“People are going to judge you by your weakest areas, not your strongest.”

I was having a great conversation with my father in law and brother in law yesterday and this is one golden nugget was shared with me by my father in law. He just retired as the President of AT& T in the South East and he has led thousands of people.

He went on to inform me that once you start to rise in leadership, people are going to judge you by what you are weak in.

people tend to see the weakness in others more than the strengths. He and I don’t agree with this way at looking at people, but he made it clear to me that it is reality and this is why many leaders don’t make it very high up. They may have some fantastic strengths but one glaring weakness tends to keep them from rising because others focus on it and judge them by it.

So he gave me four great pieces of advice

1)   Know your weakness: you have to know what your weak area is – the blind side. Are you aware of it and do you have others that help you see it?

2)   Work on your weakness: Not that we need to spend all our time here, but are we developing our weakness at all? Are we learning to be competent in these areas even if we never thrive there? It reminds me of an article I wrote last year after my conversation with Steve. He talks about how he wanted to grow his bench press so his buddy told him to work on his biceps. It made no sense, but it was right. Work on your weakness.

3)   Share your weakness: learn to be vulnerable with your team. He told me how he shared some of his weakness with his team and then “what are they going to say?” They now know he is weak there and working on it and aware of it. His team appreciated it. I would add, “talk about your weakness in front of your team so they don’t talk about it behind your back!”

4)   Get Coverage: We don’t have to be experts in our weak areas. We need to be competent and have value for it. But by all means get a team around you that is strong in your weak areas so you can spend 70% of your time doing what you are strong in.

APE Translation

For those of us that are APE leaders and we excel in one of the areas of apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, please pay attention to your weak area and become aware and at least competent in those areas. For me it is shepherding. I have had to work hard at this and I am honest about how I would rather spend my time outside starting new things or leading new people into the Kingdom. It is not my favorite thing to sit and counsel or shepherd people into the Lord. But this is extremely important.

I cannot say, “I hate shepherding and all I do is focus on evangelism.” That is not what good leaders do. I have had to work hard to grow in shepherding skills, talk to shepherding friends and learn to be a great developer of people. My team of missional leaders need shepherding and I have to offer that to them. I need to grow in my care for them and I want be the kind of person that can do that. I also need to know how to shepherd new believers into the Lord and deeper discipleship. I can’t just say, “I only care about evangelism and someone else can disciple the person.” New believer ministry at first may be 80% shepherding especially if they have many wounds in their life. This is another way I am being developed through Ben.

But I of course protect my time and try and stay in my energy and gifting 70% of the time. I am a planter and evangelist. It is what God has called me to do. I try and leave the heavy shepherding lifting to those that are gifted and called as shepherds. But in no way am I excused and guess what: I am going to be judged by my ability to shepherd.

Quoting my father in law again, he says,

“Most young leaders think they will advance because they are really exceptional in their strengths. No, you will advance if your weakness is not detrimental to your ability to lead a wide array of people. You will be judged, whether it is right or wrong, by your weak area not your strength.”

I hope you APEs reading this realize that you need to plant, be prophetic, and evangelize like crazy. But don’t use it as a license to deny the shepherding and teaching roles that every believer and especially leaders need to live into.

Develop your weak area to competence.

Where should you start: Ask your team where you’re weakest and work on it.