Your three strengths and weaknesses
O.K.M. Series - Knowledge 1
“Which are your three greatest strengths and weaknesses?”
I am sure that many of us have been asked this question at least once in our lives during a job interview. In fact, it is such a classic that meeting a potential recruiter without having a prepared response for it seems suicidal.
When in the position of the recruiter, I often throw this question at candidates to managerial positions or MBA programs. Yet, while your strengths and weaknesses are of interest to me, they remain a secondary matter relatively to what I wish to know through this question.
Then, why asking this question?
First, I expect candidates to have prepared for their interview. If they have no response ready to such a common question, I would doubt their anticipation abilities or motivation. But that is not the point of this article.
Prepared candidates fire a ready-to-shoot list of three strengths and weaknesses. They even possibly have adjusted it to fit the job offer at stake. Does that satisfy me? Still no. In fact, it may even backfire as soon as I ask them, for instance, to give me their reason to believe that they are good or bad at whatever they mentioned.
What I really ask (and encourage you to ask yourself on a frequent basis) is:
- Do you consciously seek to know yourself well? How?
- Do you take advantage of the knowledge that you gain by doing so? How?
- Do you try to improve yourself? How?
- Are you comfortable holding a rational conversation about the above aspects?
Ultimately, how conscious are you about yourself?
Through asking the three strengths and weaknesses question, I am in fact only inquiring about whether or not you have one very specific strength, self-consciousness, that I highly value both in personal and professional contexts.
Hopefully, you have understood by now that this article is no advice to perform better at job interviews. Instead, it is an invitation to practice self-consciousness as a proactive mindset of questioning and learning, directly applied to yourself, as it trains you and helps you perfect in:
- Not satisfying yourself with superficial explanations, by systematically drilling down to the root causes of your observations,
- Detaching your analysis from personal and emotional biases. Being objective and honest, at least to yourself,
- Having an open-mind, as you need to repress your subjective/emotional reactions to accept self-criticism.
- Reinforcing your taste for self-improvement.
Among other advantages, the four aspects listed above - when coupled with your own curiosity - are conditions and motivations to a healthy and rigorous learning process.
Indeed, your own self is a deep and challenging concept to learn from… As well as an excellent and always available exercise.
Thank you for reading! I hope that this article will encourage you to question and get to know yourself better. I welcome your feedback, so please feel free to react, comment, like and recommend the article if you enjoyed it. Take care!
Disclaimer: This article belongs to the O.K.M. Series (Organization - Knowledge - Motivation). To learn more, please follow this link to the series index:
