Strengths or Weaknesses: Rethink the Story !

Your weakness is your strength
Your strength is your weakness

Discover how to rethink your strengths and weaknesses to grow more effectively.

Challenging common assumptions about weaknesses and strengths
The importance of adaptation and personal development throughout your career
Real‑life examples and guidance to move beyond binary perceptions

To explore these ideas and make the most of every experience, dive into the full article.

What lies behind this statement?

We grow by learning. Throughout your career, you will learn to understand your strengths and weaknesses. And you will continue to improve yourself. This is the model we are taught in school and that is reinforced in most organizations. Investing in yourself to truly know who you are is the only path to becoming a better version of yourself. As our world constantly evolves, needs change, and we must therefore adapt, and evolve as well.

What I have understood over time, and this is the purpose of this article, is that we must question our certainties about what our strengths and weaknesses really are. In fact, we need to move beyond this limiting framework, which is simplistic and even binary, to reach a deeper self‑understanding. By removing the judgment of good or bad, strength or weakness, and replacing it with a more nuanced perspective, which skill, which attitude is most effective or appropriate in a given situation? We can contextualize our self‑knowledge, interact more effectively, and achieve our goals.

So, to illustrate this point, I will share slices of my career with you. For each one, I will offer my interpretation and explain how I would act today.

Your strength is your weakness

From expert to manager

I began my career as an expert in aerospace structural analysis, specializing in the development of new aircraft. In that role, I was for many years the technical lead, systematically reviewing all analyses and validating every decision.

I carried full responsibility for the calculations and the design choices. My strength therefore lay in a strong work capacity and great rigor in execution. I operated this way for years, under constant pressure. This way of working was the key to my success, and it became deeply ingrained in me.

Later on, I became a full‑time manager. One day, I came across a project facing major simulation issues. Their model did not predict the physical behavior of the complex assembly. I looked into it, analyzed it, and detect a potential solution. We set up a project and I assigned a young engineer to it. I guided him, advised him, checked, double‑checked, validated. The correlation worked! The client was pleased and requested additional cases and configurations. I said yes, we moved forward, and delivered the reports.

The requests and questions kept increasing, because this problem, which had been lingering for more than ten years, now had a solution. It suddenly became a priority, as an aircraft inspection date was approaching and the analysis needed to be finalized to allow that inspection and carry out the proper repairs if necessary.

And… stop.

Because I suddenly realized that the young engineer was on the verge of breaking down. Too much pressure, too much stress for him. He had not yet built his own confidence in the job of a stress analyst, lacking experience, lived context, and reference points. In his understanding of his role as an engineer, he felt accountable for everything, even though the accountability actually lies with the people who approve his simulation and then derive the analyses from it. But since this was his first real project, he had not yet acquired that distance, that understanding.

This in no way diminished his potential; it simply illustrated the differences in how individuals learn. And, for the first portion of the project, I didn’t even perceive any of this as stress, for me, it was normal work, intense but exciting. I saw it as an opportunity for him to produce one of the company’s best simulation models, a real chance. But he was experiencing an unacceptable level of stress.

We slowed down a bit, and he finished the project. But he came out of it wounded, when he should have come out stronger.

My strength was his weakness. I don’t feel negative tension when facing technical challenges, I feel excitement, like a puzzle that needs solving. I love not understanding, testing, trying, experimenting, failing, starting again. That is my strength as an expert. And my weakness as a manager. My blindness reduced my ability to perceive the stress this could create for others. This painful experience helped me grow. It illustrates how your strength in your current role can become your weakness in your next one.

From direct manager to manager of managers

I need human connection. When I lead a group, I like to know my team, what they’re experiencing, their challenges. By staying close, I want to understand the issues and the projects. In the teams I managed directly, this created efficiency, as long as it was done with care and while giving people the freedom to act and decide.

As in aeronautics, the hierarchical leader is also responsible for the technical robustness of the solutions and must approve drawings, notes, and calculations. It’s a standard. As a manager, you conduct technical reviews, verify assumptions, revisit calculations and conclusions. In fact, every document requires three signatures: author, reviewer, and approver. The goal is safety.

In another industrial environment, with a team less robust in execution and in a role where I was managing managers, I applied the recipe that had brought me success in aeronautics. I talked to everyone; since I love technical topics, people shared information with me, and then I would ask questions and quickly gain a solid understanding of the situation. As a result, I was sometimes more informed than my managers, or even the managers of my managers. And because execution sometimes lacked robustness, this pushed me to intervene.

Very bad idea.

By doing this, I was making my management structure useless, catching them off guard in front of their teams. As a result, the teams thought I wanted to control everything.

I realized the impact this had on people, so together with my management team, I reset the distribution of responsibilities and transferred a great deal of autonomy back to them. It was at that time that I decided to move toward a more business‑oriented role, and this change also allowed that team to develop its full potential.

This second example illustrates that what was your recipe for success in one role can become the recipe for your failure in another.

