Part 1. Know Your Strengths: The Keys to Your Success!
Do you know your key strengths, what I call your Highest Talents™? When you do, you can more fully appreciate your value and be able to promote yourself and your services better, both internally and externally.
Many people, perhaps most, undervalue their own key strengths. They think, “Oh, that’s easy for me, so it’s easy for everyone.” They don’t realize that it’s (relatively) easy for them, because it’s one of their key strengths. Many years ago, I was providing career and job search assistance to former offenders. A man I’ll call James painfully and dejectedly told me after we had been working together a few weeks, “Jo, I’m really stupid.” I wanted to comfort him, yet I knew that wouldn’t be helpful and thought it might be condescending. Instead, I told him honestly, “James, I haven’t seen any indication that you’re stupid. In fact, quite the opposite. What about math? You told me you always did well in math classes.” “Yes,” he replied, “but that’s easy.” Math isn’t easy for everyone, as most of us know. But it’s easy for James. His story provides a perfect example of someone simply not realizing that what is easy for him is, in fact, his natural talent, one of his key strengths. There’s a happy ending to James’s story. We were able to get him training and work in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry, a line of work that uses his mathematical and spatial talents.
How can you identify your key strengths? One way is to use a simple method called Problem, Action, Results, Success (PARS). Begin by identifying a Problem (or opportunity) you or one of your clients faced, then write the Actions you took to address that problem or opportunity. This can be a fun endeavor and you can write a paragraph or pages to describe your actions. Now write the Results you achieved. Next, narrow your comments into a one or two sentence Success Story that focuses on results. I recommend you write ten of these PARS over time and periodically update your list with new stories. These can be helpful in at least two important ways. First, for each story, make a list of the talents and skills you used. Soon you’ll see some of your talents and skills appear repeatedly. These are, most likely, your key strengths or Highest Talents™. Second, review your success stories before going into a performance review or a sales meeting. Don’t recite each one, but keep them “in your back pocket,” so to speak, and use one, two, maybe three examples, when appropriate, to demonstrate your accomplishments.
Assessments, including Myers-Briggs, DiSC and, my favorite, PREP, as well as supervisors, mentors, colleagues and clients can also help you identify your key strengths.
Knowing your key strengths will help you thrive personally and professionally, by focusing more on what you do best and enjoy most.
Watch for Thrive NOW, Part 2, in July.