Strengths & Weaknesses: Definition, Meaning, and Examples

Strengths & Weaknesses: Definition, Meaning, and 50+ Examples

What are strengths and weaknesses? How do you identify your strengths and weaknesses? And how do you start turning your weaknesses into strengths? Find out here.

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What Is Strength? (Strengths Defined)

Strengths are defined as positive character traits or skills that are considered positive. Strengths include knowledge, attributes, skills, and talents.

Weaknesses are just the opposite. Weaknesses are defined as character traits or skills that are considered negative or not as well developed. Weaknesses include blind spots, poorly developed skills, or problematic personal behaviors.

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What Does “Strengths and Weaknesses” Mean?

Someone may ask you, "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" This is a common question in job interviews, when you're being evaluated, or when someone is trying to make a decision as to whether you're the right fit for something—a program, scholarship, and the like. But strengths mean, in this context, "What are your strengths and weaknesses related to this role?" They are looking for you to answer how your strengths and weakness would affect how well you do.

Answering this question is not always easy. That's because knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses takes self-awareness and self-reflection. For example, if you're applying for graduate school, you might want to focus on strengths related to study skills. But if you're applying for a job in sales, you want to talk about your social skills.

Video: How to Answer “What Are Your Strengths?” in an Interview

What Are Strengths?

There are tons of strengths. But research has shown that there are different types of strengths. The study suggests that there are 5 types of strengths:

1. Interpersonal Strengths

leadership
teamwork
kindness
forgiveness
fairness

2. Intellectual Strengths

love of learning
creativity
curiosity
open-mindedness

3. Emotional Strengths

zest
hope
bravery

4. Strengths of Restraint

5. Theological Strengths

religiousness (or faith)
gratitude
appreciation of beauty

If you have strengths in one area, you may be more likely to have the other strengths in that area. But this is not always the case as each person is unique.

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What Are Weaknesses?

Having a weakness doesn't mean that you have a complete lack of a particular strength. It just means you tend to have less of that strength. Or it means that one aspect of yourself isn't as strong as your other strengths.

For example, kindness is one of my strengths, but I'm really bad at teamwork. I have more of the intellectual strengths but fewer of the theological strengths. So I would say my weaknesses are faith and gratitude. We all have strengths and weaknesses and that's okay. The goal is to understand our strengths so we can better use them and understand our weaknesses so we can improve them.

Why Are Strengths Important?

We probably already know that our strengths are what help us achieve our goals, be successful, and accomplish what we set out to accomplish. But strengths can also contribute to life satisfaction and well-being. For example, research has shown that strengths such as gratitude, hope, and love are most likely to contribute to life satisfaction. That's why it's important to know your strengths and weaknesses and devise a plan to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Video: How to Focus on Strengths Rather Than Weaknesses

Why Is It Important to Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses?

There are lots of reasons why we should explore our strengths and weaknesses. Here are 5:

1. It Increases Self-Awareness
When you spend time reflecting on your strengths and weaknesses, you get to know your true self better. This helps you make decisions that better reflect your true self and make you happy.

2. It Helps You Understand Others
It's interesting how self-awareness can also help you become more aware of others and boost empathy. This can improve relationships and create mutual understanding.

3. It Shows You What to Focus On
When we know our strengths, we can make an effort to put them to better use and increase our chances for success.

4. It Shows You What You Need to Improve
When we know our weaknesses (especially weaknesses that are hurting our well-being), we can better address them, improve, and increase our chances for success.

5. It Can Help You Appreciate Yourself More
When you have a list of all the things you are good at, you can more easily see and appreciate all your talents and skills and increase your self-confidence.

Video: How to Find Your Areas of Strength

Find Your Strengths

To better understand your areas of strength, start by making a list of your:

Skills: These could be acquired from education and experience (e.g., computer skills, languages, degrees, certificates, and technical abilities).
"Soft" skills: These are the skills that may not have bee taught but you developed none-the-less (e.g., communication skills and social skills, problem solving abilities, and strategic skills).
Personal strengths: These are your unique qualities (e.g., reliable, flexible, kind, hard working, creative, punctual, and positive).

