59: Work on Your Strengths not Your Weaknesses

SisterSmart Leadership · Sep 3, 2026 · 15m

Every leadership development plan starts in the same place. Here are your gaps. Now go work on them.

It is the most standard advice in corporate life and almost nobody stops to question it.

And you have done it. You took the feedback seriously. You worked the list quietly and mostly on your own time. You did get better at those things.

And the promotion still went to somebody else.

Here's the thing. Senior leaders were never reading down your gap list. They are trying to answer a completely different question about you, and getting better at your weaknesses does nothing to help them answer…