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Weakness
4 min read · 800 words
Weakness is reduced capacity in a specific domain. Every person has them. The relationship built with weakness shapes whether it gets addressed, hidden, or organized around.
The hardware has limits in every operator. No one is strong across every domain. The particular configuration includes some capacities at high level and some at lower; the distribution varies, but the existence of weaknesses is universal. The system was tuned to register weakness as relevant information — the operator with awareness of their weaknesses could compensate, avoid configurations that would expose the weakness damagingly, and develop the weakness where development was possible.
The configurations that produce damage are not the weaknesses themselves. They are what gets done with them — usually one of two failure modes.
TWO COMMON FAILURE MODES
Hiding weakness. Configurations get run that depend on the weakness being absent. The leader who hides their inability to handle conflict and ends up in configurations that require it. The professional who hides their gap in a particular skill and ends up in roles where the gap produces damage. The person who hides the relational pattern that is producing damage to others, with the result that the pattern continues uncorrected. The hiding requires continuous effort to maintain, often more effort than addressing the underlying weakness would have required, and produces costs that addressing the weakness would have prevented.
Organizing identity around weakness. The opposite configuration. The weakness gets continuously announced, worked around, treated as defining. It has become the explanation for what cannot be done, often dismissing development that might have been available. The weakness is now part of the working configuration, and the inhabitant resists evidence that the weakness could be addressed — because addressing it would require revising the identity that has been organized around it.
HONEST INVENTORY
Examine current weaknesses honestly.
The diagnostic for each:
- What specific domain has reduced capacity?
- What is the current strategy for this weakness — hiding, organizing around, developing, accepting?
- What is the cost of the current strategy?
The honest assessment usually surfaces specific weaknesses and configurations where the strategy warrants adjustment. Some have been hidden that are producing real cost. Some have been organized around as identity that could have been developed. Some are being worked on that are more usefully accepted. The discrimination produces specific operations.
FOR HIDDEN WEAKNESSES
Bring them into honest acknowledgment.
At minimum to the internal model. Often also to people who are affected by them. The acknowledgment is not display; it is accurate registration of the actual configuration. The acknowledged weakness can be:
- Developed where development is available
- Compensated for where development is not available
- Incorporated into selections of which configurations to run
The hidden weakness produces all of these as ongoing costs. The hidden gap in skill that keeps getting stepped into in new roles. The hidden pattern that keeps producing the same damage in different relationships. The hidden limit that keeps getting exceeded because it has not been registered. The acknowledgment is what allows the operations of compensation, development, or selective avoidance to begin.
WHEN TO DEVELOP
Not every weakness needs to be developed. Some can be reasonably worked around.
The weaknesses that warrant development are typically the ones the actual life and direction require to be addressed. The weakness in communication for someone whose work depends on communication. The weakness in emotional regulation for someone whose relationships are being damaged by it. The weakness in physical capacity that is limiting broader functioning. The weakness in a specific skill the current role requires and that has been worked around at substantial cost.
The development is real work and takes substantial time. The investment usually returns more than the continued running of the unaddressed weakness — but only when the weakness was one that genuinely warranted address, and only when the development time was actually committed. Half-hearted development efforts on weaknesses that were never really intended to be addressed typically produce nothing.
WHEN TO ACCEPT
Some weaknesses are deep enough in the substrate that they will not substantially change.
The temperamental tendency that has been present since childhood. The neurological pattern that runs at a level no amount of practice will fully convert. The cognitive style that has limits the development work cannot fully expand. Energy is better directed at building strengths and arranging conditions that work around these, rather than at continuous attempts at conversion that the underlying substrate will not support.
The honest assessment of which weaknesses warrant which response — development, compensation, arrangement, or acceptance — is one of the more useful operations available. The wrong response to a weakness usually produces more cost than the weakness itself.
The configuration includes weaknesses. The inhabitant who knows their actual configuration operates better than the one who either hides them or organizes around them as identity.