How To Answer “What Are Your Weaknesses?” In A Management Interview

Around this time of year, you’re likely gearing up for the next phase of your career. You’ve demonstrated throughout the year that you have leadership potential, and now you’re ready to progress up to the next level in your leadership and management journey for 2024. Here you are, one of the fortunate shortlisted candidates for a management position, being considered internally for a promotion, or externally for career progression. Perhaps one of the trickiest curveball questions that could make or break your chances of securing the role is, “What are your weaknesses?” or “What’s your greatest weakness?”

How do you answer this effectively? This question throws most people because you’re caught between saying “I don’t know,” or “Nothing” (more on that later), or sharing a deal-breaker which paints you as a poor quality candidate altogether.

Why Do Hiring Managers Want To Know What Your Weaknesses Are?

First, they’re looking to assess your level of self-awareness. If you respond with, “I don’t know,” or “Nothing,” it demonstrates that you don’t possess essential leadership qualities such as analysis and introspection, which are critical to your professional development and effectiveness as a manager. Being aware of your weaknesses, or your greatest weakness, as the question may require, indicates to hiring managers that you possess a growth mindset, which will likely extend to the teams you manage. It also demonstrates that you welcome and invite feedback, and use this to help you grow. Hiring managers also ask this question to assess your fit within the organizational culture, particularly if their company values align with humility, honesty, and coachability.

Worst Ways To Answer “What’s Your Greatest Weakness?”

Other than “I don’t know,” or “Nothing,” below are some real-life, cringe-worthy statements that many candidates choose to give in response to this question:

• “I am too kind.”
• “I work too hard.”
• “I’m a perfectionist.”

These answers provoke nothing more than a yawn, because they are overused, too generic, and actually do more harm than good since they do not provide specific details, thus failing to demonstrate self-awareness.

Best Examples To Answer “What’s Your Greatest Weakness?”

The best way to approach this question is to think about a challenge or area of improvement that you’ve overcome or addressed recently, ideally within your professional life, which is not a core requirement for the role. For example, it could be that as you’ve been preparing for your next leadership role you’ve realized that you tend to get too hands-on with operations and struggle to delegate. You could also think back to a time when you’ve received not-so-positive constructive feedback from a colleague, client, or manager. But stating that you hate collaborating with teams or are terrible at organizational skills will shoot you in the foot.

If you’re still unsure of the answer, perhaps conducting a personal SWOT analysis following this method will prove beneficial.

However, don’t just leave it there. Simply telling the hiring manager what your weakness is does not demonstrate leadership qualities or management potential. You need to take it a step further and actually talk through what tangible steps you’ve taken to address these areas of improvement and turn them into strengths.

Even if you haven’t started working on them yet, now might be a good time to think about how you could confront these weaknesses and start developing a professional development action plan. You could then share with the hiring manager that, since you’ve recently observed these weak areas in your work, you have outlined a plan to improve your skills and have resources and a timeline with which to tackle these weaknesses.

Here are a few examples of how this looks in practice:

• “One of my weaknesses is that I am very strong with operations and the team management aspect, but I am not as strong with the budget management and financial aspects, as I have had little exposure to this in my work to date. I understand this is an important skill that I need to develop, especially for this role, so I have already started working closely with my manager to ask for more exposure to the financial areas she covers including asking to sit in financial reporting meetings and liaising more frequently with our in-house accountant. I’ve also enrolled on a business finance course which is due to start next month.”
• “My greatest weakness is that I tend to be very hands-on as a leader, which often is a good thing because it was required with my last employer; but at the same time this leads me to decrease my own strategic productivity, because I get too involved and don’t give the team room to be themselves and get things done on their own without my constant, direct input. Over the past couple months, I’ve started getting the help of a leadership coach to assist me with knowing how and when to let go and be more strategic, taking a birds eye approach to my department while being there on hand as needed.”
• “One weakness I’m seeking to improve is that my work tends to run into my personal life more than it should, and I struggle with maintaining balance. I’ve noticed how it has injuriously affected my health and overall wellbeing, and consequently I’ve made the commitment to set structures in place in my calendar to ensure this is minimized. For example, I have a separate work-from-home office, and I’ve been more rigorous with my scheduling, arranging my time and important meetings, and delegating more so that work does not unnecessarily run into my personal life.”

Now that you know how to approach this question, you don’t need to be thrown into alarm or worry about being asked this ever again. If you maintain a good level of self-awareness and are passionate about continuous improvement and development, you’ll be able to adequately prove that you are a star candidate to take the management post, one that can lead their teams with emotional intelligence and foster a growth culture.