Well, this is exciting! The Managing Editor at Businessweek.com asked the Handel Group to be career coaches for their website! As I prepare to film some short clips on topics such as "How Do You Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths?," I thought I'd share the collective insights of the Handel coaches on this topic, with you, my faithful readers!

Here's how we advise our clients on the "weakness question." Everyone has weaknesses; knowing yours well and having them "leashed" (as we like to say) is what makes someone a highly effective person. HG life coaches often find that by looking (lovingly) at what doesn't work about you, you get greater access to your gifts. We give people the opportunity to safely look, and even giggle at, the craziest, most self-defeating traits and habits. We show you how the results you have been getting match perfectly to your beliefs, philosophies and habits. Then we show you that all of that is changeable! Thank goodness

Take Joanie for example. She had both communication and organizational issues. Let me explain. Joanie was very well-liked at her job but she found herself staying late every single night perfecting reports and redoing things other people were supposed to do for her. Sometimes she felt fine about it, but other times it just got to be too much and she would start becoming resentful, taking it out on the people above and below her and generally becoming unproductive because of her emotional rut. When she came to us, we addressed both issues. By replacing her "law" called: "I'll leave work when I have handled everything," with a new law: "I'll leave work by 6 pm no matter what," we opened up a new world of communication and organization.

Joanie had to become more organized in order to stick to this new law. She found herself asking for more help from those around her and letting go of things that were not most crucial to her accountabilities. She stopped checking email every few minutes and restricted surfing the Internet to only her (required!) 30 minute lunch break. This would have been enough of a triumph, but there was more.

We helped Joanie see where she was being a "chicken" in correcting the people she worked with, expressing her concerns (and her gratitude) and really letting others take over certain tasks and do them 100%. Joanie had to practice how to have conversations with her subordinates that would be both truthful and empowering. She learned: how to "own" her "chicken" tendencies, where she set her people up to disappoint her (reinforcing her unwillingness to delegate) and how to make clear requests about how things could be done in the future.

And the cherry on top? She set up weekly meetings with each of her staff to check in on what was working and what wasn't; ensuring that she could never walk around grumbling or martyring herself for very long! In keeping with her commitment to be more organized she brought a chart of accountabilities and "areas to develop" to each meeting and assessed progress right along side her subordinate. Together they picked dates by which to upgrade or expand training in each area. The staff felt supported and Joanie felt organized, relaxed and a true sense of leadership.

So when Joanie is applying for her next job she can say that her weakness was trying to do everyone's job and then becoming resentful, but that she has learned how to surmount that by making and keeping promises to herself about organization and communication.

Leaving your interviewer with the sense that you are an introspective, proactive, problem solver will certainly set you apart from the competition. I hope you can see that doing this kind of honest assessment of yourself and putting in corrections applies across a wide variety of issues. If your problem is distractibility, not writing things down, not finishing things, over multi-tasking, not enough communication, over communication, too harsh or soft in your demeanor, etc., then this process, below, applies:

• Assess your issues in organization and communication
• Confess them to someone to see if you can bring some light-heartedness to it
• Consider the laws or theories you are affirming/upholding with your habits and current behaviors
• Create a new law and start living by it
• Get help with how to organize yourself better. Get help with how to be a better communicator (just ask us; we have many ideas!)
• Look for results of your efforts and report them when you answer to "the weakness question." You will honestly show your weakness and emphasize just how far you have come. You can be proud of that!