Empowering Innate Strengths

It’s 2024, which means you’ve likely been thinking about your goals for the year ahead. If you’re anything like me, you might have a history of setting ambitions based on behaviors you want to change or reaching that exciting end goal, all without a strategy to guide you. But if you’re curious about a sustainable method to turn these goals into reality, you’ll want to keep reading!

As you shape your goals for this year or reevaluate the ones you’ve already set, challenge yourself to uncover your strengths. This isn’t just goal-setting; it’s about building a success strategy rooted in your innate strengths. To empower your journey of self-discovery, here is a list of questions to ask yourself that will help identify your strengths:

Reflective Questions To Uncover Your Strengths:

• What brings you energy?
• What are you good at?
• What activities have brought you enjoyment in the past?
• In past successes, identify what motivated you to complete what you achieved?
• What talents and tasks come naturally to you?
• Ask a close relation, what do they see as your strengths or talents?

Once you’ve determined your talents, it’s time to appreciate your unique power and value. Remember, our strengths make us unique and a valuable member of our teams and organizations. Now, let’s take those insights and translate them into action.

Action Steps To Amplify Your Strengths:

1. Reflect: Identify activities you are naturally drawn to. Decide on ways to do more of them
2. Invest: Focus on skills you seem to pick up quickly and invest in ways to master them
3. Utilize: When facing a problem or a challenge, rely on activities that feel automatic
4. Cultivate: Actively seek and engage in tasks that highlight your natural abilities and give you a sense of accomplishment

While it’s empowering to focus on our strengths, it’s equally important to acknowledge areas where we’re not as strong. Everyone has aspects of their work that are less energizing or even challenging. The key is not to dwell on these weaknesses but to approach them with intention and strategy. Here are some steps you can take to manage areas where you may not naturally excel, turning potential weaknesses into opportunities for growth and team synergy.

Action Steps To Manage Your Weaknesses:

First, identify areas which are not your strengths but are still important for job success. Then, decide whether to delegate, do it differently, or dump it. Here’s how you can approach each option:

1. Delegate: Find a partner to help with tasks that are not your strong suit
2. Do It Differently: Design a support system or use one of your strongest strengths to approach these tasks in a new way that utilizes your strengths
3. Dump It: If a task doesn’t align with your strengths and isn’t critical, consider if it’s necessary at all. Sometimes, the best option is to just stop doing it

Client Transformation: Aligning Strengths for Organizational Impact

Consider the story of Heather, Director of Sales at a Fortune 500 Company. Heather’s career, while generally fulfilling, presented her with a challenge that resonates with many professionals: she found herself grappling with certain tasks that, being out of sync with her innate strengths, dulled her enthusiasm and impeded her sense of achievement. This dissonance led her to contemplate a change, as the lack of enjoyment began to weigh on her.

During our coaching session, while reviewing her CliftonStrengths report, Heather’s reflection revealed her profound joy in collaborative efforts and tackling complex problems. She thrived on big-picture thinking and meaningful recognition of her impact on others. Yet, the struggle with tasks misaligned with her dominant talents left her feeling stuck.

Addressing this, Heather’s strategic action plan involved connecting with leaders to grasp the underlying motivation for projects and engaging with peers for brainstorming, which helped her reframe the impact of her work on the broader mission. This alignment of her work with her personal strengths reignited Heather’s commitment to her organization, underscoring that the whole of her career satisfaction depended on more than the sum of its parts.

As we step into 2024

Take time to reflect on your strengths. Gallup tells us that “A person’s ability to achieve excellence and get the most out of their life is directly linked to understanding, developing and aiming their strengths at outcomes that matter.” Recognizing and building upon your strengths can lead to profound personal and organizational achievements. So commit to actively engaging them in your daily life for a more purposeful and empowered year ahead. To actively harness your strengths individually or with your team, download our Strengths Discovery Worksheet. This resource is designed to guide your reflection and strategic application of your unique talents.

For leaders aiming to enhance organizational success, we invite you to discover how Stop At Nothing can support you in amplifying your team’s strengths through expert guidance.