To be more effective as a leader, should you focus on developing your strengths or correcting your weaknesses?
This question challenges everyone who is serious about accelerating their own development. The answer defines whether you will thrive in new roles, fail in important transitions, or stagnate despite your potential. Yet most leaders don’t have a systematic approach to making this decision. Without clear diagnostic criteria, you end up following your instincts or focusing on the feedback that seems most urgent. Neither of these approaches maximizes your growth consistently.
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Some experts argue that leaders who deliberately build on their most notable strengths create more momentum and engagement.
Others argue that it is more important to correct weaknesses, as they can compromise your team and your career.
Our recommendation is not to choose one path or another, but to diagnose what your specific situation requires, asking four key questions, identifying both superpowers and dangerous derailment factors and unexplored potentials, considering your context and then taking action.
Four questions for self-diagnosis
Analyze these questions systematically before deciding where to focus your time and development energy.
- What does success require in my role?
Identify the capabilities needed to perform your role effectively. These requirements set the minimum line below which you cannot fall.
Requirements vary greatly depending on the level and role. A first-line supervisor needs strong execution and team management skills.
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A division president needs strategic thinking, stakeholder management, and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information.
A chief technology officer needs both technical credibility and the ability to translate technology strategies to non-technical executives.
In addition to your own vision, try to understand your manager’s perspective on what really matters. The two assessments often differ in telling ways. Your manager may emphasize capabilities that you have given little weight to or minimize concerns that have been consuming your attention.
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2. What are my current capabilities?
Rigorously map your strengths and weaknesses in relation to the job requirements. This is harder than it seems.
Many leaders have difficulty identifying their top talents because what they do with ease often seems ordinary.
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A leader who is exceptional at building trust among diverse groups of stakeholders may see this as just “being good with people.”
A leader who quickly synthesizes complex information may not realize that this skill is unusual.
The challenge intensifies as you advance in your career. Senior leaders often receive filtered feedback. Subordinates avoid pointing out weaknesses. Colleagues shy away from difficult conversations.
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Unconscious incompetence—not knowing what you don’t know—is especially dangerous because blind spots can affect entire teams.
Therefore, actively seek honest opinions from people willing to speak candidly. Consider structured feedback processes, external coaches, or trusted colleagues outside your reporting line.
3. What can be compensated?
Identify which weaknesses can be compensated for through team composition, partnerships, or support systems.
Not every failure requires personal development. Operational skills can often be delegated. Differences in cognitive style can complement each other. Gaps in functional knowledge can be resolved with hiring.
A visionary leader who struggles with operational details can work well alongside an operations director who excels at execution. A technically talented executive who faces difficulties in managing stakeholders can rely on a chief of staff capable of dealing with cross-functional relationships. Some gaps, however, require your direct attention.
4. Where is my untapped potential?
Identify capabilities that you have not yet developed or discovered. This is fundamentally different from correcting weaknesses because it involves exploration, not remediation.
Untapped potential refers to opportunities that you have not yet explored because you have already been highly effective using your current strengths.
A leader who has succeeded thanks to strong analytical thinking may not yet realize that he or she can also inspire people through engaging narratives.
Someone who has built a career on excellence in execution may never have ventured into strategic vision formulation. This becomes especially important during transitions, when you need skills that weren’t needed before.
Three categories for development
Once you’ve completed your diagnosis, focus on three categories. The rest can usually be managed, offset, or left on the back burner.
Superpowers
These are your exceptional strengths, those that differentiate you from your colleagues: areas in which you demonstrate energy and consistency, perform among the best, can cite concrete business achievements and offer something difficult to imitate.
Small investments in these capabilities often generate significant improvements, because you are building on existing excellence rather than starting from scratch.
So dig deeper into your superpowers. Look for ways to use them more frequently and in more impactful situations.
Dangerous factors of derailment
These are unmanaged weaknesses that cause negative ripple effects on your team and others; appear frequently enough to form a pattern; cannot be compensated by team structure or support systems; undermine trust, psychological safety, relationships and teamwork; and put your current or future success at risk.
Correcting these factors should take priority above everything else.
Unexplored potential
Many high performers never explored certain capabilities because their current strengths worked too well or because they were too busy trying to correct defects.
But it’s also important to reflect on where there is untapped potential for growth — especially when the business is changing in ways that require new capabilities, when you’re moving into a role that requires previously unnecessary skills, or when you have adjacent talent that can be expanded.
Context factors that define your focus
Three factors typically determine how you should divide your time between further developing your superpowers, correcting dangerous derailers, or exploring untapped potential.
Job requirements
Ask yourself: Where can I use my core strengths to exceed expectations in this job? In what aspects am I at the limit or below the minimum standard? What else could I do to improve my own performance and that of the team? What will really make a difference?
Career stage
At the beginning and mid-career, it is possible to continue growing mainly by strengthening key skills. As you advance to higher positions, you will have to face weaknesses that were once tolerable. For example, a vice president who rises to the top executive level cannot avoid corporate strategy, even if execution has always been his main talent.
Professional transitions
The timing of career changes is also crucial. When adapting to a new role, focus on using your already consolidated strengths to build credibility and take advantage of untapped potential.
Once you have established yourself, start paying attention to both your strengths and important derailment factors. If you are under corrective pressure, confront serious problems directly. Many leaders take too long to address development priorities.
Taking action
The answer to the debate “should you work on your strengths or your weaknesses?” It’s about diagnosing what you need at each moment. This judgment begins with the four diagnostic questions.
It continues with a disciplined focus on three categories: superpowers, derailers, and untapped potential. Context determines how to balance these priorities. Master this model and you will accelerate your career.
Shannon Anderson-Finch is an executive coach and leadership consultant with nearly 20 years of experience leading talent and culture strategies at Deloitte, Google and other global organizations. Konrad Lenniger is an international executive coach with more than three decades of experience in leadership development and coaching global executives. Michael D. Watkins is professor of leadership and organizational change at IMD, co-founder of Genesis Advisers, and author of “The First 90 Days.”
C. 2026 Harvard Business Review. Distributed by New York Times Licensing
