Very predictably the interview question pops up once again and your answer comes forth as it did in the previous interviews. “My weakness is…”
It is time to flip my answer because the whole matter of weaknesses is more a matter of personal growth. That's life. Being weak at something is a starting point in every life journey. For instance, in a previous job that was presented to me with a large pay increase, in a difficult and somewhat perilous environment of many stakeholders, I began with nothing more than a slate smudged with strained relationships, bad attitudes and angst. It was my job to unravel the underpinnings of relational tensions and get an important project back on course. I began to dig deep into each and every team members’ perspectives on the issues – which indicated the other parties issues were at fault. I’m not a psychologist; still, project technicalities were halting progress so much that relations became as unmanageable as the project.
In short, one day I realized that to resolve every stakeholders' frustrations was futile effort on my part and I had to do something unordinary, unorthodox and unpopular – which I did. I called in the vendor, more precisely, the lab team that invented and patented features of the new technology being ushered into the organization. The plan worked. A Fortune 100 company sent two developers/inventors to the corporate office and I arranged their introduction to my group of high-level tech’s where they sat down and figured things out. Sounds simple but it took one and a half years for me to accomplish this. The complexity was overwhelming.
Go ahead, flip the interview answer: is it weakness to start at the beginning or even half-way point of an issue, struggle through it, move ahead, believe in the change processes which require using one's strength against resistors? Patience.
Nobody rides a bicycle hands-free on the first try. No one hits a homerun the first time at bat. A company may run all the hiring psychometrics to suit their "analytics based" culture but people aren’t science projects: human strength lies in experiencing growth opportunities that will be used to strengthen others.
Robert Waters
It is time to flip my answer because the whole matter of weaknesses is more a matter of personal growth. That's life. Being weak at something is a starting point in every life journey. For instance, in a previous job that was presented to me with a large pay increase, in a difficult and somewhat perilous environment of many stakeholders, I began with nothing more than a slate smudged with strained relationships, bad attitudes and angst. It was my job to unravel the underpinnings of relational tensions and get an important project back on course. I began to dig deep into each and every team members’ perspectives on the issues – which indicated the other parties issues were at fault. I’m not a psychologist; still, project technicalities were halting progress so much that relations became as unmanageable as the project.
In short, one day I realized that to resolve every stakeholders' frustrations was futile effort on my part and I had to do something unordinary, unorthodox and unpopular – which I did. I called in the vendor, more precisely, the lab team that invented and patented features of the new technology being ushered into the organization. The plan worked. A Fortune 100 company sent two developers/inventors to the corporate office and I arranged their introduction to my group of high-level tech’s where they sat down and figured things out. Sounds simple but it took one and a half years for me to accomplish this. The complexity was overwhelming.
Go ahead, flip the interview answer: is it weakness to start at the beginning or even half-way point of an issue, struggle through it, move ahead, believe in the change processes which require using one's strength against resistors? Patience.
Nobody rides a bicycle hands-free on the first try. No one hits a homerun the first time at bat. A company may run all the hiring psychometrics to suit their "analytics based" culture but people aren’t science projects: human strength lies in experiencing growth opportunities that will be used to strengthen others.
Robert Waters