I had applied my aerospace success formula in a company with a completely different culture and level of maturity, and it had a significant impact on the team. Professionally, we delivered; our results were not bad, but the human impact was unacceptable to me. So today, I would give control to my team, keeping only two or three elements under my direct oversight. I would be patient in reaching a level of robustness that meets the right standard. And I would support them in their growth by helping them understand the “why,” and by guiding them as they define and create their own management style.

You can find other aspects of this transition in the full article. my transition from technical leadership to business leadership (LinkedIn)

Your weakness is your strength: the impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome. I hid it for decades. How? I worked more than the average person; no achievement ever felt sufficient. I had to prove myself more, constantly question myself, check and re‑check everything, again and again, in every domain. This led me to become a perfectionist. Fortunately, I always kept in mind a sense of cost versus value generated, and thanks to that, this need to prove myself didn’t affect my performance as an employee: I generally delivered ahead of schedule, with the level of quality required or just slightly above. And to stay on track, I repeated a mantra to myself: better is the enemy of good.

In my case, this syndrome also combines with a high level of energy and therefore a strong work capacity. So, with this feeling of not deserving my position or my promotion, I felt compelled to prove the opposite, which pushed me to always do more, always do better. Not according to a standard set by one of my managers, but according to my own expectations and the value I place on my work.

Consequences an impact

Several people have pointed out this high level of self‑imposed demand was stressful for them, because if I imposed to myself such standard what am I thinking of them? It was a blind spot for me. Since then, I’ve limited the expression of my dissatisfaction with myself.

In my case, this weakness is one of the driving forces of my career, allowing me, for example, to lead top‑tier engineering teams in aeronautics in both France and Canada.

The foundations of this syndrome go back to my childhood, my teenage years, and my academic journey. To fully understand it, to conceptualize it, I had to begin my coach training, where, by retracing the thread of my life, I was able to reconnect the dots. Since coaching is not therapy, I did not “treat” it. And, true to who I am, I’m not trying to treat it either! I accepted it and understood how I could activate this as a strength. Yes, what might be described as a weakness can become a strength, provided you know how to use it well.

Another strength hidden behind impostor syndrome?

It prevents you from accepting the status quo as it is and pushes you to challenge it. For me, it forces me to always find a second method or approach to confirm my first result. When your job is to size structures to ensure everything is safe, this syndrome becomes a constant spur, encouraging me to revalidate, to explore other approaches, to reject statements like “we’ve been doing it this way for twenty years, so it must be the right way.” Because I questioned myself all the time, it helped me develop faster methods to validate orders of magnitude. It also helped me strengthen my mental‑calculation skills to continually revalidate those orders of magnitude.

This is yet another illustration of how something labeled as a weakness can actually be a strength.

Books to read

One book captures this idea almost perfectly: Think Again by Adam Grant. Impostor syndrome is a strength if it doesn’t paralyze you or slow you down. So, embrace this gift, and work on channeling it well.

Adam Grant, in this book, highlights the idea that confidence without genuine and sincere self‑questioning is actually a weakness. A strong sense of self‑confidence that isn’t balanced by the ability to doubt becomes a potential vulnerability in certain contexts or situations. He therefore suggests developing what he calls humble confidence: the ability to stay curious, to question yourself, to reposition yourself with a fresh perspective, all while moving forward with confidence.

We are all different, with different life experiences, aptitudes, and attitudes that we are often taught to categorize as good or bad, strengths or weaknesses. In a world where we can sense a tendency toward simplification, reducing everything to right or wrong, for or against, give yourself the gift of nuance. Don’t think in terms of labels; know yourself. And when you present a skill, specify in which context, and combined with which other abilities, it enables you to succeed.

If this topic interests you, read Think Again by Adam Grant, and I also recommend, for French speakers, L’art de ne pas toujours avoir raison by Martin Desrosiers. Reading both at the same time was a wonderful discovery for me: they explore this theme from different angles, with rich nuance.

Articles to read

To support you in your career transitions, you will also find answers and guidance in the following articles:

How to take on your new role

🛠️ Three simple actions to put in place
Embrace and channel your “weaknesses”
Identify what you perceive as a weakness (e.g., impostor syndrome, perfectionism) and explore how it can become a driver of growth rather than something you endure. In which context, combined with which other quality, could this weakness become a strength? For example, turn doubt into curiosity and a desire to improve.

Encourage autonomy and accountability around you
If you are a manager or work in a team, delegate and give autonomy. Let others develop their own style and skills, even if it requires patience and letting go of your own recipe for success.

Cultivate humble confidence, watch your “strengths”
Work on maintaining confidence in yourself while keeping the ability to question your own assumptions. Stay curious, open to feedback, and ready to adjust your methods. This mindset will help you grow and avoid the traps of overconfidence

👉 These three simple actions strengthen your leadership posture and unlock your potential.

Coaching or Mentoring: Your Choice, Your Growth

I’m Franck Dervault, drawing on years of professional experience and now advancing toward certification as a coach. I offer two distinct paths:

Coaching to help you unlock your own potential through reflection, presence, and guided discovery.
Mentoring to share lessons, strategies, and insights from my career so you can navigate challenges with confidence.

Whichever path you choose, my goal is the same: to help you realize that you are wiser than you think, with immense potential waiting to be unlocked.

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