what does it mean to leverage somones skills

Companies need employees with unlike skill sets to improve their organizations. The strengths yous bring to the workplace are an advantage for both you lot and your employer. Once you learn to leverage those skills, y'all can set professional goals and find the best part to complement the strengths you bring to the workplace. In this article, we explain how to leverage your strengths and why this is of import to your career.

Why is it important to leverage your strengths in the workplace?

Information technology'due south of import to leverage your strengths in the workplace so you tin thrive in your role. Once you know your all-time skills, you lot can use them to your advantage to perform ameliorate on daily tasks, set goals to advance in your position within your company or in another job, and go more satisfied with your career.

Leveraging your strengths does the post-obit for yous in the workplace:

• Helps you detect the best role: If y'all use your strengths to your advantage to get a job, y'all're more likely to find a position that is the best fit for your skills and interests. Pursue jobs that rely heavily on your strongest abilities.
• Increases your productivity: Working in a position that utilizes your strengths makes you lot more productive if you set goals to focus on your strongest abilities to accomplish daily tasks.
• Sets you up for leadership: Leaders know how to leverage their own strengths and the strengths of others. They deed as mentors to identify and grow the strengths of their team.
• Allows y'all to grow: Using your strengths to get the almost out of your work feel tin can help you motility toward fulfilling your potential in the workplace.

Examples of strengths to leverage at work

Hither are some of the key strengths you tin can larn to leverage at work:

Soft Skills

Here are some examples of the personal attributes that shape how yous work and interact with others:

• Time-direction
• Communication
• Disquisitional thinking
• Leadership
• Attention to detail
• Creativity
• Trouble-solving
• Teamwork
• Adjustability
• Organization

Hard Skills

Here are some examples of skills you lot tin larn based on preparation and life experience:

• Public speaking
• Writing
• Coding
• Website development
• Graphic design
• Educational activity
• Programming
• Operating machines
• Operating software
• Skilled trade work (carpentry, plumbing)
• Sales
• Mathematics
• Technology
• Drafting
• Languages

How to leverage your strengths

Your strengths come from your innate and learned skills. Hither are the means you can leverage those strengths while on the job:

1. Define your strengths

Earlier you can leverage your strengths, you need to sympathize your unique abilities. There are plenty of ways to determine your own strengths. Here are some ideas to aid you find your strengths:

• Have an assessment: You can discover plenty of online assessments meant for professionals that will listing your strengths with explanations of each term to help you improve ascertain your strongest skills.
• Inquire people you lot trust: You tin can always ask trusted contacts to share what they see well-nigh your abilities. You tin can ask a mentor to brand a list of the strengths they've observed while mentoring you.
• Find your passions: Have annotation of the tasks yous've completed successfully that as well energize you. Your strengths come from activities that you enjoy doing and can practise well. Ask yourself what kind of tasks come up naturally to y'all.
• Consider your resume: Review the key attributes you lot use to draw yourself to employers in your resume. Employ this as a guide to understand your stand-out skills and experience.

2. Set professional goals

Inquire a managing director to help you set up goals that use your strengths. Talk over these strengths with your supervisor and focus on strategies that will positively touch your growth and productivity at work. Take time to address these goals throughout the year instead of merely during annual reviews. Enquire for feedback as you proceed to utilise your strengths to accomplish your professional person aims. It's important to work on your strengths no thing what office you play in the visitor.

3. Bear witness evidence of your strengths

Identify the strengths y'all utilize about in your electric current job. Figure out what behaviors and behavior help you employ these skills to your advantage. Then, determine what evidence you lot tin produce that shows your strengths in the workplace. In one case y'all tin can identify how your strengths positively impact your job, program to generate more successful outcomes.

4. Strengthen your strengths

Piece of work to improve what you're already expert at by looking for growth opportunities. Participate in advanced preparation for your best skills. You can even offer to mentor or instruct others in areas where you lot excel. When you can teach someone else from your strengths, your ain cognition automatically increases.

5. Choose strength-building behaviors

Your behaviors and habits can modify how you employ your strengths. For example, if you choose to read books and articles from experts in your field, you can strengthen certain skills yous want to improve. Focus on beneficial workplace behaviors that make information technology easier for you to use your strengths.

