Knowing Your Weaknesses [Makes You A Better Leader]

The fastest way to grow your confidence isn’t pretending you’re good at everything. It’s getting honest about what you’re not great at without turning it into a character flaw. Today we dig into “knowing your weaknesses” through a mindfulness lens: awareness without judgment, real self-awareness, and the kind of leadership that can see people clearly and place them where they shine.

I share why this matters so much in real life, especially when you’re stepping into a new level at work or leading a team. That classic job interview question “What are your weaknesses?” can either feel like a trap or become a secret weapon, depending on how well you know yourself. We talk about what weak answers sound like, what strong answers sound like, and why honest clarity beats polished perfection every time.

You’ll also get concrete ways to identify your weaknesses with care: journaling what you struggle with, asking someone you trust for outside perspective, and tracking a habit or goal to see where you get stuck. From there, we go one step deeper: deciding what to work on, what to delegate, and how to use self-love as the filter. If improving a skill brings you closer to your best self, do it. If delegating gets you there faster, that’s wisdom too.

Book mentioned: Graziosi, Dean. Millionaire Success Habits: The Gateway to Wealth & Prosperity. Dean Graziosi, 2016.

If you want deeper support, I share how to join my group coaching program The Art of Magnetism starting June 2nd focused on confidence, identity work, mindset, neuroscience, and embodiment so you can co-create the life, love, and legacy you want. (Visit NandiCamille.com to learn more)

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Transcript

Welcome And Show Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi friends, and welcome to Google Bee Like a Bob. I'm your host, Life Coach Mandy Camille. Join me as I teach you how to smash your goals and expand the possibility of your life through mindset management, spiritual alignment, and authentic action. I'll teach you how to create what I like to call a life of drive with ease and authenticity. As best of food as what's possible. Are you ready? Let's go.

