Leadership strengths and weaknesses play an important part in finding success while in a leadership position. Those who know you to properly use their leadership strengths while improving upon their weak abilities often become the best leaders.
For many individuals, strength finding involves spending thousands of dollars and going through challenging psychological testing. However, finding your strengths does not have to be difficult. In this article, we will discuss what leadership strengths are and how they can be used.
Defining Leadership Strengths
Before you start working in a leadership role, it is crucial to understand what leadership strengths are. In general, leadership strengths are the positive qualities that improve your ability to lead your team.
They can help you communicate more quickly with the team, increase your bonds, boost efficiency, or provide some other benefit to you and your organization.
There is a wide range of different leadership strengths. These leadership abilities will not only impact their personality but also impact their leadership as well as communication style.
30 Examples of Leadership Strengths and Abilities
One fantastic way to learn more about your leadership skills is to read about these skills and eventually take a strengths test. This could be the HIGH5 assessment, CliftonStrengths, or others.
In either case, you can begin your leadership strengths-building journey by familiarizing yourself with the most common leadership abilities. Some of these common strengths, both soft skills and technical skills, are:
- Strategic thinking
- Inspiring others
- Excellent negotiation skills
- Initiative and drive
- Flexibility
- Creativity
- Coaching skills
- Organizational skills
- Active listening
- Conflict resolution
- Trustworthiness
- Positivity
- Emotional intelligence
- Analytical skills
- Time management
- Persuasiveness
- Empowerment
- Excellent communication skills
- Uniting a team under a common goal
- Confidence
- Integrity
- Adaptability
- Communication abilities
- Empathy
- Decisiveness
- Acknowledging constructive feedback
- Vision
- Perseverance
- Teamwork
- Problem-solving skills
Defining Leadership Weaknesses
Even the greatest leaders have flaws. It is crucial to admit your weaknesses if you wish to improve upon them and become the best leader you can be.
Every individual has a unique list of weaknesses and a unique leadership style in general. Before you embark on improving your weaknesses, though, you should be clear on what weaknesses are in the first place.
In general, weaknesses act as the antithesis of strengths. They block your ability to perform to your best abilities. Strengths can slow down your productivity, decrease your ability to communicate with others, hurt your decision-making abilities, and much more.
In general, they limit your ability to perform to your best and are any trait that negatively impacts your career.
10 Examples of Leadership Weaknesses
As previously noted, every individual has their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses. This is what separates successful leaders and strong leaders from others.
To unlock your effective leadership skills, you should actively learn as much as possible about both your strengths and weaknesses. Then, learn to use your strengths more often and optimize your weaknesses.
Before you begin evaluating your own weaknesses, though, it could be very beneficial to note the most common weaknesses. If you understand these weaknesses, you will have a great background understanding of weaknesses before exploring your own imperfections. 10 of the most common bad leadership traits are:
- Indecisiveness
- Micromanaging
- Being stuck in your ways
- Hypocrisy/not being principled
- Disorganization
- Lack of trust
- Low-stress tolerance
- Disrespectful attitude
- Poor problem-solving skills
- Low emotional intelligence
Strategies for Building Upon Your Leadership Strengths
Now that you have a strong understanding of what leadership strengths are as well as examples of common leadership abilities, you might be asking: how do I become an effective leader? In truth, you probably already have some leadership skills. You may simply be unaware of them.
Therefore, the first step to beginning a strength-building journey is to recognize your existing strengths. This can serve as a baseline for your abilities.
One great way to learn about your strengths right now is to take an online strengths assessment.
Many of these tests are free and take only a few minutes to finish. One such test is the HIGH5 assessment, which is also used by numerous Fortune 500 companies and can be finished within 15 minutes.
Once you know what your current strengths are, you can begin working on improving them. Try to go outside of your strengths comfort zone. Volunteer to do more activities at your work.
This gives you more opportunities to use your strengths. Even if more responsibility scares you, overcoming your fears gives your strengths an excellent opportunity to shine.
Keep track of your progress as you test your strengths in new situations. Consider retaking your strengths assessment after several months, and keep an eye on your productivity as well as customer feedback. Be disciplined and think about the long term when making decisions.
In addition, learn from those around you. If they have strengths similar to you, see how they use them. If they use them successfully, incorporate their strategies into your everyday work. Learn from their mistakes as well so you can avoid misusing your abilities.
What Strategies Should You Use To Overcome Your Leadership Weaknesses?
Acknowledging your strengths is truly key to becoming the best leader you can be. Nonetheless, understanding your weaknesses is also important.
Great leaders recognize their weaknesses and remain humble about them. By first recognizing your weaknesses, you can begin optimizing them.
To find out what your weaknesses are, reflect on what has held you back from achieving your goals. Did you fail to plan effectively? Maybe you had a hard time with decision-making, or your lack of communication stopped you from reaching your potential.
Consider asking your team for input as well. Additionally, you could take a personality test such as the MBTI to uncover a few of your weaknesses.
Once you understand what your weaknesses are, you can begin working to minimize them. One way to do this is to pair tasks that involve using your weaknesses with strengths.
For example, suppose you need to begin a project. It requires planning and setting goals. Organization is your weakness while communication is your strength.
In this case, you could ask team members to set goals for each of their departments and you would oversee how those goals come together. Just like with strengths, try using your weaknesses in different settings. Learn from how others use their weaknesses, too.
It is important to remember that although it is beneficial to recognize your weaknesses, they should not be your priority. If you have a weakness-oriented attitude to self-growth, you may not reach your full potential.
This is so because a weaknesses-oriented mindset makes you more negative, decreases passion, and stunts confidence. Instead, use a strength-based approach to growth while still recognizing your weaknesses.
How Do You Communicate Your Top Leadership Qualities to Others?
A major part of being a great leader is knowing how to communicate your strengths to others. It is about using your strengths appropriately in the correct settings. You will not get a chance to use your strengths if you cannot acquire a job that lets you utilize them.
This is when communicating your abilities becomes extremely important. In almost any interview, you will be asked about your strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, you must be prepared to clearly outline your best qualities to the employer and interviewer.
Many people believe simply stating your strengths is enough to convince the interviewer you truly possess them. This is not true. You need to also outline how you have used your strengths and the impacts your strengths have had on your prior teams.
Use specific examples of you using your strengths. If you have data that shows the impact your strengths have had on those teams, present that as well. By doing this, you will back up your claims with facts, thus making your strengths claims more compelling to others.