Tips for leveraging your strengths

Here are some ideas to help you equally y'all leverage your strengths in the workplace:

• Focus on you. Comparing yourself to others may not be an effective fashion to identify and utilize your strengths. Instead, rely on your ain self-reflection to determine how you can best apply your unique gifts and talents.

Think about hard and soft skills. When you make up one's mind your strengths, remember, soft skills are equally as of import as hard skills. Try to identify a mix of both as y'all analyze your abilities.

Fill in your force gaps. Surroundings yourself with people who possess strengths different from your own. This is particularly important to remember if yous are in accuse of leading a team. Leaders don't demand to exist stiff in every skill, they need to identify their own gaps and bring members into the team that have the necessary abilities to benefit the grouping.

Define your cadre values. Reflecting on your securely held beliefs volition assistance you figure out the foundation that you lot can use to build your strengths.

Does your job leverage your natural strengths?

If you're doing work that doesn't tap into your greatest strengths, your performance and motivation will suffer forth with your career. In contrast, when y'all're aligned with your talents and interests, y'all gain a wellspring of confidence and expertise, and y'all do great work with a sense of purpose. Everyone effectually you lot benefits, besides.

Workplace strengths are oftentimes divers in terms of competencies similar teamwork, problem-solving, or leadership, just self-knowledge should not be overlooked. Cocky-knowledge is a powerful tool that can help you use your greatest strengths to diverse aspects of your job, from excelling in your expanse of expertise to being a strong squad collaborator and effective leader. If yous're looking to advance your career, assessing and leveraging your strengths is one of the nearly critical things you can practice.

Assessing and Applying Your Strengths

Here are five tips to assist y'all assess and use your personal strengths at work.

1. Listen to what others say y'all're proficient at.

What skills do people compliment you on?

Others quite likely see strengths in you lot that you lot haven't noticed. For case, if you oft receive positive feedback on your listening skills, inventiveness, or command of details, pay attending.

Inquire a friend or colleague to spend a few minutes reflecting on what she thinks are your greatest strengths. Then, ask yourself if the perceptions ring true.

Did honesty come up upwards every bit a strength? If so, this quality could manifest at work in the way you tell a client that their budget isn't sufficient for their projection goals, rather than you existence labeled a yes-person. Note the return on investment for your transparency (e.1000., an expanded budget, the client's trust, more projects). Be certain to bring it up in your next performance review.

If dedication and reliability came upwards as strengths, notation occasions where these attributes have paid off for your team. If your team relies on you to arrange meetings and set up conferences, include event planning on your résumé.

2. Know what you love.

If you were granted a wish to do anything you wanted for the rest of your working life, what would you choose? This might be an overwhelming proposal, merely go for it—dream big!

Look at the things you like to exercise in and out of piece of work. If you lot beloved to write but don't get a chance to do much at work, explore writing opportunities in your current position like an internal blog or newsletter for your section. If y'all're an extroverted programmer who loves to talk about your product, await for technical sales opportunities.

Knowing where your gifts and passions lie is essential in creating a career map that plays to your greatest strengths.

3. Notice your menstruation state.

Contemplate an ordinary workday. What types of tasks do you nigh similar diving into? Do you lot prefer team scrums or writing technical specs with no interruptions? What are yous doing at your desk when the hours seem to cook abroad?

If the hours y'all spend reviewing new tools for your team wing by, ask for vendor option project work.

4. Know your relationship style.

Knowing what kind of relationships bring out the best in y'all and what kind are the most hard for you lot will help yous navigate professional person waters. If 1 of your main strengths is executing drama-gratuitous negotiation, enquire for opportunities to serve on purchasing committees or to facilitate informal mediations betwixt squad members who don't see eye to centre.

5. Maximize your specialties.

Many job candidates rely on generalizations to find employment, such as beingness a "people person" or an "organizational magician." These are great attributes, but you'll stand out more if you give specifics.

Tell employers you are a "wizard at conference planning" or you can "build out project schedules and make accurate estimations like nobody's business."

