How Leaders Can Make Better Use of Their Strengths

Leaders can make better use of their strengths by identifying the work where they repeatedly create value, checking whether their calendar reflects it, and assigning other work to people equipped to own it. Developing a weakness still matters when it limits the job; it need not consume the time that makes a leader effective.

At BambooHR’s HR Virtual Summit 2026, coach Hank Wethington described “Maya,” an anonymized client who was especially good at repairing strained client relationships. She was spending considerable time trying to acquire technical expertise already held by another leader on her team. Wethington said the turning point came when they looked at what colleagues kept asking Maya to do: restore trust with clients after a relationship had deteriorated.

Maya’s story is a coaching example, not a study of leaders who focus on weaknesses. It gives the strengths question a concrete shape. The issue was not whether technical knowledge had value. It was whether becoming the team’s second technical expert was a better use of her leadership time than the work only she was being asked to do.

How can a leader identify a strength at work?

A leader can look for recurring requests that depend on how they work, especially difficult situations others bring to them. Maya’s colleagues did not turn to her for an ordinary client update. They asked her to rebuild a relationship when a script or escalation route had failed. That pattern said more about her contribution than the list of tasks in her job description.

Ask colleagues for recent examples, then check the outcomes. What problem arrived? What did the leader notice or do? What changed for the client or team? “Good with people” is too broad to guide a calendar. “Can regain a dissatisfied client’s trust and agree on a workable next step” describes work that can be recognized and assigned.

Strengths also need a place to be used. Gallup describes opportunities to do what one does best as one of its recurring drivers of employee engagement. That association does not mean every enjoyable task is a strength or that a leader should avoid difficult duties. It does support asking whether the job gives a person enough opportunity to contribute in the way they are most effective.

When should a leader work on a weakness?

A leader should work on a weakness when it prevents them from meeting a responsibility they actually own. If Maya could not understand a technical risk well enough to make a client commitment, she needed sufficient fluency to ask informed questions and judge the answer. That does not require becoming the team’s deepest technical specialist.

Wethington’s account makes that distinction easy to miss if reduced to “focus on strengths.” Maya had a capable technical colleague. She was trying to duplicate that colleague’s expertise while her own relationship work waited. A useful development plan names the minimum competence the role requires, the person who owns specialist decisions, and the situations where Maya’s contribution is decisive.

The same test applies to any leader. A manager who struggles to give clear feedback cannot simply outsource it because strategy is their favorite work. Feedback is part of management. A leader who dislikes building spreadsheets may reasonably rely on an analyst while still learning which numbers warrant a question. The test is responsibility, rather than comfort.

How can a leader make room for strength-based work?

Compare the last month of work with the situations where the leader has the greatest effect. If the valuable work is urgent but has no protected time, decide which recurring meetings, reviews, or specialist tasks another person can own. Agree on the handoff and on the few decisions that still need the leader’s involvement.

Wethington urged HR teams to diagnose the individual before choosing a development program, then set objectives that can be checked with the leader and their manager. For Maya, progress would be visible in the client relationships she helped repair and in the technical decisions her colleague could make without her taking over. A satisfaction score for a leadership course would say much less. Protecting time for work only a leader can do is relevant once that work has been identified.

An earlier article on the curse of competence approaches the related problem of being kept in work you do well even when it no longer fits. Maya faced another version: she was pulling herself toward work the team already had covered. Making better use of her strengths meant recognizing where others depended on her, then giving that work a real place in the job.