Inspired Leap - You are far more brilliant than you think you are!

Quote of the Month
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
Focus On Your Strengths
What Are Your Talents?
Oops! My Strengths Don't Fit With My Career!
Apply A Little Leverage
Final Thoughts on Leveraging Your Strengths

One of the topics covered at last month's fun and successful workshop, Work Less: Accomplish More, was the importance of leveraging your strengths, as they come almost effortlessly to you. When you work from your unique strengths, you minimize the time and effort you need to put into making something happen.

After asking participants to take a moment to list their strengths, we noticed that a few of them had some difficulty coming up with a list of what they're good at. One individual later recommended a book that helped her assess her strengths: Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.

This month's newsletter builds on some of the excellent wisdom found within this book. Read on to be inspired to re-examine what your natural talents are, turn them into strengths, and make sure you play to those strengths as often as possible.

Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: eWomen Network Luncheon presentation on May 23, 2007. (Visit WomenNetwork)
Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued Workshop: Friday, June 22, 2007, 9:00am to 4:00pm at The Crossings in Austin, TX (Visit Inspired Leap to sign up. The Early Bird price of $99 is a steal and only lasts until June 8th.) Misha Thomas and I had a blast leading our last workshop in May. We've already got a number of attendees from that workshop signed up for this one. Won't you join us? If you've ever experienced the challenge of moving past mental, spiritual, or emotional blocks, then this workshop is for you.
I Know What To Do, So Why Don't I Do It? Workshop: Friday, August 24, 2007, 9:00am to 4:00pm at The Crossings in Austin, TX (Visit Inspired Leap to sign up.) This is the last workshop in our Break Through Series and deals with overcoming inertia and excuses.

Have you ever taken the time to understand and develop your strengths? Or, like many of us, have you come out of countless performance reviews with a plan to work on your areas of "opportunity" or weaknesses? Most companies and many individuals still believe that your best chance at success is to work to minimize or eliminate your weaknesses. Authors Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton dispel this notion immediately at the beginning of their informative and helpful book, Now, Discover Your Strengths. The authors point out that unless you have a weakness that is really undermining your ability to perform or communicate, then it's to your advantage to put all of your effort into revealing and developing your unique talents—turning those talents into strengths.

It turns out that what comes naturally and joyfully to you is where your power lies and where you should put your focus. Importantly, as noted in the opening quote, spending time honing your talents and strengths is not just about excelling at work—it's about finding "lasting satisfaction," or happiness in what you do. When you do work that exploits your talents, then you find it easy to recharge yourself. You're not depleted at the end of the day—you're ready to go and "play" at work again the next morning. If that's not how you experience your work, how might you put more focus on your unique gifts?

In order to focus on your strengths, you obviously need to know what they are. Do you? Buckingham and Clifton tell us that a strength is "consistent near perfect performance in an activity," and strengths are developed by combining natural talents with knowledge and skills. For the purpose of zeroing in on your strengths at work, the authors recommend that you think of talent as "any recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied" [p. 48].

If someone asked you to list your top five or ten talents could you do it? Do you spend time thinking about what you're good at? Like some of the participants in our workshop, you might struggle to list your innate gifts of thought, feeling, or behavior patterns.

A benefit of purchasing Now, Discover Your Strengths is access to an online program that helps you define your top talents, as well as the authors' list of thirty-four themes of strengths that comes from extensive Gallup research. If you feel at a loss regarding what your gifts are, then I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book and spend time uncovering your talents and determining your strengths.

Before taking time to do a survey or pick up a book, take a few moments to tap into your intuition and ask yourself, "what are my top five talents?" "What comes easily for me?" "What have I been praised for that I would typically respond, 'oh it was nothing,' to the person giving me the praise?" Even if you think about this in terms of work talents and strengths, don't ignore intuitive information that brings up talents that appear to have nothing to do with work, like a talent for "home remodeling," or "gardening," or "baking."

Take whatever pops into your mind and break it down a bit further. What specifically is it about gardening, for example, that you do so well? Whatever the talent associated with your hobby (for our gardener, perhaps attention to detail—always remembering to water, fertilize, and protect your plants), there's a strong probability that the talent can be applied to your career.