Sponsor The Art Of Magnetism

Spring Reset And Gardening Metaphors

Why Leaders Know Their Weaknesses

Three Ways To Find Weaknesses

Improve Or Delegate With Self Love

Offers Coaching And Final Ask

SPEAKER_01 0:26

This episode is sponsored by The Art of Magnetism. It is my newest group coaching course. It's all about confidence and co-creation, being your most confident self so that you can co-create the reality that you want. If you're tired of playing small, feeling small, not feeling like you can use your voice, feeling like you're ready to be more confident so you can call in and have the life that you want, create those new results that you keep thinking about. Go to Nandicamille.com to learn more. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Believe Like a Boss. I am your host, Life Coach, Nandi Camille. Welcome back, my friends. I am so excited. I think last week I got the episode off. So I'm not even gonna say what episode this is, but I know that we're still in season eight. And I'm so grateful to be here. Denver, Colorado, we just got our last snow uh last weekend. It always happens. No, last week. It was in the week. Um, it just snowed. Hopefully, it's the last one. So I'm gonna be getting in my garden today. I'm really excited about that. Wherever you are tuning in from, whatever the weather is doing where you are, hopefully you are enjoying this season. I definitely am. I'm really, really happy that I'm gonna get my hands in the dirt today. I got some red pepper, tomato, cilant. No, yes, I did. I got cilantro, oregano, and then my herb garden, my inside herb garden. Sometimes I'll post it on social media, follow me at Nandi Camille. But it's recently died off. I normally do, I want to say two times a year, I'll redo my indoor hydro herb garden. And it's been just kind of sitting dead for a little while, but I unplugged it the other day thinking like all of it was dead, but I went and I looked up close and I had a little baby rosemary plant that was starting to grow. And out of this like dead herb garden, I've had it unplugged for a few days now. Um so I'm gonna plant that rosemary in an herb garden pot thing. So I'm really looking forward to being outside, getting my hands in the dirt. Y'all know I love the gardening and the dirt metaphors. There's actually a podcast episode all about that. I think it's called metaphors. I think that's what the podcast is called, or like lessons in metaphors. I love that one. I do a lot of gardening metaphors because I think that we are so like the earth. Um, we are meant to expand, right? Like trees, like plants. We outgrow our spaces in the same way your indoor pots, the your indoor plants outgrow the pots out there, and you have to replace the pot or they're gonna get cranky, right? We're the same way. When we don't grow and we don't expand, when we don't get the sunlight, the water, the nutrients that we need, we get cranky. We get sad, our leaves wilt, right? So are you getting your water? Are you getting your sunshine? Are you getting your nutrients, my friend? Just a little check-in there as we're jumping in. I hope that your spring is going well. I also realized that last week I didn't tell you guys, I just had my birthday. So I feel like all the personal things, if you want more of that stuff, more of who I am in the world, besides being a life coach, come and follow me online at Naughty Camille on both Instagram and TikTok. I will say though, TikTok I'm really bad at, and it's something that I would like to work on in 2026. So if you want more up-to-date things, go to Instagram at NadiCamile. All right, my friends. This week we're talking about knowing your weaknesses. You know that I love to think about you all every single week. Like, what are we struggling with? And when I say think about you all, I include myself with that. What are we as a collective? What might we be struggling with? Because I love the phrase struggle is a choice, right? And I keep that one in my back pocket. And we're human beings on the planet, that life is 50-50. So while we love springtime and sunshine and all the things we're creating, we as human beings on the planet go through things all of the time. All of the time. So it's like, what are we going through right now? And the thing that came up for me is knowing my weaknesses, just being aware of my weaknesses. And I thought that this would be really powerful for everybody, whether you're a creative entrepreneur or you're an ex or you're an executive, or you're just somebody that wants to be in leadership. Maybe you're a mom, right? I would say every single mom is in leadership. As a mother, you are a leader, period. Right. But I really truly believe that this lesson speaks to everybody, knowing our weaknesses. And the reason why I thought about this is I think about job interviews. And so I'm working with some clients that they're in a job that they enjoy and they're growing in their job. They're wanting to, one of them just got a promotion recently, and so she's working with a new team. The other one is in the midst of getting a promotion and like title change and is going to be potentially relocated for her job temporarily. So we're talking about what it means to step into these new levels of leadership. So maybe this resonates with you. Why do we want to be aware of our weaknesses? Why? Because we like to be self-aware here, first and foremost, right? I'm a mindfulness-based life coach, mindfulness being awareness without judgment, right? So it's being aware, aware of yourself. Why do you want to know your weaknesses? Because you're a self-aware human and you want to be aware of what you're strong at, and you want to be aware of what you're not as strong at, right? That's just a part of awareness, right? Awareness isn't one-sided. Oh, I only know about what I'm good at and I know what my strengths are. That's a part of awareness. The fullness, the holistic awareness is also knowing what I'm not so great at, right? Again, from a place of non-judgment. You don't always have to work to overcome your weaknesses. I want to make that very clear in this podcast episode, but it's just good to know where you are, right? So this is not going to be about know your weaknesses, so you can change them. I truly just want you to be mindful, aware of your weaknesses. This can also help with your team building and delegation, right? If you're good at identifying