You might accept experience working on a marketing squad, simply you're really, really excited nigh SEO. This is a unique skill, and if you chief it, you tin go far. Maximizing your specialty not only helps your career but too makes you more valuable to your team and arrangement.

Tapping Strengths from a Leadership Position

If you're in a leadership role, you probably know the huge benefit that comes from knowing—and borer into—the strengths of your team members. You tin assign the right tasks to the right people with the double benefit of getting the highest quality work washed as efficiently as possible.

Then, everyone's happy.

How have you identified and leveraged your strengths on a project? Let united states know in the comments.

What are your greatest strengths?

If you've ever sat through a task interview, you've probably had to answer this question. Virtually employers are looking for people whose strengths match the task clarification. After all, you don't desire to hire a sales rep that's bad with people.

Just how many times do yous think near your strengths when you're non in a job interview? And, how often accept you been asked for your all-time strengths but unable to articulate them well?

To be your best, you take to leverage all your strengths on a daily basis to maximize your potential. You accept to be intentional. But you can't be intentional if y'all don't know what your strengths actually are and how to use them when you demand them.

What are strengths exactly?

When near people answer the question, "What are your greatest strengths?" they tend to respond with a list of skills or talents.

"I'thou good with computers."

"I'chiliad an excellent salesperson."

"I make a mean pot of coffee."

Skills and talents are things that tin be taught (or forgotten); they're what you do. But your strengths come up more innately — your encephalon just thinks a certain manner.

One of the best ways to measure strengths is Gallup'southward StrengthsFinder assessment. (If you haven't taken it already, nosotros highly recommend it.)

The StrengthsFinder cess provides a list of your "top five" strengths, and each 1 has an impact on your behavior and performance. People with an Analytical strength, for example, have the ability to think almost all the factors that might affect a situation and can make decisions about how to proceed with minimal risk. Those with a Futuristic strength can see the big pic and have an easier fourth dimension creating a vision for a product or their life. If y'all take the Connexion force, your technical expertise might center on systems compages where y'all can see how all the parts connect equally a whole.

Each strength works in conjunction (or sometimes in conflict) to help you navigate the world. Yous could even layer skills on pinnacle of a strength to make it more than powerful. For example, someone with a Communication strength might want to enhance that force past go grooming equally a public speaker.

Do you need sure strengths to succeed equally a technical expert?

Practice you take a flick in your head of what a successful person looks like? Do you call back it takes a sure type of person to be truly successful, and as smart as you are, y'all're not an Elon Musk-level genius? Does that mean you can't be successful?

Actually, non actually.

A common misconception that keeps many from moving frontwards is the idea that strengths and personality are the same.

For example, 1 of your strengths could be Communication even though you're introverted and hate public speaking. Perhaps you lot prefer one-on-one conversations and so you're better at podcasts or mentoring people.

The reality is that you can leverage your strengths no affair what type of personality you accept. Bill Gates didn't become a household name because he was actually good at chatting people upwards around the water cooler.

In fact, Gallup enquiry indicates that an individual's inherent talent for a role — ane'southward natural capacity for excellence in a certain position — is a blended of innate personality traits, attitudes, motives, thinking, and values.

This means that there's no "ideal" combination of strengths that make someone successful. A successful person uses their strengths to fit the role they desire.

That means at that place isn't a single profile for a successful technical expert. The stereotype of a programmer ever being belittling is a misnomer. Yes, belittling skills tin can exist helpful in programming but in that location are plenty of other strengths that tin be used to attain the same chore.

The fundamental is leveraging the strengths y'all have to fit your situation, needs, and overall goals.

How do you employ your strengths to succeed?

In one case y'all take a articulate picture of your strengths, at that place are a few things you can do to make sure that you're using them to your advantage.

1. Own your own development

No matter what specific combination of strengths are, you lot will still need to take fourth dimension to develop skills to help you brand the nearly of them. It'due south upwards to you to recognize and place how your strengths will help yous in your career. You lot accept to take control of your evolution process in order to add skills to those strengths. No 1 else will do it for you.