If nothing jumps out at you right away, keep asking yourself this question, "what are my top five talents?" every evening before you go to bed. This is a great time to prime your nonconscious mind to work on the answer. When something does pop into your head, write it down without judgment, then spend some time thinking of examples of how you expressed this talent.

If you're thinking about making a change in a career or going for a big promotion, I strongly encourage you to analyze your strengths before moving forward. How many times have you seen someone whose career was flourishing, only to have her stumble when she moved into a new role. This can happen when you don't evaluate how the new role will fit with your strengths.

It can be seductive to go for a promotion (especially the dollars and prestige associated with it) or to decide you're ready to quit and run your own company, only to find—after you've made the move—that your strengths don't fit with the new role. For example, if you're brilliant at working alone to solve problems and you enjoy the mental challenge that comes with solving those problems, getting promoted to a senior management position—no matter how appealing—may be the worst thing to happen to your career.

Why might a sought after promotion be wrong? Using our example, the new responsibilities of managing more people, leading team projects, and spending more time in meetings leave little time to do the work that energizes you and shows off your strengths—your brilliance lies buried under the mound of new responsibilities.

At the same time, doing the new work without the "consistent near perfect performance" that comes from using your strengths, leads to working hard to deliver an "okay" performance that depletes your energy. You slowly lose confidence in yourself and all of a sudden a great promotion turns into a disaster.

Whether or not you've got a possible job change ahead of you, a few hours of time spent discerning your strengths can save you a lot of pain and disappointment later on. Consider blocking out the time in the next few weeks to look within to discern where your brilliance lies.

Sherie S. was already in medical school when she had the unpleasant realization that she didn't have a talent for being with sick people! Buckingham and Clifton shared her powerful story in, Now, Discover Your Strengths. It's a great example to help you realize that if you play to your strengths, you can craft a job that works well for you even if it seems your strengths are opposed to the typical strengths required for your chosen career.

Don't be afraid to honestly assess your gifts. Even if they turn out to not be a perfect fit with your chosen career, you can choose to specialize or create a version of your job that plays to your strengths. Trying to change yourself to fit what you believe the appropriate requirements for your job is a recipe for disappointment and stress. Instead, change the job description to fit with your strengths, or find a company that will let you create a unique position tailored to your talents.

uckingham and Clifton note, "The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn't have enough strengths, it's that we fail to use the ones we have." [p. 12] I know it sounds trite, but one of the easiest ways to work less and accomplish more is to take every opportunity to use your strengths to help you do whatever work you have in front of you. And, if it's a task that won't allow you to incorporate your strengths, then delegate it or hire someone else to do it.

Depending upon your work situation, there may be some work requirements that you're not in a position to delegate. If that's the case, adjust your schedule to account for that. For example, it's likely that those tasks are energy-draining for you and are your least favorites. So, do them during the time of day you have the most energy and break them up into small chunks. Also, make sure you've got work that plays to your strengths incorporated into other times during those days, so you can re-energize yourself and remind yourself of how brilliant you are!

Make changes in your workday or job description to reflect your strengths and watch your productivity and energy soar. Don't be one of those people who fails to use the talents they have. No one else can apply your unique blend of strengths to your chosen career. Make the most of them!

I challenge you to examine your unique gifts. I thought I knew mine, but I'm finding that there's more to understand and, quite frankly, exploit. As an entrepreneur, I can get caught up in feeling a need to "do it all myself" until revenues reach a certain level. But the reality is that revenues will never reach the level I desire if I don't spend the majority of my time doing those activities that play to my strengths and outsourcing those activities that don't.

How about you? Are you maximizing your potential for success by making the most of your strengths?

If your company needs help with inspiring employees to reach new heights in productivity, creativity, morale, and integrity, please contact us at inspiredleap.com or 512-236-0090. If you need some more inspiration or more regular nudging to practice these steps, check out our website to see what's new to inspire you (a visit to The Quiet Room may be just what you need!).