your own weaknesses, you'll be able to more keenly and honestly observe and evaluate others as well. I have found this to be very true for me. I'm a person where I've climbed the ladder in multiple ways in within the education sphere, going from preschool teacher to executive director and head of school. And so through that trajectory, through that uh pathway, I had to do several interviews. And whenever I would get interviewed, that question would always come up. What are your weaknesses? And I was always aware of my own weaknesses. Mine for me, it's physical messiness. That's one of my weaknesses. Um, that I am mentally organized, my planner's organized, my calendar's organized. But if you walk into my office, 50% of the time, there are piles, there are papers, there are sticky notes. It is, I like to say controlled mess. I know what's happening. I know what piles have what, right? But that's what I knew it was one of my weaknesses. So I could speak to it with confidence, right? But then beyond that, when I would then work with a team, I was then able to observe them without judgment in the same way that I did it for myself, just watching my team members. What is it that they're naturally strong at? What is it that they're naturally weak at? And then from there, I love the saying, aces in their places. If this teacher is really great at community events and not great at talking to parents, maybe they're great at the marketing side, but they're not great at the communication side. Great. I'm not gonna going to necessarily have them be the welcome person for this event we're going to have for families. I'm gonna have them work on the marketing for it. I'm gonna have them work on the flyers for it, right? So when you are able to observe yourself, again, without judgment, it just helps you to be able to do this for other people. And again, so beautifully without judgment. Those are the strongest leaders I find. Those who can observe their team, and maybe you don't like all the attributes of all of your team members, but to be able to observe it and then say, okay, Jeffrey's great at this, he's not great at that. I'm gonna have Jeffrey doing this task and this project, and then I'm actually gonna have Susie work with him on that project because that's where he's weak, but she's strong. And then vice versa, I'm gonna have Susie work on, right? You're picking up what I'm putting down. This is why knowing your weaknesses, especially in leadership, is so important. And then just point blank, period. When you get asked during a job interview, it won't be an awkward question that could cost you the job. Instead, it's a secret weapon that you're excited to answer. And this became the case for me. These were the three points that I wrote down. That was the third point, right? During a job interview, you'll feel better, right? If you already know and are acquainted with your weaknesses, and again, in a non-judgmental way, it's the difference between, oh, I'm so bad at time management. I'm just so bad at it, oh my gosh, and like bullying yourself and beating yourself up about it, right? And so if that's you're the way you're aware of your weakness, so to speak, when you go into that job interview and they ask you, Well, what are you, what are you weak at? You're gonna show up and not want to say that because you are judging yourself about that, oh, I'm really bad at my time management and I don't want to tell them that. So then we end up giving some like weird answer or not answering honestly, or get like, what is what I in sitting on the other side as the interviewer, I've done dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews now. When people tell me, like, I'm just so good at saying yes to things, like that was an answer that I got once. It's like, okay, what's what's one of your weaknesses? Oh, I'm just so good at saying yes to things. I just say yes to so many things. I just get so overwhelmed because I just say yes to all the things. You know, that might actually be true. I know that that can be true for me. I know that that can be true for other people, but when you're in a job interview, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself, somebody else might think somebody else, something else about this. But when I'm interviewing somebody and that's your answer, I just say yes to everything. It comes across of like, I'm so good and I'm so perfect, and you should just hire me because I'm great. And that actually tells me that the opposite. When I'm interviewing somebody, if they tell me that, then I'm just so good at everything. That's what my weakness is. I'm just so great that I have too much on my plate. That tells me you're not actually really self-aware. And there's an energy to that that I don't resonate with. I'm gonna say it that way. I want the person that actually is aware, like it's my time management skills, and this is what I'm doing to correct them. My weakness is that uh sometimes I'm a few minutes late, right? I would much rather have the person in front of me be honest rather than come up with some weird answer because they don't actually know what their weaknesses actually are, right? Again, take with six of you, leave the rest on this podcast. Now, we know why we want to look at our weaknesses. We want to be self-aware, we want to be stronger leaders, we want to be able to answer the question strongly when we go to a job interview. So, now how? How do I become more aware of what my weaknesses are? First and foremost, you probably already know what I'm going to say as a mindfulness-based life coach. That is awareness without judgment. I'm gonna ask you the question. You're gonna ask yourself the question. What am I good at? What am I not good at? Right? Play with both sides. This is not about beating yourself up. I say play with both sides. But when you're focusing in on what I'm weak at, what is it that I'm not good or great at? What do I struggle with? And notice what comes up again. This is not about beating ourselves up. This is about being aware. Right? It's about being open to noticing the information. What comes up for you? Is it that you don't feel like you're good at basketball or sports? Is it that you feel like you're not good at budgeting? Is it that you feel like you're not good at talking in front of crowds? Does it feel like you struggle with memorizing information in a short amount of time? Does