As a leadership coach and life coach, one of the first things I do when I work with a client is to identify their values and optimize their innate strengths because they’re such a great springboard to achieving a person’s hopes and dreams.
When someone uses and hones their innate strengths, they perform better, they feel better and have more fun at work, and they’re more motivated to grow.
To identify your strengths, you can take a self-discovery test like StrengthsFinder, Via Me, or Gallup, do an introspection exercise, or get feedback from your colleagues, superiors and loved ones. In this article, I will introduce you to an introspection exercise that will help you create your “signature strengths”.
Do you really know what your innate strengths are? List them now, right off the bat…Do you have the chance to use them every day in your work life and in your personal life? Several of my clients draw a bit of blank when I ask them this question. They find it difficult to spontaneously rattle off their strengths, which is perfectly normal by the way.
In fact, studies show that only 1 in 3 people can spontaneously list their strengths 1 and a mere 17 per cent say they generally use their strengths at work 2. This low percentage shows to what extent we’re caught up in a cultural paradigm that puts more emphasis on our weaknesses with a view to correcting them and improving our performance. However, by constantly focusing on our weaknesses and taking our strengths for granted, we never learn to recognize, develop and use them. A recent Gallup Poll3 that surveyed 469 work teams revealed that managers who were given feedback on their strengths increased their profits by 8.9 per cent, compared to those that did not receive feedback during the same period.
The concept of “strength”, which focuses on people’s positive aspects, is relatively new to most corporate cultures, and it is rising.
Pierre Lavoie5 is a great example of a person who uses his strengths. The Founder of the Grand Défi, the Quebec mechanic-turned-triathlete now gives conferences across Canada.
By optimizing his leadership skills, creativity, communication skills, his resilience and joie de vivre, he motivates and inspires people through his exceptional story, his remarkable inner strength and his incredible resilience, showing us that any challenge can be overcome if we maintain a positive attitude. In 2013, the Grand Défi raised $1.4 million and two million dollars were donated to promote healthy life habits among young people and to support hereditary orphan disease research. Lavoie is the embodiment of courage and self-actualization, and inspires respect.
How to recognize your innate strengths:
This 3-part introspection exercise will get you to focus on the strengths (see Table 1) that are revealed before, during and after a situation/project.
- Take a moment to recall something you did, a decision you made, or something you accomplished, that made you feel very proud and satisfied. Generally describe the situation and spontaneously describe what it brought out in you. This will help you identify potential strengths.
- Using the suggested questions in Table 2, retrospectively observe strengths that may have emerged during the situation. The answers will provide indicators of your strengths.
- Now, in Table 3, circle all the strengths that emerged during the two previous exercises and that are related to the situation at hand. Then create your “signature strengths” by identifying the five strengths that kept coming up.
Once you’ve found your “signature strengths”, you must then develop strategies that will allow you to make the most of them in your work life and in your professional life. Focus more on tasks that tap into your strengths, take a fresh look at your goals, and complete the sentence: “I’m at my best when…” And remember to use your strengths where warranted and with the correct intensity.
Using the “signature strengths” exercise with your employees and colleagues is a great way to improve commitment and performance in the workplace because a person’s greatest strengths lies in what they do best, not in what they do wrong.
My own “signature strengths” is: leadership, gratitude, creativity, joie de vivre and social intelligence. I encourage you to share your signature strengths with me and/or to simply do the exercise and then follow through by actively optimizing your strengths.
Christine Lecavalier
- Ref: Arnold, J. (1997), Managing Careers Into the 21st Century, Paul Chapman
- Ref: Buckingham, M., Clifton, D.O. (2001), Now, Discover Your Strenghts, The Free Press
- Ref: Hodges, T.D., Asplund, J. (2010), Strengths development in the workplace
- Ref: Linley, A. (2008), Average to A+: Realising Strengths in Yourself and Others, CAPP Press
- Ref: Le Grand Défi, https://www.legdpl.com
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