Work In Colour - Work. Think. Live. In Colour
Wednesday 2nd September 2009 | 2 comments
I've written before about working with your strengths, but how do you FIND them in the first place?
Strengths are NOT necessarily the same as the limited range of abilities that are praised at school or the skills you might traditionally list on a CV. Your strengths might include map reading, or soothing a frightened child, or matching colours, or sensing the mood in a room - or even (though I struggle to see this one) adding up a column of numbers and getting the same answer twice...
Strengths are the things you love to do, and they come from using skills you enjoy. Using strengths leads to that wonderful state known as flow, which I've also written about. You love doing it, so you keep doing it, so you develop confidence and eventually, expertise. It's not about things you are good at doing, it's about things that make you feel strong inside, things that uplift you, make you feel energised, things you look forward to and feel involved with.
When you are using your strengths, you are in your element and you shine! It looks a bit like this:
Talent + Knowledge + Practice = Skill
&
Skill + Enjoyment = Strength
Think about the last week or two:
What activities did you do that made you feel strong? Be specific, what precise activities were they? (Work activities are great, but maybe there are clues outside your core working life, too..) What were the activities you looked forward to? Enjoyed, focused easily on, got into the zone, felt in flow with? If you have a trusted friend or colleague handy, ask them - you may be surprised at the result!
Be as particular and specific as you can. I have long known, for example, that one of my strengths is sharing ideas with a group of people. Although I am fundamentally an introvert, I love sharing ideas so much that I have become quite practised at running group workshops and am now even comfortable presenting to large groups. A while ago I was asked to be the MC at an awards night. I accepted, as an experiment to see if this was an area I'd like to do more with. I was really very nervous, but prepared well and went along feeling OK. I was adequate on the night, but no more - most importantly, I realised that even if I practised for ever, I'd never love doing it and would never shine, either. My strength is around being able to connect with people, to share ideas I am passionate about - and without those 2 elements, it just doesn't click for me.
For an online strengths questionnaire check out Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness website for his VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire.
(Scroll 2/3 down the central blue section, til you come to VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire.)
If you're a book person, try Marcus Buckingham's Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance or Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness.
So, take some time and get really clear - it will be worth it.
Dear Joanna,
WOW! You can add writing & connecting with people through writing, and writing about emotion & feeling, to your strengths ! :- )
I've read a lot of inspirational, 'self-help', & formal references over the years as I explored this condition that no-one seemed to like and shunned open inquiry thereof...Yep! That would be the 'human' one :- P...and I have seen entire books devoted to 'Finding One's Strengths', but never have I seen it presented so clearly, warmly & purely functionally...indeed one of your great strengths :- )
Many thanks....I really wish you were my school teacher...actually all of them :- P
Cheers
Stephen G
And you, Stephen, can add 'flattery' to your strengths! Thank you very much, though I'm not sure about the school teacher bit :)
Joanna