was properly tuned and one that was not. This weakness turned out to be a strength in that context.
Conversely, I have had students with "perfect pitch," a seeming strength for aspiring musicians. But, I have watched them cringe at tones being even slightly less than perfect - even when it was just a group of people singing "Happy Birthday." They do not enjoy much of the music they listen to because most music doesn't rise to the level of perfection. What we would identify as a strength becomes a weakness in those situations.
I'm not a fan of most personality type testing because there is little to no science behind any of them. They only tell you what you already know about yourself because you are the one answering the questions. However, in the training I do for camp, we are divided into four personality types (and I am less than shocked to find out that I am a planner). The reason I am okay with our doing this, despite my skepticism of the tests, is that it leads to a discussion about the need we have for every type of person at camp.
If there weren't planners, we would arrive at camp, ready to have fun, but there would be no food, no activities packed on the truck, and no program. It would be total chaos. Planning is an obvious need and strength. However, if ONLY planners showed up at camp, we would be on time for every well planned event with no one to provide the energy. Camp wouldn't be any fun. If all the staff were super focused on relationships, the kids would bond well, but rules would go out the window, and that could make things dangerous (at this camp, especially, the rules protect everyone). The point is that we need each type of strength to be present, or those strengths would make a very weak camp.
For 18 years, I was a yearbook advisor. I had quite a mix of students with a variety of strengths. Some had an incredible knack for visual balance and creative ideas about how to represent events. Some had the ability to write with concision. Some understood how to include every member of a team on a page without it making the page appear overcrowded. Some were super critical.
You don't think criticism is a strength? Then, you have never needed an editor. A yearbook editor needs to see what is wrong with a page and be able to fix it. The gentle optimist is generally not suited for the job. My first editor was incredibly self-aware, and it led to a practice I'm glad we established early. She emailed me and said, "I don't think I can tell her what I think of her page without making her cry. Why don't I send my thoughts to you and you tell it to her in a nicer way than I can?" The lack of tact that accompanied her strength of criticism would have been a weakness if she hadn't also been able to criticize herself. For the next 17 years, that was the process, saving everyone a lot of heartache and making for a better creative environment.
My point is this. Instead of telling students or employees what their strengths and weakness are, we should talk about the contexts in which all characteristics could be best used. It's easy to think a weakness should be eliminated if you don't recognize that there could be a situation in which it is a strength. Suggest to a student that they might be good at . . . because of that trait that they have previously been told to eliminate.
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