It’s time to rethink how we grow

Let’s stop focusing on our weaknesses

Somewhere along the way, many of us have absorbed the idea that all development should feel uncomfortable.

If we're serious about becoming better leaders, we should be confronting our weaknesses, working on what doesn't come naturally and pushing ourselves outside our comfort zones.

We have bought into the notion that growth is supposed to be hard.

But what if some of our most powerful growth can actually feel energizing and even freeing?

A recent conversation with a client reminded me of how insightful this question can be.

She is an accomplished senior leader, and we were talking about her development priorities. Like many of the women I coach, she immediately focused on what she felt she needed to improve.

In fact, she told me that after almost every important meeting or interaction, she reflects on what she could have done better.

And while I support ongoing reflection, this approach trains us to look for what needs fixing rather than what is already working that we can build on.

So, I asked her a different question: What are your greatest strengths/leadership superpowers?

That's when things shifted. She had recently completed a 360-feedback assessment, and one of the things that came through consistently from her raters was that she is one of the best salespeople they had seen in a long time.

She told me that, without this feedback, she never would have thought of this as a strength because it comes so naturally to her.

As we unpacked this, she realized that being able to sell an idea to her team, get a client excited about a new solution or build support for a major project at the senior leadership table had been monumental to her success and could be equally important to her future growth.

Suddenly she could see that her ability to understand what mattered to her stakeholders and then connect it to a vision that moved them to action was an innate strength she could apply to just about any leadership development goal she had identified.

BINGO!

Why had she discounted this strength?

In the 2024 Harvard Business Review article, Identify — and Develop — Your Natural Strengths, Duke professor Sanyin Siang points out that we are conditioned to value things that are challenging and that we have to work at, while undervaluing what comes easily to us.

When I explained this concept to my client, she told me that this was such a relief. That she felt freer knowing she could dial up something that was already very natural for her.

Part of that relief came from realizing she had been equating development with discomfort. If growth wasn't hard, she wondered, was she really growing?

I think that's an assumption worth challenging. Growth and discomfort aren't the same thing.

Taking a strength into a bigger, unfamiliar or higher-stakes arena can create enormous stretch. Growth doesn't always require adding something that's missing. Sometimes it means taking what you already have and learning to use it at a whole new level.

I can see a version of this in my own career.

I've always been intensely curious and naturally ask a lot of questions. Early on, this helped me understand what was going on, gather information and make sense of things quickly. But as I moved into more senior rooms, the questions I asked became one of the ways I contributed.

A thoughtful question could surface something others hadn't considered. It could shift a conversation from the immediate issue to the bigger strategic question underneath it. Asking good questions helped me establish credibility and influence.

What started as something completely natural to me became a leadership strength I could use more intentionally as the demands and complexity of my roles increased. So it felt like second nature, not hard work.

How can you make your strengths the starting point for your development?

Here’s a simple 3-step framework you can try:

SPOT IT: When am I at my absolute best? What do other people consistently tell me I do exceptionally well?

NAME IT: What's really underneath that strength? What am I doing that creates the impact?

STRETCH & AIM IT: Where could I apply this strength in a bigger or different way to accomplish my most important goals for the next 6–12 months?

A final thought and caveat: I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that we ignore all our weaknesses.

The 2026 Harvard Business Review article Should You Develop Your Leadership Strengths — or Fix Your Weaknesses? offers a useful distinction between “superpowers” worth amplifying and “dangerous derailers” that can undermine our effectiveness.

That's an important distinction. If something is damaging relationships, undermining trust or limiting your impact, absolutely address it. But equally as important is to remember that being less good at something doesn't automatically make it a development priority.

I’m guessing your next level of leadership is not waiting on the other side of fixing another weakness.

It’s likely going to come from something you're already exceptionally good at.