Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you discovered a pot of gold? What if this gold-filled pot was right there, inside you? Wouldn’t it be great to dig that out instead of trying to turn everything else into gold? For most people, self-improvement begins with identifying weaknesses, then deciding what to improve, refine, and enhance. We’re always encouraged to go out of our comfort zone. However, a different approach recognizes the genuine possibility that improving weaknesses can require a great deal of invested time with little return.
Rather than examining deficiencies and forcing ourselves out of our comfort zones, this alternate approach helps us lean into our strengths and identify what we already excel at.
After all, each of us already has a pot of gold inside us. There is a wealth of knowledge, skills, and experience in us that we may be misusing or don’t recognize.
Understanding your strengths can be incredibly influential in work relationships, interpersonal communication, and job performance. A more holistic understanding of yourself and your strengths also enables you to identify your values and pursue a path that aligns with them.
Let’s see how we can do that at work. In a work environment, identifying your strengths and sharing them with your team can revolutionize how you tackle projects, manage your workday, and interact with colleagues. The journey to self-improvement through strength recognition begins with the Gallup Strengthsfinder 2.0, which identifies your top 34 strengths in order of their importance to you. The top 5 strengths shape your personality and actions and affect your personal and work life.
Strengthsfinder 2.0 includes CliftonStrengths groupings, which take this knowledge a step further. These groupings teach you how different strength profiles interact together, unveil your team’s untapped potential, and provide a roadmap to better collaboration.
How Your Strengths Could Turn Against You
For example, let’s say my top strength is responsibility. This is a good quality. Who hates being responsible? No one! But this talent can be overused and become a double-edged sword. Instead of being helpful, it might overwhelm and exhaust me. Suppose I overload myself with tasks. I might be offering the impression that I have more time in my schedule than I do. Being too responsible could create issues with my team or even within my family. I could also inadvertently pressure people around me whose responsibility strength ranks lower than others they possess.
Another aspect of being responsible might be that I don’t know how to say NO. I like to make people happy. If responsibility is my top strength, I may continue to take on tasks to please others, at work or at home. I can also feel anxious because a job hasn’t been completed yet, and push to correct it or fix myself and others.
These behaviors represent OVERUSE.
To change, I would need a more comprehensive understanding of my strength. This is beneficial to me as I’ll know myself better, understand the values that underlie my actions, and adjust my behavior.
And That’s Why Understanding Your Strengths Is Crucial
When I understand my strengths, I can use that knowledge efficiently for my team and myself, which will create a healthier work environment. Instead of wasting time working on improving my weaknesses, I can evaluate and maximize my strengths and the strengths of individuals and groups. When I better understand my team members’ different strengths and personalities, I can identify the tasks each team member is most suited for.
Understanding strengths helps me learn more about the people I work with, how best to work with them, and what to reasonably expect from them. For example, suppose there is a project that requires dealing with people. In that case, I’d select a team member whose top 5 strengths include connectedness, empathy, or relator, because relationship-building attributes are essential for projects related to public relations, marketing, and sales.
After you’ve identified your strengths, it is crucial to identify potential red flags for your strength type.
Returning to the talent of responsibility, red flags are environments or behaviors that induce stress. Here are two to watch for, so you don’t become disengaged or decide to quit:
These flags include:
- Constantly Missed Deadlines. If you work with a team that doesn’t respect deadlines, you might feel a lack of mutual respect. Your word is your bond, and you expect others to keep their promises.
- Enforced Urgencies. Because you are diligent, you plan your schedule so you can keep your word. When other people are unprepared and throw your day off, you are likely to feel anxious and worry you’ll break your commitments.
For someone who leads through the Responsibility strength, put your talent to fair use with one of these options:
- Reliance. Someone with the responsibility talent is someone you can rely on to complete a project that requires time and effort. You can depend on these self-starters to remain diligent.
- Trust. If you can’t oversee a project, you can trust a person with the responsibility talent theme to keep you in the loop about timelines, progress, and deadlines.
- Ownership. Some processes get you to an end goal in every workplace, but they haven’t been well planned. Suppose you assign that process to someone with the responsibility talent theme. In that case, they will take ownership of that project and significantly improve it.
There you have it: a quick tutorial for building your career through the talent theme of responsibility.
On a broader note, this approach to self-improvement is building attention and growing globally; thousands of success stories support its validity.
If you want your pot of gold, it’s right there. Help yourself, dig in, and enjoy a better work and personal life.
About Our Guest Writer
Rasha AlAjouz is a chartered linguist and the author of the recently published work Standing Tall Without Heels. She describes herself as someone who loves working with words and passionate about anything related to developing humans. With 20 years of experience in the entrepreneurial world, she writes what she hopes would promote smart practices and intentional living that challenges the notion of the “hustle”.
In 2020, she received the TIAW World of Difference Award under the corporate category. She’s also a Certified Assessor/Practitioner of the EQ-i 2.0 and EQ 360 Assessments, and a Certified Practitioner of the Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360). My CliftonStrengths Top 5 Talents are Empathy, Relator, Strategic, Developer, and Responsibility.
You can learn more about her by heading to her website here: www.rashaalajouz.com, or find her Twitter and LinkedIn at @rashaalajouz.