For instance, if you have a stellar Empathy strength, and can put yourself in anyone's shoes, you lot could use that to see the production y'all're creating through the user's eyes. Yous will understand your audience because you can experience their hurting points in a manner that others tin't.

2. Don't focus on limitations

If yous're the blazon of person who tends to be self-defeating or focus on limitations, you may be tempted to rule out opportunities because you don't experience qualified.

Instead of focusing on what you practise best, y'all're mentally preoccupied with your lack of experience, education, or contacts — all of which prevent yous from moving forward.

Productive people don't think this way. Productive, successful people brand decisions based on their best qualities and strengths. They focus on what will help them succeed instead of what seems impossible.

iii. Find complementary strengths in others

Focusing on your strengths doesn't mean yous should ignore your weaknesses altogether. It just ways that yous discover ways to overcome those weaknesses, and i of the best mode to do this is past leveraging the strengths of others.

Instead of worrying near your shortcomings, find someone with complementary strengths to make up the deviation. For instance, Achievers can sometimes get focused on the checklist rather than prioritizing. In this case, yous might desire to squad up with a Strategic who can help you narrow downwards the list, so y'all focus on the nearly important tasks.

Even better, find a position that plays to your strengths and where your weaknesses are irrelevant.

If yous want to know what your strengths are, how to use them in your career or to find your side by side position, a Strengths Session can help.

By Christy Cates and Katrina Onderdonk

We recently celebrated five years working together at Caltech, so we accept had the opportunity to reverberate on our journey of building an advancement organization comparable to the best in American college teaching. The key to our success has been leveraging our squad members' strengths.

In 2016 when we launched our Intermission Through Campaign, recruitment had taken center stage. Nosotros increased our advancement staff by 33 percent over two years and kept up with regular turnover. While this alone was a huge accomplishment, we before long learned that finding and onboarding talented people was only the commencement.

Exploring Strengths

Information technology was a heavier lift to begin to build a new culture and shift our management epitome. Nosotros needed to create an environment in which squad members would have the opportunity to be engaged: managers would have the knowledge and agreement to coach their staff and individuals would have the opportunity to use their strengths every day. To aid us with this part of our journey, nosotros started looking at ways to measure and improve employee date. We establish Gallup and the StrengthsFinder musical instrument (now called CliftonStrengths), and this is where the fun started!

Through Gallup'southward inquiry, we learned that doing what you love every mean solar day is the backbone of both engagement and performance. Growing your understanding of yourself can bring purpose and intention to your job and directly correlates with improved operation.

Gallup has institute that people who focus on using their strengths are:

• iii times equally likely to accept an excellent quality of life,
• 6 times as likely to be engaged at work, and
• 7.8 percent more productive in their roles.

During the past iii years, we take learned, trained and coached our teams on the value of using a "strengths-based" approach to the workplace. By incorporating the StrengthsFinder assessment into our squad-edifice efforts, nosotros have helped our team members identify and leverage their own talents and deepen the talents and potential of their teams. Equally a result, managers who focus on their team members' private strengths come across improvement in their squad'due south overall date and productivity.

Strategically Using Our Talents

As enthusiastic practitioners of the strengths philosophy, our pocket-sized talent management squad of three has benefited. Our understanding of each other's strengths allows us to utilize these talents strategically. For example, Christy'southward stiff influencing talents rally our partners for their commitment and back up while Katrina's potent executing talents ensure projects are well planned and efficiently executed. Our colleague, Lilli, has strong human relationship-building talents and guarantees our partners and constituents are fully considered.

As members of our team, nosotros all have strategic thinking talents that help us envision and ready for what is ahead. We pride ourselves on being a high-performing team where we utilise our talents every day and rely on each other's strengths to tackle challenges, reach new heights and achieve success.

Christy Cates in the executive director of advancement services for evolution and establish relations at the California Found of Technology. Her areas of focus include prospect research, prospect direction, reporting, prospect analytics, talent acquisition, professional development, staff engagement and performance management.

Katrina Onderdonk is the director of talent management for development and institute relations at the California Constitute of Technology where she specializes in executive search, employee engagement, individual coaching and team building.

