One of the most common leadership beliefs we encounter in our Executive Coaching for mid-sized companies is the idea that growing as a leader means fixing all of your gaps so they move closer to the level of your strengths.
It sounds responsible. It sounds disciplined. It sounds like leadership. But it is usually wrong.
We all know the leader who is brilliant at relationships but drowns in spreadsheets, or the leader who builds flawless processes but struggles to read a room. They are not broken. They are spending enormous energy trying to compensate for their gaps on their own, white-knuckling their way through the areas that drain them most. And it is costing everyone.
Here is what we see in nearly every mid-sized organisation we work with. Yes, we can and must grow our competence in weaker areas. That is part of the work. However, one of the most effective strategies is not trying harder in your gaps. It is recruiting people whose natural strengths match exactly where you struggle, people who are not only more effective in those areas but genuinely energised by the work that drains you.
When leaders make that shift, from “I need to get better at everything” to “I need the right people alongside me,” it changes how you think about leadership development entirely.
If you are responsible for developing leaders in your organisation, you have likely seen this pattern. And you have probably seen the cost.
DISC is a behavioural assessment that helps individuals understand how they communicate, make decisions, and interact with others, based on four behavioural factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance (TTI Success Insights).
Here is the link to their webpage which explains the DISC behavioural model and how the assessment is used for leadership, hiring, coaching, and team development.
Every Strength Comes with a Corresponding Gap
Strengths and gaps are not separate. They are two sides of the same wiring.
If someone is naturally relational, they tend to read people well and build trust quickly. But that same wiring usually means they have less natural pull toward detailed analytics or structured systems. A highly structured thinker brings precision and clarity, yet that same wiring can make ambiguity and relational complexity harder to navigate.
This is not a flaw in the leader. It is inherent in the design. It is the flipside of their strength.
A helpful way to picture this is through the metaphor of a radar system. Your strengths determine where your radar is naturally tuned. Those are the areas where you see clearly, read signals quickly, and make accurate judgments. But radar cannot cover 360 degrees equally well. There will always be blind spots. If you try to operate constantly in those blind spots, the coverage becomes patchy. Decisions become slower. Energy drains faster.
We worked with a senior partner at a public accounting firm who embodied this dynamic. His analytical capability was exceptional. But as the firm grew, he found himself drowning in operational detail. His instinct was to solve the problem the way he had solved every other challenge in his career: by working harder and gathering more information.
His natural wiring made him believe he needed almost complete information before making a decision. Once he recognised how his wiring was driving that behaviour, the solution became clearer. Part of the work involved building personal structures that helped him make decisions earlier. But another part, and this was the breakthrough, involved surrounding himself with people who were more naturally decisive and action-oriented.
Instead of trying to become someone he was not, he built a leadership environment that complemented how he was wired. The result was not just relief for him. The entire organisation began moving faster.
In the following example:
- Person A shows stronger capabilities in strategic thinking, relationships, and vision
- Person B shows stronger capabilities in execution, detail focus, and risk-taking
- When combined, they create a more balanced leadership profile
What Happens When Leaders Do Not Know Their Wiring
When leaders do not understand their wiring, two predictable patterns emerge.
The first is what we have just described: they try to become everything, spending enormous energy in areas where their radar coverage is weakest. Instead of building teams that bring high-definition capability across multiple areas, they exhaust themselves trying to stretch their own coverage.
There is a second cost that compounds the first. Under stress, leaders tend to dial up their dominant strength. While this is sometimes exactly what is needed, what we often see is that when the strength becomes overused, what was once an asset turns into an Achilles heel. The leader who values excellence becomes nitpicky and perfectionistic. The analytically wired leader gets stuck in the data and struggles to move to action. The leader prone to action makes costly snap decisions. The adaptable leader, who is normally flexible and collaborative, becomes hesitant to make a hard call when the moment requires commitment.
“In each case, the leader believes they are benefiting the system by leaning into their strength. In reality, the strength is now undermining the system. Without self-awareness, leaders often double down on the very behaviour that is costing them.”
The Shift: From Fixing Yourself to Building Around Yourself
A different kind of leadership begins when a leader accepts a simple but liberating idea: your strength is enough, and it always comes with a gap. A gap that is not a failure to eliminate, but a signal about how to build the team around you.
When leaders truly accept this, something shifts. They stop trying to be everything. They start looking for the counter-strengths in the room. They begin asking different questions: Who on this team naturally sees what I tend to miss? Whose radar is tuned to the areas where mine is weakest? How do we structure our work so that each person operates primarily in their high-definition zone? What wiring strengths are absent in our team that we need to recruit for?
This shift also changes the emotional posture of leadership. Instead of white-knuckling their role, leaders begin to stand confidently in reality and start leading with an open hand. When leaders have peace with their own strengths and gaps, they create space for the strengths of others. They invite contribution rather than unconsciously competing with it.
The following article looks at the return on investment of executive coaching and why more organisations see coaching as a strategic investment rather than an expense. It highlights how coaching improves performance, supports real behavioural change, and contributes to stronger individual, team, and organisational results. The ROI of Executive Coaching – American University
“When leaders have peace with themselves, they have space for others.
And that is when the true strength of the collective shows up.”
What Accurate Self-Knowledge Makes Possible for Your Leaders and Teams
Accurate self-knowledge is not a personality profile sitting in a drawer. It is self-awareness that leads self-leadership.
It is a leader who can stand in front of their team and say: “Here is what I am good at. Here is where I am not naturally strong. And here is who on this team brings what I lack.”
That kind of honesty does something powerful in a team. It creates safety. It signals that nobody has to pretend to be something they are not. Which, in turn, allows people to bring their strengths fully and acknowledge their gaps without fear that those gaps define their value.
We have seen this shift firsthand with an engineering firm we have worked with for more than a decade. The leadership team began understanding behavioural assessments not as labels, but as practical tools for understanding how each person was wired. They stopped assigning projects based solely on availability or seniority. They began asking a different question: What strengths does this project require? They now assemble teams whose combined strengths match the needs of the work.
The results were tangible. Projects ran more smoothly. Team members felt more energised because they were working in areas that played to their natural wiring. The two senior partners discovered their strengths and gaps were highly complementary. Instead of competing or compensating, they learned to defer to each other where the other was strongest.
What previously felt like tension between team members is now leveraged to the organisation’s advantage. That is what accurate self-knowledge makes possible.
The Design That Changes Everything
Here is what twenty-four years of equipping leaders has taught us. The leaders who have the most lasting impact are not the ones who eliminated every gap. They are the ones who stopped pretending they should.
They learned their wiring. They accepted that their strength is enough, and that it comes with a corresponding gap. And then they did the thing that transforms organisations: they built around themselves. They recruited the strengths they lacked. They created room for the people who were energised by the very work that drained them. They stopped white-knuckling and started leading with an open hand.
For those of you responsible for developing leaders, this reframe changes the investment. It changes what “ready” looks like. It changes how you build teams, how you structure succession, and what you measure. It shifts leadership development from an exhausting solo performance into a collective strength that is productive, profitable, and life-giving.
“Everyone is interesting. Everyone has a contribution.
The leader’s job is not to be everything.
It is to build the environment where every contribution is seen and released.”
That is the design. And it is within reach.
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Advantage Management Consulting
Equipping leaders to create productive, life-giving environments since 2002.
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