Work In Colour - Work. Think. Live. In Colour
Tuesday 7th July 2009 | 2 comments
I am giving some workshops in Victoria over the next week, for the Australian and New Zealand Buddhist Youth Conference. The main topic is 'Building a Strengths Profile', which is one of my favourite themes.
If you'd like some ideas on HOW to identify your strengths, contact me with the words 'Strengths Article' in the message.
In this post I want to talk about WHY it's important to play to your strengths.
It used to be thought that you had to become an all-rounder...that your strengths were the easy bit, and it was your weaknesses you had to shore up. In school reports, in workplace appraisals, in our own assessment of our performance, it was the weaknesses we focussed on.
This was tricky enough, but it has been coupled over the last 20 years with an increasingly narrow definition of 'success', of 'ability', and even of 'socially cool'. Many of us hid our true talents in order to conform, to meet someone else's criteria for success or belonging.
But in the last 5 years or so, there has been a shift. Writers like Marcus Buckingham and Martin Seligman have done some brilliant work about putting the emphasis on strengths not weaknesses, and some serious scientific studies show that life satisfaction has a lot more to do with playing to your strengths than compensating for your weaknesses.
Once you've identified your strengths, you should find more ways to use them - as well as seeking out ways to by-pass your weak points. In a recent post, I talked about the 10,000 hours between you and expertise, so it's very important to spend those hours honing skills and strengths - and having fun along the way.
It is up to you to be the champion of your strengths - only you can know what you love to do and where you feel satisfied doing it. This is not about competence - I am a competent lawyer but it gives me no thrills, even where I absolutely succeed at a task. In contrast, even when I run a training that is less than perfect (or not even close), or handle a coaching session less than brilliantly, I KNOW deep down that I am on the right track, that I am prepared to do whatever it takes to polish my talents and to shine in those arenas to the best of my ability.
If you can use your strengths in a way that intersects with the needs of the world, in a way that connects you to something larger than your own ego, larger than your own immediate day-to-day life, then you have a recipe for a lifetime of satisfaction.
The final argument? I truly believe that the planet is at a crossroads, and none of us can afford to ignore our real talents and strengths - if we are to make the transition that we are now being called upon to make, we must all uncover our strengths, polish them and shine.
Our future depends on it.
Last year I did a comic hoax speech on the topic of strengths based teaching for a TAFE teachers' conference. Most of it was ridiculous and, of course, funny, but here is a true story I put near the start:
At a certain school, there once was a young boy who couldn’t keep quiet or stay still. He was eventually diagnosed with ADHD and put on Ritalin, to treat his hyperactivity. It helped a bit, but not much. One of his teachers said he would never succeed at anything.
After two years, he asked to come off the tablets. Somehow he knew he could make it, if he could only build on his major strength: swimming. So he stopped popping pills.
At the age of 12, he needed an algebra tutor, and was so restless in school that his mother suggested that the teacher sit him by himself in the back. And yet he willingly got up at 6:30 every day for 90-minute morning practices, and swam 2 to 3 hours every afternoon.
And the rest is history. Too many adults looked at Ms. Phelps’s boy and saw what he couldn’t do ... rather than what he could do.
The story of Michael Phelps shows just how crucial strengths based teaching and learning can be. The key for us all is to turn talents into strengths.
Thanks so much for this story. I have an equation I use that Talent + Knowledge + Practice = Skill and then Skill + Enjoyment = Strength. This illustrates that perfectly - I shall shamelessly steal your Phelps story and tell it in my presentation!
It's similar to a video clip I use where Ken Robinson is talking about Gillian Lynne the choreographer - check it out here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html