Learn more almost leveraging your team's strengths. Bring together conference chair Katrina Onderdonk at the CASE Strategic Talent Management conference, March 6–8, in Chicago, to address the challenges facing your organisation and implement talent management solutions that fit your needs.

Proceeds momentum in your personal and professional life

Posted May 07, 2019

Do y'all want to proceeds momentum and feel happier in your personal and professional person life?

Capitalize on your strengths. Leverage your pinnacle character strengths not only to lead more effectively but to feel greater well-beingness in your life and work.

What are Character Strengths?

Your graphic symbol strengths reflect your cadre personal identity and can bolster your thinking, feeling, pregnant, and date. According to Martin Seligman, Ph.D., (2011) founder of positive psychology, the 24 grapheme strengths are the cornerstone of personal well-being and a flourishing life. These strengths are: creativity, curiosity, judgment, dear of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, dearest, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, cocky-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, sense of humour, and spirituality (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Know Your Acme Strengths

To build greater momentum toward achieving your professional and personal goals, identify your peak strengths and larn to use them more effectively. Building on our top (signature) strengths has been consistently shown to increase our happiness and improve piece of work date, life satisfaction, and well-beingness (Niemiec, 2018). Using our strengths tin can increment our effectiveness across the domains of our lives, including work, schoolhouse, community, relationships, and spirituality.

Strategy i: Here are four steps identified by positive psychologist Ryan Niemiec, Ph.D., to help you identify and utilise your tiptop strengths. These steps have been validated internationally with populations of children and adults:

1. To boost your personal majuscule for life and leadership, identify your top strengths. Take the costless VIA Survey, a quick (less than 15 minutes), cocky-assessment of your personal strengths. Information technology's highly evidence-based and has been taken past over 7 million people throughout the world. Yous can find the VIA at http://www.viacharacter.org/world wide web/Character-Strengths-Survey
2. Look at your VIA findings, and every bit Dr. Niemiec suggests, ask yourself what strengths are most essential to who y'all are as an individual.
3. Cull one of these strengths and discover a mode to apply it in a new way each mean solar day for a week – at home or at work (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson (2005).
4. Discover how you feel and what thoughts and emotions emerge when you lot capitalize on this forcefulness.

Strategy 2: Apply Your Superlative Character Strengths in Your Personal and Professional Life

At present figure out how to apply your summit strengths to propel yourself toward your goals. Here are a few ways to use some of the 24 strengths:

Leadership – Developing and maintaining expert relations amidst a grouping and engaging them toward achievement:

• Complement employees, colleagues, clients, family, and friends on a job well done – one-to-1, in a meeting, or by e-mail.
• Strengthen interpersonal relationships by paying attention to your positivity ratio – share more positive than negative letters with people when you lot communicate (Cameron, 2012).
• Create your own consultation squad with co-workers or other professionals in your field, and offer each other moral back up.
• Assist a colleague, co-worker, or team fellow member, who is struggling in the leadership process.
• Seek assistance and encouragement from others when you need it.

Perseverance – Staying on job toward what you start, despite challenges or obstacles:

• Set a meaningful long-term goal for your professional person or personal life.
• On a daily or weekly footing, fix small, manageable sub-goals to propel you lot toward this goal.
• Rails your progress on your agenda or computer.
• When something gets in the fashion, be adaptive. Figure out how to motility past information technology to reach your goal.
• Identify your most productive hours of the day. Work on your goal during those times.

Kindness – Caring virtually the needs of others and being willing to do a proficient deed without expecting a return:

• Offering a kind discussion to people every bit yous get through the solar day, for instance, at home, the function, coffee shop, via email, at meetings, or while traveling.
• Offer a small-scale random human action of kindness toward someone else – whether someone you lot know or a consummate stranger.
• Share something with another person or offer to help them if you lot know something they don't know.
• Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge your progress and achievements. Have proficient intendance of yourself with nutritious foods, exercise, and enough sleep.

