What weaknesses did you have to overcome to get where you are today in engineering?

I think my biggest weakness to overcome has been to assert myself and be definitive and concise with my responses. In my personal life, I am not an assertive and decisive person. I tend to stay quiet, rather than being one to give an opinion. I am never the person selecting the restaurant, I’m usually the one just going with the flow and saying I’m good with whatever you want.

However, at work and in the business world, I am direct, assertive, and have a response (or opinion) when it’s needed. It has taken many years to get to the point where this feels natural for me. Some of it has been growing in my career to the point where I am confident, but a large part of it has been making a mental focus to respond in a way that I know will get me the results I desire.

To overcome a weakness, it takes several things:

1. Identify your weakness – This is sometimes harder than you think. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses are critical. Fine tune your strengths as they will make you great. Improving your weaknesses will make you even greater!
2. Envision what you want your outcome to be – For me, this was focused around a behavior. I had to reflect on a lot of questions to understand how to model my tone of voice, my body language, my style of language, etc. How did I want to be viewed by my colleagues? How did I want to come across in meetings? What was going to be my management style for directing work?
3. Find a mentor – Is there someone you come in contact frequently that you can model after? If so, seek them out and ask for their help.
4. Experiment and train – Practice makes perfect. It will not happen overnight. You will find trying something new the first time is not always going to go the way you want. So redirect, practice, experiment, and try again.

As a NASA research engineer, one of my biggest weaknesses that I needed to overcome to become a successful expert in my field was being truly scared of public speaking (i.e., giving technical presentations). I was an absolute wreck when I gave my first presentation as a graduate student (I will spare you the details ;-). I needed to overcome that fear as I was required to present my research at NASA meetings and at national and international conferences. I still get a bit nervous before any public speaking event, but I have learned that if I am well prepared and know my subject matter, and I practice the presentation several times (even sometimes memorizing exactly what I am going to say for each slide), then once started, the presentation will go smoothly. I think public speaking is a fairly common fear. You can overcome that fear by being well prepared and practicing!

I am a believer that oftentimes strengths and weaknesses are borne from the same personal traits, it’s just a matter of how you’re using them. For me, one of my strengths/weaknesses is that I am very empathetic. On one hand, I get along with my people, am a good listener, and try to find a solution that considers varying opinions. On the other hand, it means that I can be slow to make decisions and I get anxious about potential inter-personal conflict. When I first started working in a testing lab, I stressed about relaying failing results – I felt like no one wants to hear that their product iteration doesn’t meet standards! So I had to learn to reframe my personality “weakness” as my strength – instead of seeing it as delivering bad news, what I conveyed to people was that by telling them the test results (good or bad) I am helping move their product development forward and making the product ultimately better. The information I’m giving them is helpful, not hurtful – and my ability to deliver that information in an empathetic, friendly way makes me that much better at my job. As with most things in life, utilizing strengths and mitigating weaknesses took practice.

I’ve been in engineering for over 30 years, so I could share many stories of things I’ve overcome. Early in my career I had to continually remind myself to “be me.” I was surrounded by men and found myself dressing neutrally and even subduing my laugh to fit in with the guys. I always got along well with my team, but was missing an important aspect of what I could bring to the organization… diversity of thought and actions! No one discussed the value of diversity back then, but I felt strongly that bringing my authentic self to my work offered value. It took time to feel comfortable with this, but when I mastered that, it helped me to thrive.

Another example: I am independent and strong willed. This is a strength, but was also a weakness for me because I didn’t want to take the time to gain alignment with key people before proposing an engineering solution. I quickly realized that I was much more successful with a large team if I gained alignment of key influencers. They also often gave me “tweaks” for my design before I presented the final design to a team. Impatience was my weakness and I worked through this by realizing that reaching the end goal was actually faster if I slowed down a bit initially in order to have the most robust design and decision process long term.

