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Imagine you are in the middle of a professional interview for this job that you really want, the interviewer asks you: “so now, tell me about your strengths”? or better, "what are your unique strengths which will enable you to succeed in this role?".

 

Would you be able to answer authentically without feeling whether awkward or bragging? Most probably not. In fact, most of us if not all, prepare very well how to answer the question about weaknesses but rarely about strengths. Whereas it is equally important to know and be aware of what you do well.

 

Professor Sanyin Siang explains this very well in her HBR article titled “Identify and Develop Your Natural Strengths”, where the author explains why we’ve developed this focus on weaknesses, that she explains by 3 main reasons: we live in a “fixing” society, we experience negative bias which means that we weight negative data more than positive data, and lastly we devalue what comes most naturally to us, in other words we discount what come easily to us and instead, we are conditioned to value those things that we have to work on.

 

I love how Dr Lea Waters, an Australian psychologist, speaker, researcher and author explains it perfectly in her podcast "How to Find and Use Your Strengths" (available on LinkedIn Learning) and I cannot agree more with her. Dr Waters says science shows that when you're in a position where you can utilize your unique strengths, the things that give you energy, the things that come easily to you and get you self-motivated to do, that's going to flip into higher levels of performance and productivity.

 

So, I hope this has convinced you already to investigate more this topic, but here again, I understand that you may wonder where to start from, how can you identify and discover your strengths? Well, the good news is that there are many ways, which are simple and pretty helpful so let's delve some of my favorites.

 

Practical tips :

 

1. Tip 1: use family, friends and colleagues: as you guessed, the most evident and simplistic way of exploring your strengths is your surroundings! All you need to do is to simply ask the question “can you share from your perspective, where do you see me doing things well easily, almost with no effort?” and leave the question wide open on purpose, be ready to be positively surprised by all the insights your surrounding will give you, as you do that, take note if you can so that you’ll spot the most common or repeatable strengths as you go.

Your goal is to build-up on those later-on as we move ahead in the process. Why? Because these common strengths are what make you truly unique but you may not even be aware of it. In other words, you seem to naturally be good at something, however you don’t think of these strengths as an asset as you don’t even realize that this is actually a strength, which you can explore furthermore and capitalize on.

 

One side note: you could also take it a step further, by using the 360° feedback, this is usually a list of questions which you can access within your company or download templates for free. Simply Google search “360° feedback” and choose what sounds best for you, the process here consists of sending this document to as many colleagues as possible who work with you regularly and collect their feedback. Such report, will help you read insights about you which will spot your strengths easily, leading you again to confirm some strengths which you already knew but also discovering new ones. One piece of advice here, the quantity of people matters here quite a lot so make sure you reach out to at least a good dozen of people, more is even better.

 

2. Tip 2: Use the Clifton Strengths Finder, this tool is a self-test you take on the website of the Clifton Strengths Finder which is pretty simple, easy and fairly quick. Test takers are presented with paired statements and choose which best describe them, they then receive a report outlining their top five strength areas they scored highest in, along with information on how to apply those strengths.

 

I personally used this tool more than once and I love it, it turned out so helpful for me to have a such nice report presented in a very nice visual while providing detailed insights, which I used and reused many times, so I cannot recommend it enough. Note that this is not for free, you’ll have to pay for the test, however the cost remains reasonable so hope you’ll give it a go.

 

You can access a free sample here which illustrates what the test result looks-like. The interesting thing here to highlight is that even if you get a similar strength with someone else, the insights you’ll receive will be different from the other person, since these insights will be personalized for you in combination with other elements of the report which are specific for you and your unique strengths.

 

3. Tip 3: Volunteer by your strengths, I'm personally a big fan of this practice which helped me tremendously throughout my career, that's why I strongly recommend it.

 

Let’s imagine that one of your top strengths that you discovered is “creativity” and you happen to work in operations, where you get the feeling that you don’t really get to explore your full potential to be creative. So here’s the trick, see if you can allocate extra time to engage in projects outside your usual scope. Look for areas where you can put your creativity at service such as on digital marketing, AI or content creation, offer help to teams handling such projects. This initiative will not only expand your professional network but will also present opportunities to learn and practice new skills unrelated to your current role.

 

Seek feedback as you explore these new avenues. Your creative inputs might impress the teams you supported, leading you to extended collaboration and recognition for your fresh perspective. Embrace the chance to grow your strength by unleashing hidden talents that could shape your future career trajectory. Your next dream job could be just a strength volunteer away!

 

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Match your strengths with your current responsibilities:

 

Now that you learned more about yourself and your unique strengths, you'll move to the next stage, where you'll match your top strengths with your current job responsibilities, why? Because you are looking to have a sanity check about how far you are from using your natural abilities in your daily responsibilities. At the end of this exercise, you'll get to see how much of your current job aligns with your current strengths.

 

The less you use your natural abilities in your daily responsibilities, the less happy or fulfilled you may feel. It doesn't mean you won't get the job done, you will do the job but you will get it done with more effort, probably with less enjoyment and therefore less performance. Whereas if you build-up on your strengths, you will create a virtuous cycle and that's what you are looking for, the more you tap-in your natural abilities, the better you will perform, the more confident you will feel and therefore the more you will explore new things which will unlock even more skills.

 

I created this simple table example for you to use, here again it's not a matter of perfection, you can create any better template as long as you get the matching completed.

 

As you will complete this exercise, you will get surprised from the outcome - sometimes positively, but sometimes it can also be a wake up call as you may discover an important misalignment between your strengths and responsibilities, so give it a try.

 

Match Your Strengths Table

 

Hope this article will get you even more inspired to keep on collecting all the insights somewhere from step 1 "Make Space To Reflect", to discovering your strengths and stay tuned for the next one as we will talk about "values". Another important yet overlooked topic.

 

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Thank you for reading and for sharing any feedback in the comments section, as usual I’d love to hear from you.

 

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