it feel like you struggle with delegating or directing other people, asking people to do things? What is hard for you? Notice what comes up. This is where I find journaling to be very helpful, getting out a notebook. Don't just ask yourself the question and let the answers come up. Take it the next step, write it down, and look at it. I don't think that I'm good at budgeting. I don't think that I'm good at talking in front of crowds. I don't think that I'm good at managing my anger when X, Y, and Z happens. I don't think that I'm gonna dot dot. And just notice what comes up. Another way that you can notice what you're not good at is asking somebody that you love. Tell them to be kind. I've actually done this with my father, I did eight years ago, and he was like, Why are you asking me this? I was like, I'm reading this book, and this book told me that I should ask people around me what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. So ask somebody that you love, tell them to be kind. But ask them, what do you think that I struggle with? Outside looking in, what do you think that I struggle with? Your best friend will know, your mom will know, your sister will know. And again, this doesn't mean that you have to agree. It also doesn't mean that you have to take any action, but it is a way for us to be aware of how we're perceived by somebody who truly cares about us, somebody who loves us. My husband and I are very good at this. We tell each other what we think the other struggles with all of the time. We're getting weaving me. I'm getting better at my delivery, and I'm also getting better at, I don't always have to tell him what I think he's not good at. As his wife, even though I think that it's my job to make sure he knows all the things that I think he's not very good at. It's not my job to tell him that all the time. If he asks, then I can tell him. And so I'm I'm working on that personally, in case anybody else is working on that, that let's wait until our friends and loved ones ask us for that feedback and not just always give it to them. But again, I'm talking to myself because first and foremost, that I we don't always have to share our opinions. But this is a case where we're asking for somebody, hey, I want your outside opinion. Not because I'm gonna necessarily do everything with it immediately, but so I can have some outside perspective of what do you think it is that I struggle with. Another way for you to mindfully notice what it is that you struggle with is tracking your habits and goals. So maybe you've asked yourself what you think you struggle with. Maybe you don't feel comfortable asking somebody else outside of you, or maybe you did, and maybe you still want a little bit more, right? How do I really notice what it is that I'm not very good at? Track a habit andor goal. So, for example, if you have a goal to start drinking more water, notice how that goal goes. Do you struggle with the decision making around the water bottle that you use? Do you struggle with tracking itself, tracking how you're going to track your water? I'm gonna track it in a gallon-sized bottle. No, I'm gonna track it in my planner. No, I'm gonna use stickers. Do you struggle with bringing your water bottle with you? Do you even drink more water? The reason why this is really helpful is you can really start to understand by just tracking one habit or goal, some of the things that you struggle with. So let's say again, you're trying to drink more water, right? If you struggle with decision making around the water bottle, you might notice, ah, I struggle with decision making. It's hard for me to make a choice between a gallon size water bottle or using the stickers, right? Or maybe I struggle with believing in myself. I'm not choosing the water bottle, not because it's hard to pick the water bottle, because I just don't truly believe I'm going to drink this water every single day like I said I'm going to. Right. If you are leaving your water bottle at home, maybe you struggle with remembering things or prioritization, prioritizing what goals are important to you, right? By just tracking one goal or one habit, you can notice where you struggle and what that specific struggle tells you about maybe a weakness that you have, an area of growth. Okay, so we've looked at it, right? We now know why I want to look at why I'm weak. And I say weak very lovingly, right? I don't mean it in like you're a weak person or we're weak or we're bad or we're wrong. I just say it, it's an area of growth, right? That's an area where I want to get stronger. There's nothing wrong with that. And again, let's bring it back to I love all the metaphors, our gym metaphor. When you first walk into a gym as a new person that's never been in there and you go to lift weights for the very first time, your muscles are going to feel physically weak. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? That's why you're there to get stronger. So when we say weakness, we're just lovingly noticing it. There's nothing wrong with how you are, right? It's just information. And then from there, we get to decide what to do with it. So then what? Right. I've noticed these are my weaknesses. I've talked to my friends and family about it, or talked to a friend or a family member about it. I tracked a habit and I noticed that these are the areas in which I struggle. Now what? You get to decide if you want to make a change or not. That's the magical part of all of this. You get to decide if you want to make a change or not. You might notice that you're weak at basketball and you're not really good at shooting hoops, or you have a weakness around standing up in front of like large crowds and speaking. You might have a weakness around delegating to more than three people at a time. You might notice that. You get to decide if you want to make a change or not. So what you're not good at basketball. Do you want to get good at basketball? You don't have to. So what you're not good at speaking Spanish or memorizing things in a short amount of time. You get to decide if you want to make that change or not. I think it's called the Millionaire Success Stories, but the the author is Dean Graziosi. I've listened to his book years ago. And what struck me was he specifically talks about not working on your weaknesses. It's the first time I ever heard it. And it was really interesting to me. I was like, wait, what? You don't want me to work on my weaknesses? So I took this quote from his book. It says, One of the biggest lies of our society is to work on our weaknesses. From grade school, we are taught to focus on the things we suck at instead of improving things for which we have a natural propensity. If you have made an A in math and a C in English, you were told to work harder in English instead of doubling down on the areas you already excel. Root out this mentality like a cancer. Embrace your strengths and delegate your weaknesses. That's what Dean Graziosi says. And I will look up the actual book that he did it from and I'll put it in the show notes if you're interested in the actual book. I'll make sure that's in the um description of this podcast episode. So you can find that book. Listen to it years ago. I really enjoyed it. And I found that part to be really intriguing because he's right. At least that's been my experience, as well as that I was always told to work harder the things I wasn't good at. Growing up in school, I was great at English. I loved drama. I loved actually languages as well, but I struggled when it came to sciences. Ironically, I was in honors and AP classes. I took AP biology, I took honors physics, I was in um harder science classes. I struggled though. I really did struggle. And I remember my parents being quite upset with me for getting a B- or getting a C in physics, in biology. But I knew that these were not my strong suits. So for me, like getting a C was like, cool, I passed. I did a good job. Like this, these concepts are really hard. And so what Dean is saying in is let's not work on what's hard for us. Let's work on what's easy for us. Let's be aware of what's hard for us. But you don't have to work on those things if you don't want to. But here's what I would add to that. At the end of the day, this is about loving yourself for me, right? At the end of the day, the goal is always to love yourself because when you love yourself, you show up differently. You create goals differently, right? The person that loves themselves is creating different goals than the person that hates themselves and wants to stop hating themselves. That you're writing goals from a different place, right? So for me, the goal is always to love yourself first and foremost, because from that place, you will create a life, relationship goals change that positively impacts not only you, but the world, right? So for you, if working on your weakness in shooting hoops and basketball makes you love yourself and love life more, then work on that weakness. And if working on shooting that basketball doesn't make you more excited, makes you cranky, you're like, why the heck am I at this basketball court? And of course, I'm using a silly example, but like with anything, when you think about your weaknesses, if working on that weakness brings you closer to the best version of yourself, that version that loves themselves, loves the work that they're doing, and loves how they're showing up in the world, then work on that weakness, right? For me, one of my weaknesses recently that I've noticed has been my time management. And I you can decide. Do I want to work on time management? Do I not? Do I like how I'm moving throughout the world? For me, it was a no. I actually want to tighten the way that I'm showing up. I want to manage my time better. This feels like a weakness for me, and I want it to be a strength. I no longer want to feel like I'm rushing around. For me, that was part of my time management. I noticed that I was rushing around. I hate the feeling of rushing. It makes me feel behind. I normally forget things when I'm rushing, that I'm usually late if I'm rushing. That means that I'm already, I've already wasted the amount of time that I needed to do things effectively if I'm rushing around. So for me, working on my time management does make me a better person. It makes me more relaxed because when I'm not rushing, that means I've planned ahead. When I've planned ahead and I've managed my time and I've picked out my outfits, I feel better. When I'm walking into an event with some time to spare, I feel better. I feel early. I feel like a boss, right? And so you get to decide when you look at your weaknesses, is this something that, should I work on it, brings me closer to my best self? Or is this something that I could delegate? And delegating it brings me closer to my best self. Sometimes we delegate things out, right? And sometimes we learn to get better at them ourselves. Regardless, I want you to be aware. Aware of yourself, be aware of how you move, how you impact yourself as a result of how you move, right? And as a result of that, how you impact others, and decide from there how you want to feel and show up. Then rinse and repeat. Remember, mindfulness is awareness without judgment. Be aware without judgment of how you're showing up in the world. Notice those weaknesses with love. This Decide if there are things that you want to work on. And if you've decided, no, I'm not going to work on my Spanish speaking skills because that's my weakness. I'm really bad at beginner Spanish. And I don't really want to learn it because now there's these translation things that I can put in my ear and they'll do it for me. Great, right? It's your life to live. What makes you fall in love with life and fall in love with yourself and fall in love with the world? Do more of that. And if delegating it helps you do that, then do that. As always, my friends, take what sticks to you. Leave the rest. If you want to be aware of your weaknesses, I think it's really helpful. And of course, we have the art of magnetism right around the corner. So if you're curious about that, come and reach out. Payment plans are up. So if you're curious about payment plans, they're on the website. You can go and click on there and load it up. Send me an email, hello at nondecamal.com if you have any questions at all. As always, like I said, take it with six view, leave the rest. I'll see you next week. If you like this podcast, I would love it if you give us a five star rating. Share it with your friends. If you're interested in one on one coaching, if this podcast resonates with you and you're ready for some one on one support, support for you and your journey. Go ahead to nandicamille.com to learn more or head over to nandicamille.as.me to sign up for your free discovery call.