Strategy 3: Deed Every bit If

If, similar many people, yous have a negativity bias, focusing on areas of weakness rather than strengths, here'southward a strategy recommended by Shannon Polly and Kathryn Britton in their book, Character Strengths Affair. "Act equally if" to pull up strengths at the lower finish of your VIA strengths ratings. You lot can pretend you take that lower forcefulness as a top force and act as if. Similar an actor, practice positive outcomes and create new stories virtually how you utilize this force to build momentum and positive engagement. This strategy can make a difference in personal and professional realms – in your leadership role at work and as a leader in your own life.

How volition you leverage your character strengths to gain momentum and experience happier in your personal and professional life?

*This post is for educational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.

Cameron, One thousand. (2012). Positive Leadership: Strategies for boggling performance. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Niemiec, R. (2018). Character strengths interventions: A field guide for practitioners. Boston, MA: Hogrefe.

Peterson, C. & Seligman, E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

Polly, South. & Britton, 1000. (2015) Character strengths thing: How to live a full life. Positive Psychology News, LLC., U.s.a..

Seligman, Thou.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-beingness. New York: NY: Atria Paperback.

Seligman, M. East. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, lx(five), 410-421.

If you lot want to excel at anything, it's non plenty to fix your weaknesses. You also need to leverage your strengths. When Albert Einstein failed a French exam, if he had full-bodied only on his language skills, he might never have transformed physics. When J.K. Rowling realized that she was highly disorganized, if she had focused solely on condign more orderly, she might never accept honed her storytelling skills to write Harry Potter. And had Dennis Rodman worked exclusively on overcoming his weakness in shooting gratuitous throws, he might have never become a seven-fourth dimension NBA rebounding champion.

Before you can leverage your strengths, you need to figure out what they are. To identify their unique capabilities, millions of people have taken self-assessments like Gallup'south StrengthsFinder. After filling out a survey near what you practise best, you get to read a report on your pinnacle talents. When I completed one of these self-assessments in 2004, I was pleased that kindness and generosity stood out equally one of my signature strengths.

Upon reflection, though, I started to question the results. Was I really generous, or did I just want to see myself in that style? As I looked at the inquiry, I found skillful reason to be skeptical. In one serial of studies, psychologists Nick Epley and David Dunning showed that people "consistently overestimated the likelihood that they would deed in generous or selfless ways." This isn't merely truthful for generosity; people are wildly inaccurate judges of their strengths in a broad range of tasks and domains — from logical thinking and reasoning skills to math aptitude, and even in estimating their own abilities to recognize a funny joke.

And then often, we run across ourselves through rose-colored glasses. When I filled out the forcefulness survey, generosity was important to me, so I thought almost times that I had helped others successfully, ignoring times when I had failed in my efforts to be helpful — or failed to try and help at all.

If you want to recognize your strengths, you need other people to agree up a mirror. When you see your reflection through the eyes of those who know you well, you can brainstorm to identify your nigh unique talents. My favorite mirror is called the Reflected Best Cocky Practise, which is based on inquiry past Robert Quinn, Jane Dutton, Gretchen Spreitzer, and Laura Morgan Roberts. It involves emailing people who know you well, asking them to write a story about a time when y'all were at your best, so using the common patterns to create a portrait of your strengths. Many students and executives describe it every bit heart-opening; some even call information technology life-changing. Here are the steps:

(1) Choose your sources and seek feedback: Identify 10-20 people who know you well from different walks of life, and ask them to write a story about a time when yous were at your best.

(2) Spot patterns: In one case the feedback arrives, expect for the common themes that appear in multiple stories. Make a list of the themes, the central examples that support each them, and what they advise about your strengths.

(3) Create your cocky-portrait. Using this information, write out a brief profile of who you are when you're at your best.

(iv) Put your strengths into action. Create an action program for how and when you lot'll utilize your strengths.

When selecting your sources, diversity is critical; the best sources are a mix of personal and professional contacts. Research shows that feedback is more than energizing and actionable when it comes from a diverse group of friends, family members, colleagues, and mentors who tin can pigment a comprehensive motion picture of your strengths.

Proficient sources don't guarantee good feedback. A comprehensive analysis of more than than 23,000 feedback interventions revealed that more than 33 percent actually decreased performance.

