Are you more like Mark or Jen? The answer can help you leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses.

Let me tell you about Mark and Jen.

Mark leads a team of 30. He likes to challenge his team to do more than they think they’re capable of, and he often inspires them to do so. He thinks and moves fast, always quick to “run the experiment,” i.e., try out new ideas and adjust on the fly.

Mark gets results.

But not everyone loves Mark’s management style. Many feel he’s more concerned with ticking boxes off his task list than he is about their welfare. And sometimes Mark’s attempts to move quickly backfire, creating major setbacks.

Now, let me tell you about Jen.

Jen also leads a large team. People love her empathy; they feel she “gets” them. Due to her excellent relationship building skills, team turnover is low. A careful, analytical nature allows Jen to get to root causes of problems, leading to better, more effective solutions.

But it’s that strong empathy that also causes Jen to hate conflict. Because of this, Jen sometimes pushes off the tough conversations. And that careful, analytical nature? Sometimes, it leads to missed opportunities--out of fear of trying something new.

Now, a question:

Are you more like Mark, or Jen?

Here’s the thing: Both Jen and Mark have major strengths--and leveraging those strengths can help them get the most out of their teams.

But taken too far, those strengths turn into weaknesses, and actually hold everyone back from reaching their full potential.

But emotional intelligence, the ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions, can help. In this case, it begins by learning to embrace the ‘law of strength and weakness.’

The ‘law of strength and weakness’

The ‘law of strength and weakness’ was derived from an article offering marriage advice,that also applies to workplace relationships.

It goes like this:

A person’s strengths and weaknesses are often different facets of the same quality, like two sides of a coin. They are inextricably linked, so that you cannot discard one without the other.

To embrace the law of strength and weakness, then, is to learn how to leverage the strength while also mitigating the weakness.

And here is where emotional intelligence can help. Because by building self-awareness, the ability to understand your own emotional tendencies and behavior, you can build a plan to manage that behavior.

Here are three ways to do it:

Find the right partner.

The first step to building self-awareness is to find a trusted colleague, family member, or friend with whom you can speak and get perspective.

The key is to choose a person who is strong where you are weak, and vice-versa, so you can help each other to achieve balance.

Follow the “rules.”

Over the years, I’ve devised simple, easy-to-follow “rules” that can help you manage your emotion-based behavior.

For example:

The 3 Question Rule

Writing in Reverse

The rule of awkward silence

These rules are helpful because they're constructed simply enough that a person can quickly go through them in an emotional moment. With practice, they can be used to gradually change behavior.

Practice. Learn. Repeat.

No matter how good you get at understanding and managing emotions, you’ll still make mistakes.

But each mistake is another chance to learn. View these failures as case studies, identifying lessons learned. Then, use those learnings to help you manage behavior in the future.

This could include getting help when it comes to activities that require a skills set in which you are weak, or even delegating those activities altogether. In other cases, it could mean learning to step back when you are in a situation that’s over your head.

Above all, remember: Nobody’s perfect. A strength can easily become a weakness if left unchecked. The key is to recognize this fact, and learn to leverage your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Do this right, and you’ll make the most out of your own potential, and help others to do the same.

Inc