Find Your Weaknesses

Each area of strength has a corresponding weakness if it is not developed. Next, make a list of weaknesses (or underdeveloped strengths) that would be helpful to achieve your goals. For example, maybe you're a bad cook. If that has nothing to do with your goals, then you don't need to list it as a weakness here.

To better understand your weaknesses, start by making a list of:

Weak skills that you need: Again, these could be acquired from education and experience.
"Soft" skills you need: These skills were not developed naturally but you see how developing them could help you reach your goals or improve your well-being.
Personal weaknesses: These are your unique challenges or the things you know you struggle with. For example, I know that I struggle with assertiveness and I have a hard time standing up for myself. These personal weaknesses are something I have to continually work on.

By working on our weaknesses, even a little bit, we can start to turn them into strengths.

Video: Turn Weaknesses Into Strengths

More Examples of Strengths

Sometimes it can be hard to think of all the areas of strength we actually have. So here's a giant list of strengths to help you identify personal strengths. Many of these strengths are especially desirable in the workplace:

Trustworthy
Cooperative
Self-Disciplined
Patient
Kind
Determined
Dedicated
Honest
Balanced
Efficient
Innovative
Motivated
Professional
Respectful
Practical

Logical
Open minded
Solution oriented
Storyteller
Friendly
Likable
Persuasive
Clever
Detail-oriented
Focused
Genuine
Funny
Responsible
Good time manager
Wise

In addition to the examples above, you may also have other positive personality traits.

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Strengths Activities

If you need some more guidance to help you work with your areas of strength try these activities:

Positive qualities activity
To remind yourself that you have value and worth, it's important to remember your positive qualities. In this activity, you do this by exploring the positive aspects of your personality.

Using your strengths activity
What are you especially good at? It doesn’t have to be anything big. In this activity, you explore how to use your strengths.

Best self activity
When we imagine things, our brains experience them as if they are real. In this activity, you imagine being your best self.

More Ways to Identify Your Strengths

Sometimes it can be hard to look at ourselves honestly and name our areas of strength and weakness. So if you're having trouble, consider asking someone to help you. I tried asking friends about my strengths with the AtMyBest tool and enjoyed getting to see the results. But you can also just send a quick email or text asking people to help you identify your key strengths. This can often help you identify hidden strengths and talents—things that you are so good at you don't even consider them strengths.

How to Use Your Areas of Strength

First, try to identify patterns or themes among your areas of strength. This can help you zoom in on what you're really good at.

Second, create a self-portrait, vision board, or narrative that helps you think about your strengths in context. For example, how do these strengths relate to each other? How did they develop? What is it about you and your values that led these things to become strengths?

Third, think about how you would re-design your job (or life) to focus on what you're good at. For example, as I was writing this article, I thought a bit about my strengths to innovate and learn new things. Perhaps I should consider innovating some new aspect to this website...

What about you? How might you change your job (or life) to focus more on your strengths?

Take Actions That Support Your Areas of Strength

You may or may not be able to immediately change your job or life to focus more on your strengths. But you can take small actions to start using your strengths more. For example, maybe you're a natural coach. You could start taking classes or working on getting your life coaching certification. Or if you're creative or hard-working, maybe you want to start a side hustle while still keeping your day job. Or maybe you're a brilliant cook and you want to start having more people over for dinner to enjoy your meals. Whatever it is, try to take some action that helps you capitalize on your strengths to manifest what you want.

Reevaluate Your Areas of Strength

Remember that as you go about life, you'll build new areas of strength. Some of your weaknesses will turn into strengths. And you'll need to focus on different weaknesses. So just take time periodically to reevaluate your strengths and weakness and see if you need to shift your focus.

Celebrate Small Increases in Strengths

Some talk about using your strengths like it is magic. It's not. It takes time and self-insight to develop and use your areas of strength. That's why it's key to pause and celebrate small successes along the way.

Articles Related to Strengths & Weaknesses

Want to learn more about strengths? Check out these articles:

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