A few years ago, I studied management and we focused, of course, on a lot of successful and not so successful companies. What are some typical characteristics and, more important, which strategies do they imply in order to ensure long-term success. To cut the long story short, there is no magic pill and therefore thousands of experts are selling their personal approach to willing-to-pay clients.
I really enjoyed my studies of management and the one thing I liked best was trying to mentally adapt strategies designed for huge international corporations to strategies suitable for individual people. So recently I flipped through my old notes and I found a hand-written statement on my notepad that says “companies should focus on improving the skills they know better than their competitor rather than trying to close a gap to a competitor”. It was a hand-written note out of the context, so I don’t know if this was a quote of somebody or just the summary of a speech. But anyway, I found this sentence quite interesting and thought more about it. Should we focus on improving our strengths or our weaknesses? As always in life, there will be no correct answer to this question but I wanted to share my thoughts about it with you.
First thought: weaknesses of course!
When it comes to improvement, our first thought usually is: I have to improve this because I’m not good at it. Example: I’m not good at cooking, I have to read more cookery books. Or a typical example from the early school days: Your handwriting is not clear enough, you have to practise harder!
On the other hand, when it comes to strengths we usually think: I’m already good at this, I don’t have to work on this. Typical example from my time at school: I was doing very well in English and French so I hardly ever revised – I thought to myself, hey, you know English anyway (ha! :))
And while thinking about similar examples I realize how much of this mind set comes from our early childhood and time at school. As mentioned before, for me all the language related subjects were really easy. My weak point was mathematics. So from early on I was told and then consequently told myself that I have to study maths harder.
There is nothing bad about focusing on mathematics when you’re not good at it. On the contrary, you may have to invest a lot of time not to fail exams with all the consequences that the respective school system has to offer. But what I want to point out is that from early on we are drilled to improve our weaknesses.
Shifting my thoughts
But school is over. I even work for myself – so there is no external pressure that forces me to focus on my weaknesses. And still it’s hard to shift my thoughts into another direction. How could it be useful to improve my strengths? I have to get rid of my weaknesses, no?
Recently, I stumbled upon an article on forbes.com that is exactly about the same topic. The author described himself as the ‘World’s Worst Boss’. As people kept telling him to work on this weakness, he did so and then wrote:
“[I]t was the worst thing I could have done. Yes my delegations skills (for example) increased 300%. I went from a 1 to a 3 on a scale of 10. But
A. I was still lousy at it.
B. I wasted a lot of time that could have been far better spent trying to build up my strengths.”
My weakness in language learning and usage is participating in conversations. I’m too slow in processing what somebody says to me, reacting, checking linguistic correctness and then formulating my answer.
My biggest strength in language learning is my understanding of structures of a language, even if they are very complicated. I’m also pretty good at remembering vocabulary and as a consequence of both, my strongest skill of language usage is reading.
So compared to the common expectations I’m not good at participating in conversations but good at reading. My natural reaction would be: focus on participating in conversations. Actually, that’s what I tried to do in spring when I took many classes on italki. I enjoyed the classes, of course, but I didn’t see much of a progress for myself.
Naturally, you have to invest a lot of time and effort (and maybe even money?) to work on your weaknesses. But what if I focused on my strengths? What if I focused on reading?
Advantages of focusing on your strengths
Sticking to my personal example, I identified the following advantages of focusing on my strength:
- I need to invest far less time and consequently less money to improve this skill.
- I enjoy what I do instead of struggling with what I don’t – and yes, conversations in foreign languages are a struggle to me.
- I feel much more motivated because I see more success than failure.
To sum it up: focusing on reading is the “easy option” for me. And those of you who read the blog regularly know that I already decided to shift my focus to this easy option. And the little devil appears on my shoulder immediately: “But Dani, you constantly say that things can’t always be easy in life. That you have to invest some energy in order achieve things. Do you want to be a lazy language learner?”
Oh devil, you know my weak points. Yes, I choose the easier path. But does it really mean that I chose the lazy way? Feel free to have your personal opinion about this question 
Anyway, I have to fight the devil on my shoulder and deliver some arguments and these are the ones I give him:
- I didn’t choose the easy way because I prefer going the easy way but because I need to manage my resources and my energy. I guess you all know the famous 80/20 rule and it also applies here. If I can use 20 % of my capacities on reading and thus achieve 80 % of my results, I still have the other 80 % that I can invest.
- Learning languages is my passion and I want to enjoy it. When I “need to“ focus on something that makes me struggle, I won’t enjoy it any longer.
- Just because I consider participating in a conversation is my weakness does not mean that I’m not able to do it. If I need to, I’m sure I could handle most of these situations. And hey, there might be somebody else out there who considers my conversations skills as high because he or she doesn’t know anybody with better skills …
- My own theory: focusing on reading will also help me improve my conversation skills. Ok, I’m honest, this is no scientific theory and I have no proof for this. I just I hope for the best. If it works out, I will be the happiest language learner ever!
So I just give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll come back to working on my weaknesses …
Your turn!
What are your strengths and weaknesses in language learning? Where do you put your focus on and why? Thanks for your comments!