One last example from early in my career: I have always been drawn more to all types of software than to electronic hardware. I even love very low-level board support software, but still software. The first time I was offered a position with much higher responsibility, I actually told the hiring manager that I would be glad to take the position if he would provide a mentor for electronic hardware issues because I was less comfortable with that side of the business. He was very happy that I was open about this potential weakness and that I was proactively seeking a solution that allowed me to be successful in the position. I hope this helps!

My two biggest weaknesses to overcome throughout my career were confidence and shyness. I knew I was smart and knew answers to questions and problems, but I could not bring myself to volunteer answers or ideas. I had a mentor share with me once that getting the best projects at work had nothing to do with how smart you were or how good of an engineer you were, it was how social you were. I remember being taken back, with my rose-colored glasses, thinking that can’t be right. But knowing this, in combination with knowing I was shy, made me reevaluate my behaviors. One of the best decisions I made in college was to join a sorority. Not only did I make lifelong friends, but many events require you to put yourself out there, be friendly, make small talk (something I had to learn) and to lead groups of peers. In college, or in high school, or really anytime, get involved in organizations. Not only does it allow you to grow as a person, it makes life much more rewarding and fun!

The weaknesses that I feel were most useful to overcome in my journey have not been fully overcome. But I do write much better than I used to, thanks to a boyfriend in college and graduate school (now my husband) who very critically reviewed my work several times along the way. He’s an attorney and an excellent writer. His focus on being more concise, direct, and organized really helped my written communication. He also had many tips on oral presentation, which I do not fully follow but which are good advice in general. (He’s an excellent presenter and he recommends the following: First, tell your audience the 3 [just 3!] things that you’re going to tell them, tell them each in some detail, and then remind them of what you just told them. Try to keep it to three key ideas, because that’s about all most people can remember from one presentation.)

I hope I also am better about recognizing the very different perspectives that different students, colleagues, and others alongside me can have. It is extremely important to get along well with people, to be maximally successful. And this requires thinking differently. It feels unnatural to be in someone else’s shoes at first, but really listening to (and carefully watching) others, regularly, and reading about different personality types and how your personality type may be perceived, can be very helpful to success in any field or activity. In my case, I love to hear what my students, colleagues, neighbors, vendors, and others are going through because it helps me appreciate what they need and are likely to want, and how they’re likely to perceive me. I choose my words differently and make better decisions when I understand those around me. Such abilities are very important for successful teaching, research, public presentations, and life in general!

My biggest weakness has become my strength.  

I have learning disabilities, so my ability to read and comprehend the written word is ZERO!  My eyes roll in the back of my head and I zone out.  I can read something over and over again and it just does not click.

I have learned to compensate for my weakness - books on tape, speak - text, spell check.  

Prior to all the wonderful innovations I have a great memory, I learned to listen, take notes, and found how I learned.
 

Early in my engineering career, the weakness I had to overcome was self confidence. When faced with a challenge in these early days of my career, I first thought, “I am not sure I can do this.” But each time this happened, like before a new job or difficult task, I would talk to myself and think positively about the situation and that I would do my best to meet the challenge. With time, I observed that not only did I meet the challenge, but surpassed expectations. This led me to stop this fear and become much bolder. My career was extremely satisfying and successful.

This is quite common in women and we have to fight this feeling of inadequacy or low self confidence and build a strong attitude: "Where there is a will, there is a way". So believe in ourselves and boldly enter into challenges for which we know, in the end, that we can learn and succeed.

This question is close to my heart. I am an unlikely engineer, I was not good at math and did not like math. My family are economists and growing up I thought I would be an economist until I took my first economics class and decided that it was not for me. During the career day, a programmer came and spoke about programming computers and I decided to study computer science. The little detail was that I had not taken any of the math classes required for CS, however, I was a 4.0 student and I convinced the Dean of CS to let me in. In my first math class, I thought I had moved to China, I could not understand anything. I had to get to the library and started reviewing Algebra, Trig, Precalc, took a lot of effort but finally caught up. Programming came naturally to me and the rest of the classes were ok but math was very, very hard work, but I did it and graduated first in my class!