Thinking about fixing your weaknesses in 2026?

Across the 100+ people I’ve mentored, including very advanced professionals, I often have heard the same request:

Help me fix my weaknesses so I can move forward in my career.

It sounds responsible. It feels like the “grown-up” strategy. But it’s the wrong one.

Working on your weaknesses usually takes you from:

below average → average

But it rarely turns a weakness into a breakthrough.

Breakthroughs come from the other side:

your strengths.

People get promoted, recognized, and sponsored not for being balanced, but for being exceptional at something.

Organizations don’t look for the person who is “okay at everything.”

They look for the one who:

Weaknesses only matter when they actively block you:

You can’t communicate,

You can’t collaborate,

You can’t ship.

In those cases, you raise the weakness to the minimum professional standard.

That’s maintenance, but it isn't growth.

Once the basics are covered, the game is to double down on what you naturally do well.

I’ve seen every major career acceleration come from this shift:

The ML engineer who leaned into scalable architecture instead of trying to get “less bad” at EDA.
The AI Product Manager who doubled down on translating ambiguous business pain points into solvable ML problems instead of taking yet another certification to “improve” their coding.
The Data Engineer who became the organization’s expert in building resilient ingestion pipelines instead of trying to “fix” their mediocre dashboard skills.

Your strengths are leverage.

So if you want momentum, ask yourself:

🔹 What do I do noticeably better than others?

🔹 Where do results come easier for me than for most?

🔹 Which skills energize me when I use them?

Then invest heavily there.

That’s how people become exceptional.

And exceptional is what gets promoted, funded, and remembered.