“As with many of the dichotomies of leadership, a person’s biggest strength can be his greatest weakness when he doesn’t know how to balance it. A leader’s best quality might be her aggressiveness, but if she goes too far she becomes reckless. A leader’s best quality might be his confidence, but when he becomes overconfident he doesn’t listen to others.”
Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership (Page 281)
Beyond the Quote (165/365)
One of my greatest strengths, I believe, is my ability to empathetically connect to and listen to others. When somebody talks to me about how upset they are that their dog died, I feel the upset. When people call me to express their frustrations towards other people, I feel their frustrations. When the people around me get angry, I can feel their anger in me. Basically, I feel like I have an uncanny ability to put myself in other people’s shoes and feel what they’re feeling even if I’ve never been in their exact situation myself. This is something that I have noticed after many years of introspection and while it can certainly be a strength, it also comes with its fair share of drawbacks and challenges that can turn it into a weakness if left unchecked.
As with so many other things in life, the ideal tends to be the mean between extremes. When I don’t limit or balance my exposure to these types of listening situations, I will burnout and overwhelm. And one of the challenges with this is that, as an empath, saying “no” is very hard for me to do. So, there have been times when, even after I was way past my point of being overwhelmed and burned out, I would still accept another person’s request for help. You can imagine the suboptimal performance of helping someone when you’re in that state of being way past your point. It’s not good for either person.
Now, to be clear, this is not a complaint. I’m not saying that I feel overwhelmed or burned out from helping too many people. Helping people is what gives me life more than anything else. And it takes me A LOT to get to the point of burnout or overwhelm. However, If I’m not careful, I’m aware that I can get into that state and potentially into a situation that I’m not mentally ready for—which, of course, makes the effort counter-productive. You can only ever give what you have and if you don’t have anything left to give, then it’s best to go and get yourself some “more.”
This is where you can see how one of my greatest strengths can turn into one of my greatest weaknesses. I have a hard time saying, “no.” If I’m not careful, I’ll say “yes” way more than I should and I’ll expose myself to those types of non-ideal situations. This is true, not just for situations when people need help in some way, but when it comes to being asked to do anything in general. If people ask me to join a group, or speak at an event, or teach an afterschool class, or handle a situation, my default answer is almost always, “yes.” What I have to do is consciously slow down and empathize with myself first. This is the process by which I now manage my empathetic connections—I turn that empathetic arrow around and point it back at myself before I act.
By learning this about myself, I am now able to better control what I say “yes” to, what I say “no” to, and am able to better keep in touch with where I stand mentally and emotionally. The skills that have helped me maintain this as a strength and have helped me prevent this from spiraling into a weakness are these regular mental check-ins, practicing the art of saying “no,” prioritizing better, and learning how to optimally recharge. This is how I keep myself within that “mean between extremes.” This is how I can continue doing what I do every day at full capacity with the confidence that I’m optimizing my performance and influence. This is the type of self-awareness and insight that helps guide a significant number of my actions every day. This is the type of insight that changes how you lead your life.
And so now, I pass the question off to you: What is one of your greatest strengths and how might that strength also be one of your greatest weaknesses? How might you keep it in check? The answers to these questions may make you feel vulnerable (as it’s how it made me feel), but may very well wake you up to a side of yourself that you weren’t even consciously aware of before. As Jocko said above, aggressiveness can lead to recklessness and confidence can lead to cockiness if left unchecked. Better to know your weaknesses and act accordingly than to not know your weaknesses and act blindly. Good luck!
Read Next: 15 Quotes on Being Strong and How Borrowing Strength Builds Weakness.
Don't Let the Motivation Stop There...!
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