Knowing your strengths provides a sound basis for building for the future. They are the best basis on which you can build. You need to recognise your strengths, grow your strengths, observe your strengths and look after your strengths. Strengths need nurturing and cannot just be taken for granted. Strengths are not just what we perceive about ourselves but are what others perceive about the particular qualities we bring.
There is a danger that you are not accurately aware of your strengths and talents. Often, as people grow, they become experts in describing their own weaknesses and spend time trying to address these faults rather than building on their strengths. As a result, some of their strengths can lay hidden and ignored, with the consequence that they are undeveloped and dissipate over time.
When you are fully aware of your strengths and confident in them, you are able to do things that you might have been much more hesitant about in the past. As you use your strengths you become ever more confident in their value and application.
A good starting point is to articulate what you think your strengths are. You can supplement this by honestly summarising what you think other key people, such as your family, colleagues and boss, would regard as your strengths.
I recently asked one leader what he thought his strengths were. He said:
Good awareness of the environment around him
Good at building on different strengths in others
Good at problem solving
An empathy for the emotional reactions of other people
Good technical and professional skills
A good ambassador for the organisation
He said that his family would regard his strengths as:
Putting them first
Having a strong family commitment
Showing financial prudence
He thought that the people who worked for him would describe his strengths as:
Accessibility
Decisiveness
Clarity of what he wanted from them
Setting high standards
Giving people confidence
Being somebody whom others could talk to in confidence
He thought that his boss would describe his strengths as:
The ability to carry a heavy load
Effective problem solving ability
Providing a safe pair of hands
Being a good representative and a dependable professional
Looking at your strengths through different perspectives allows you to begin to see yourself as others see you. At one level you can do this by imagining yourself standing in other people's shoes and commenting on your strengths. Another approach is to ask people directly what they perceive as your strengths, or to request a colleague or coach to ask them on your behalf. You might be able to use the kind of 360 ° written feedback tool that many organisations have available for their staff.
It can help to write a list covering:
What do you think are your five key strengths?
What do you think your colleagues would see as your five key strengths?
What would your close family members or friends see as your strengths?
Another approach is to look at generic lists of strengths and assess which might apply particularly to you. In their excellent book Now, Discover your Strengths (Pocket Books, 2004), Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton talk about each individual needing to become an expert at finding, describing, applying, practising and refining their strengths. They talk of distinguishing natural talents from things you can learn and seeing strengths as a combination of talents, knowledge and skills. To them, talents are your naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behaviour, with knowledge consisting of the facts and lessons learned, and skills as the steps of an activity. These authors' approach is to encourage the reader to identify their five strongest themes of talent, some of which may not be strengths as yet. They identify the 34 themes of the Strengthsfinder profile, which are set out in Box 1.
Working on an illustrative list of strengths such as the one referred to in Box 1 can be helpful in reminding you of aspects you might not have perceived as strengths.
Your strengths never stand still. You are either growing them or, if you allow them to stagnate, they will be declining in effectiveness. As you look back you can often see how your strengths have been changing. You can identify the strengths that have been consistently a valuable part of your armoury and those that have adapted and grown as a consequence of circumstances and experience.
John Suffolk held senior positions in the private sector before moving into central government roles and has now done two very significant jobs within central government. When pressed about what had enabled him to step up into these senior roles, he said:
StrengthsFinder® Profile – Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
I have built up the right tools in the kit bag. I believe I can take a complex issue, simplify it, crystallise the key issues and see the big picture. I view events as an opportunity and not a threat and never give up.
John has brought his great strengths of clear thinking and clarity of purpose into his two leadership roles within government. What I have observed in John is both his use of strong, natural talent and the way he adapts that talent to the particular leadership challenges he has faced. The fact that he has brought clarity of thinking to complex issues and simplified them well has been greatly appreciated by his colleagues. The positive reinforcement of this capability to bring clarity has enabled him to use this strength and develop it further to powerful effect. John is an excellent example of someone who has natural talent and has been willing to hone that talent to meet the needs of a new context when he moved from the private to the public sector.
Growing your strengths is about making what is good even better.
However effective your strengths, they need nurturing and growing. For all his natural talent, Tiger Woods still practises regularly and draws on the expertise of coaches.
Mel Zuydam, has held senior finance director positions in both the private and public sectors. He used to see his particular strengths as on the technical and financial side rather than on the people side. In his role as a finance director within government, he developed different approaches using his strengths with people as well as his strengths on technical issues. He said that he 'crossed the Rubicon' when he realised he should use both his technical and human sets of strengths. He comments:
To do a job effectively as a finance director is to be consensual and bring people with you. Keeping listening is so important. To raise your game you need high-level self-awareness and you need to learn from the way others perceive you. You need to have genuine respect for what others say about you. I realised that others view me in a different way to the way I view myself. Then my tool kit quadrupled in size.
Mel talks of reflecting on the right approach to use when he wants to achieve a particular outcome: bringing a tempered approach based on self-awareness on some occasions and implementing different approaches on others, drawing on strengths related as much to human understanding as to technical ability.
Key questions for you to ask yourself as you grow your strengths are:
Which strengths have I built on in the last six months?
Which strengths do I want to use more over the next six months?
What are the hidden strengths I need to make more of?
A consistent message in challenging times is to be optimistic, energetic and enthusiastic while being rooted in realism. Confidence and optimism building on your strengths can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Success is about being self-assured, with confidence having as much impact as capability. You have to believe in yourself as well as being honest about yourself. It enables you to believe that there is a solution, however tough the situation might seem. How you build on your strengths will give you a competitive advantage.
Drawing on your strengths means that even in the most challenging circumstances you can see opportunities.
Building on your strengths means being positive and being objective. Optimism must not come across as denial. People who lose heart are those who have lost their positive belief that there can be a successful outcome. You have to believe that your strengths will mean that you can become part of the future and are not part of the problem. Growing your strengths can give you confidence that you can make choices, even in the most difficult circumstances.
