The question about 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 through delegating tasks.
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. Because of that, here I want to share four things you can do when you want to turn your biggest weaknesses into strengths.
What do you think about yourself? Do you have some entrepreneurial weaknesses? Or are you the only one who is without them?
1. Create Your Most Important Strengths and Weaknesses List
You are an entrepreneur, and you need to be honest about your and your business 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 in your own ground when you cheat yourself and your customers. You are losing possibilities to improve yourself and your business. This means that you are losing possibilities to make you and your own business much stronger than now.
Because of that as the first step for you is, to be honest with yourself.
If you didn’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 a disciplined person, 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 such as described above, then your self-discipline can be your weakness.
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, give a significant contribution to team goals, teamwork is your strength. Otherwise, teamwork can be your weakness.
Taking Initiatives
If you are a person who continuously has ideas to do something to improve your company and take all necessary steps to make it possible, then taking the initiative is your entrepreneurial strength. Otherwise, taking the initiative can be your weakness.
Persistence and patience
As an entrepreneur, you probably already know that the results will not come today, but you will need to 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 for the future.
The most significant question here is how you can recognize what your most essential weaknesses and strengths are. When it comes to 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 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 because your business is created on your biggest strengths at a specific time. You can not be an expert in everything. You need to find the biggest 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 with the definition of all your weaknesses, start prioritizing them. Make a list starting from the higher possible priority to the lowest possible priority. You can use Excel or some spreadsheet application that will help you in completing these steps.
4. Write 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 to write about your daily experiences and successes from one side and your most significant struggles and failures from another side. Give a chance to daily journal, and you will see the progress on your entrepreneurial journey.
5. Accept That You Have Weaknesses and Work Hard on Implementation of Your Strategies to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths
When you already have the list of weaknesses that prevent you from accomplishing your goals, the most important thing you need to ensure is that you accept that everything on the list is your weakness.
- How I can turn my known and hidden weaknesses into my biggest strengths?
- How I can prepare for the future possible weaknesses?
- How I can show my progress to my current and potential customers?
Often, I have seen entrepreneurs know that they have some weaknesses, but they ignore them because they can’t accept that they have weaknesses.
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 full commitment to solving your weaknesses is to go on one step further and publicly show where you are weak and what you plan to make about that. In such a way, you can build trust in the customer’s eyes about you as an entrepreneur.
So, share what you think is your weak side on social media and what you will take regarding this. Then, work on your promises.
