Everyone’s personality strengths and weaknesses are unique and sometimes personality strengths can become detriments.
Under pressure, facades melt away and the true personality traits emerge; sometimes it takes months or even years to get to know an individual’s real flaws.
Since there isn’t a shortage of miscreants in this world, it’s perfectly acceptable to get to the heart of another person’s character; it’s wise to decrease your vulnerability and exposure to excessive risk by any ethical means possible.
You can’t control the actions of a potential business partner, romantic partner, associate, friend, or adversary, but you can get to know them well enough to minimize your risk.
Below I list five personality strengths and the frequently embedded personality challenges in those strengths.
- You can be confident an associate with a high degree of discretion won’t disclose confidential information. However, excessive secretiveness and a lack of transparency can derail even the most successful partnerships.
- It’s best if a commission-based salesperson, for example, is motivated mainly by money, but excessive acquisitiveness can be a heavy liability for any organization. Clearly, it can be a big problem in marriages or other partnerships too. It’s a fascinating dynamic of the human mind—people regularly give you pretend reasons for their actions, and even believe those reasons, while the actual motivations are hidden in their subconscious mind. Few things in a person’s core behavior are controlled by conscious motives.
- Strong attention to detail is praiseworthy in many professions, but excessive perfectionism makes one miss the bigger picture and impedes success.
- People who are easy-going and non-judgmental are usually well-liked. However, a lack of objectivity, and a deficient sense of discernment and critical thinking skills yields poor problem solving ability, thus hinders goal-attainment.
- Those with a strong sense of responsibility are appreciated, but in the extreme, a savior complex makes one act to his or her detriment.
Nobody is perfect, though it can save you a lot of time and money to look beyond personas to authentic personality, which can be discerned through various methods, including my unorthodox security investigations.
Copyright © 2017 Scott Petullo