For greater career fulfilment - make friends with your strengths (Part 1)

For a long time, received wisdom urged us all to work harder on our weaknesses if we wanted success.  By improving our failings, they would no longer hold us back. 

Then the penny dropped – what if a much better approach was to understand our strengths and to use these talents to solve problems, to enjoy our work, and build a more fulfilling career? 

Placing our focus on what we’re good at – whether naturally or through committed application – is a positive and empowering endeavour. But first we need to know what our strengths actually are.

Here’s a simple question to get you started:

What are you great at?

And please don’t say ‘nothing.’ I don’t buy that. We all have skills, character traits, or mindsets that we use better than many.  However humble we’ve been raised to be, it’s time to discard any false modesty and face the truth – we’re all great at something.

And this is the vital starting point for building a better future, one where work is in flow, where we’re in the right place doing the right work, and people around us truly appreciate what we do.

What are your strengths?

Perhaps this has never crossed your mind. Or maybe at different points in your career, you’ve completed psychometric assessments like CliftonStrengths or VIA  Character Strengths. Perhaps the subsequent list of ‘strengths’ left you baffled – who was this person described in the summary – and did these so-called strengths truly belong to you? Even more alarming, what should you do with this knowledge, even if you do accept its truth?

For the case of this article I’m taking strengths to include:

·      Character traits such as flexibility, integrity, persistence, approachability

·      Well developed professional or personal skills often grouped under headings like ‘technical or specialist skills’, ‘people skills’, ‘self reliance skills’ and that reflect specialist knowledge, proficiencies, and talents

4 ways to uncover your strengths

1. In different contexts, it’s likely that distinct strengths will come to the fore.

Think about the different roles you have in life: daughter, father, volunteer, team member, chairperson etc. What aspect of the role do you perform particularly well?

 If you’re unsure, ask someone who knows you in that role what they see as your strengths, or your unique contribution?

2. Asking someone whose opinion you respect is often the easiest way to uncover hidden strengths.

You’ll need to get over the sneaky fear that you’re asking for undeserved praise and acknowledge that you’re actually on the quest for the truth. 

We all have strengths, and if we’re unaware of them, they can’t be put to their best use!

3. Then think about what you’re known for or why people are pointed in your direction at work or in life.

Is it your willingness to help a junior colleague with a piece of software, or do people approach you when they have a personal problem they want to resolve? Are you known as the queen of the spreadsheet, or for calming things down in a meeting? Might you be an expert in a particular field or is there a part of your story that stands as a great example to others?

Giving this some thought will open your eyes to many truths about yourself – and I’m betting there are far more of them than you thought. We often underplay our own contributions because they come so naturally to us – we might swat them away with words like ‘oh anyone could do that!’

But let’s challenge that. ‘Anyone’ probably couldn’t perform the same task, make a difference, or explain a solution in the way you do. Accept that this is one of the things you are great at.

4. A potentially more objective approach is to complete a free profile like the VIA Character Strengths Survey to identify your best qualities.

This is less about technical strengths specific to a profession or role and much more about your character and how you approach life and its many problems and opportunities. It may well help you open up new realizations about qualities you have that you’ve never really considered important, nor seen as strengths. 

Here’s a look at mine:

So now you have a clearer idea of the qualities and expertise that make up some of your strengths, so what? 

Well, this is the best bit – you can now use them every day to build the kind of life and work you want.

In Part two of this article, I’ll be revealing how to activate and regularly use your unique combination of strengths to start making some changes in life or work.

And if you’d like to discuss what you already know about your strengths and how to use them for greater career fulfilment, just get in touch: