Turning weaknesses into strengths is one of the most asked questions. This is because you can’t find an entrepreneur without some weakness. Even the most successful entrepreneurs in the world have them.
In my experience, I didn’t know an entrepreneur without some weaknesses. I can say that I find successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs depending on how they turn or complement their weaknesses. There are no supermen entrepreneurs who can manage their businesses without weaknesses.
Today, it’s not about the question, do you have or do not have weaknesses? It is more about recognizing them and what you are doing to decrease their effect on your business success. You can always work on your strengths and eliminate weaknesses by delegating tasks.
One way to identify your strengths is to take a strengths test, a handy tool that can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. Many different strength tests are available, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses can be challenging as they often remain invisible to you. Yet, they become glaringly apparent to your company, leading to their struggle and ultimately attributing the business’s difficulties to you.
Often, your weaknesses aren’t visible to you. But, they are visible for your company that will start struggling. So, your business struggle because of you as a reason.
What do you think about yourself? Do you have some entrepreneurial weaknesses? Or are you the only one who is without them?
Here I want to share six things you can do when you want to turn your most significant weaknesses into strengths.
Table of contents
- 1. Create Your Most Important Strengths and Weaknesses List
- 2. Recognize and Learn About Your Weaknesses
- 3. Prioritize Your Weaknesses
- 4. Write an Entrepreneur’s Journal Each Day
- 5. Accept That You Have Weaknesses and Work Hard on the Implementation of Your Strategies to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths
- 6. Commit Yourself to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths
1. Create Your Most Important Strengths and Weaknesses List
You are an entrepreneur and need to be honest about your and your business’s weaknesses. What can you get if you cheat yourself? What can you get if you cheat your customers or potential customers? Nothing, you are losing your own game on your ground when you cheat yourself and your customers. You are losing possibilities to improve yourself and your business. This means you are losing the possibility to make yourself and your business much stronger than now.
Because of that, the first step for you is, to be honest with yourself.
If you don’t know about some weaknesses, analyze yourself and try to find your hidden weaknesses and weaknesses that can be possible in the future.
These questions will help you in defining your biggest weaknesses:
- What are my known weaknesses?
- What are my hidden weaknesses?
- What will be my weak sides in the future?
Before you start working on turning your weaknesses into strengths, you need to know some things. First is what can be an entrepreneurial weakness, and second, what can be an entrepreneurial strength. As you probably already think, many things can be weaknesses or strengths. But, here, I would like to cover an example list of the most important strengths and weaknesses related to your entrepreneurial career.
Self-discipline
If you are disciplined, motivated to do things you set to do, not procrastinate and control your personal behavior, then you are a self-disciplined person. In this situation, your self-discipline can be your strength. But if your behavior is not as described above, then your self-discipline can be your weakness.
✋ Warning
Sometimes entrepreneurs can exaggerate when it comes to their to-do list and checking what they need to do. Here are helpful tips to help you decide how many times you must check your to-do list. Also, use the following five techniques to beat procrastination.
Problem-solving
If you are an analytical person with exceptional ability to identify and define problems, analyze them, find causes and the right solutions, and implement the best solutions, then problem-solving is your strength. Otherwise, problem-solving can be your weakness.
Teamwork
If you want to work in teams and easily communicate with team members, encourage, listen, and respect them, and give a significant contribution to team goals, teamwork is your strength. Otherwise, teamwork can be your weakness.
✋ Warning
Use the following seven steps framework if you want to achieve all your business goals.
Taking Initiatives
Suppose you are a person who continuously has ideas to do something to improve your company and takes all necessary steps to make it possible. In that case, taking the initiative is your entrepreneurial strength. Otherwise, taking the initiative can be your weakness.
✋ Warning
You need to escape your entrepreneurial inertia if you want to succeed. Here are ten ideas to beat your entrepreneurial inertia.
Persistence and patience
As an entrepreneur, you probably already know that the results will not come today, but you must be persistent and patient. So, these two characteristics can be your strengths or weakness.
2. Recognize and Learn About Your Weaknesses
If you know about your weaknesses, don’t ignore them. Try to fix them and turn them into your strength. Eliminate all of your hidden weaknesses and prepare for what is possible in the future.
The most important question is how to recognize your most essential weaknesses and strengths. Regarding your entrepreneurial activities, you will always want to do something. This is something often the accomplishment of your goals. Because of that, when I want to recognize the biggest weakness of an entrepreneur, my starting point is their goal accomplishment.
Here are some questions that can lead you through this discovery process of your weaknesses and strengths:
- What have I accomplished related to my goals in the last several years? Why have I accomplished what I want to accomplish?
- What are the strengths that allow me to achieve my goals? How can I use them in the future?
- What are my most significant weaknesses that don’t allow my business to succeed?
- What strengths do I need and still don’t have to help my business succeed in the market?
- How do other people respond to such weaknesses? Can I use some of their strategies?
- What can be my unique strategy to beat my most significant weaknesses as an entrepreneur?
3. Prioritize Your Weaknesses
You don’t need to transform all your weaknesses into strengths. This is not possible or sometimes will not bring you value for your entrepreneurial work.
Why?
The simple answer is that your business is created on your most significant strengths at a specific time. You can not be an expert in everything. You need to find the most critical weaknesses that limit the growth of your business and find appropriate ways to remove them or delegate them to another more competent person for the specific task.
So, when you finish defining all your weaknesses, start prioritizing them. Make a list from the highest possible priority to the lowest possible priority. You can use Excel or some spreadsheet application to help you complete these steps.
4. Write an Entrepreneur’s Journal Each Day
One strategy that can help you recognize and turn your weaknesses into strengths is to use an entrepreneur’s journal. Your daily diary will help you learn about yourself, your mistakes, and your failures. In such a way, you will become a stronger entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur’s journal is where you will spend 30 minutes daily writing about your daily experiences and successes from one side and your most significant struggles and failures from another side. Give yourself a chance to journal daily, and you will see the progress on your entrepreneurial journey.
5. Accept That You Have Weaknesses and Work Hard on the Implementation of Your Strategies to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths
When you already have a list of weaknesses that prevent you from accomplishing your goals, the most important thing you must ensure is that you accept that everything on the list is your weakness.
- How can I turn my known and hidden weaknesses into my most significant strengths?
- How can I prepare for possible future weaknesses?
- How can I show my progress to my current and potential customers?
I have often seen entrepreneurs who know they have some weaknesses but ignore them because they can’t accept them.
6. Commit Yourself to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths
You need to commit yourself to work on turning your weaknesses into strengths.
One possible solution for your total commitment to solving your weaknesses is to go one step further and publicly show where you are weak and what you plan to do. In such a way, you can build trust in the customer’s eyes about you as an entrepreneur.
The best way is to build your strengths through practice and experience and then transfer that experience to new situations. Here’s an example: if you’re not a natural at public speaking, commit yourself to speaking in front of groups at least once a week. When you get up in front of a group and speak, practice makes perfect, and when you practice regularly, you’ll become better.
But if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that there are a lot of strengths to build on. You can improve your communication skills and be more creative. You can become more confident and more organized. These are the strengths you can build on.
In short, it’s about looking at your problems and asking yourself, “What if I could turn this into a strength?” This is the essence of a self-development program. It means you must see the problem and ask yourself what you can do about it instead of simply accepting whatever happens.
So, share what you think is your weak side on social media and what you will take regarding this. Then, work on your promises.
