When hiring faculty or staff one of the final steps of the process is checking references. One frequent question is, “does the candidate have any weaknesses?” Recently an answer to this question when I called a reference was “when younger, she tended to take on too much responsibility — but always met her obligations! As she gained more experience she learned to strategically say no to requests when appropriate, or to delegate tasks more effectively.” That “weakness” is actually a strength…I’ll have to use it the next time I’m serving as a reference for someone!