When feedback backfired, it was usually considering it lacked specificity. It may feel good to hear that you're generous or creative, but it's far more useful to hear about a specific situation in which you lot helped someone else effectively or generated a novel, practical thought. To learn nigh your strengths and the situations in which you've used them productively, you need physical examples. That's what makes these rich stories far more powerful than most 360-degree feedback exercises, where people rate each other in abstract, general terms. When the stories roll in, y'all'll be surprised to see that some of your sources comment on strengths you didn't know you had, and experiences you lot didn't recall.

In fact, the stories are sometimes and then revealing and exciting that people finish there. Simply if you lot don't map out a plan for using your strengths, the benefits volition fade. In one experiment led by psychologist Martin Seligman, people who identified their strengths were temporarily happier and less depressed, but the changes didn't terminal. Only those who identified their strengths and then actively used them achieved sustainable psychological gains: over the side by side half-dozen months, they were significantly happier and less depressed. Like patterns emerged in a study of job crafting that Amy Wrzesniewski, Justin Berg, and I conducted at Google with Jennifer Kurkoski and Brian Welle. Employees who worked on their strengths didn't become happier or more constructive. Googlers who planned out ways to adjust their jobs to contain strengths were able to reach meaning gains in happiness and task performance over the next six months.

One of Oscar Wilde'due south keen lines read, "I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too complacent." If we only expect in the mirror at our strengths, we may find ourselves falling downwards a slippery slope of narcissism. It would be fascinating to see whether weaknesses can be identified through a like process: ask people to write a story almost a time when you were at your worst, and create a plan for improving upon your flaws (or at least learning to manage around them).

I learned most the Reflected Best Self Practice right around the time that I filled out that survey almost my strengths. It dawned on me that instead of gathering feedback from other people nearly whether I was generous, I could tweak the procedure to become a flake more generous. I fabricated a list of some people who had made a divergence in my life, and started sending them stories about who they were at their best. It turned out to exist a very meaningful way of thanking them for their contributions.

When it comes to assessing our own talents, we're full of blind spots. If yous can encounter yourself through the eyes of others, your vision volition become less blurry. And by giving other people feedback about their talents, you might help their vision go clearer besides.

Leveraging Personal Strengths for Growth

What does it mean to leverage your strengths?

Leveraging your strengths means using what y'all are personally practiced at to get more than of what you desire. (As for how to apply them, what they are, well that is a piddling more complicated.)

I would similar to identify some accent on the word 'strengths' because while growing up I was pushed to place more effort in the areas where I was weak equally opposed to giving more attention to the things that I was naturally adept at and preferred doing. I am not saying that the concept is wrong. Information technology is good to challenge yourself and broaden your repertoire but in this blog, my focus is on leveraging our strengths, talents, skills, and abilities to maximize our growth. It'south identifying what you are practiced at and becoming a master at it while utilizing other people's help in areas where they are ameliorate than us.

It is a fact that anybody will experience varying degrees of success and failure during their life. Sometimes, the process of accomplishing and making it to the elevation can be a jaded walk. One in which you have a few steps forward and more than than a few backward, much to your dismay.

So the question is: How can I maximize and increase my growth potential and elevate my chances to succeed?

The key factor is identifying and leveraging your personal strengths.

You may not know what your personal strengths are, so how are you to go about leveraging them?

You offset need to pinpoint your strengths and can do so by following these tips:

• Get to know Yourself. What are you lot good at? What are your skillsets, strengths, weaknesses? What concrete skills and abilities exercise you have? What areas do you lot excel in and what are your weak areas?

• Plough to a Friend/Family. Ask someone who you trust to tell you what are some things they know that you are really proficient at/your strengths. In some cases, others know you lot better than you know yourself. Our friends/family have the inside scoop. They know our personality and are often equipped to aid u.s. identify our strengths and weaknesses because they have a valuable outsider perspective.

• It'due south probably a skilful idea to take your own self-cess, and compare information technology to your friend/family assessment of you. If in that location are overlaps, great, if not possibly you need to scrutinize either your own self-assessment or your friend/family assessment and see if the truth lies somewhere in between the ii.

• If y'all still don't trust the results from the above and then you can await into taking a "forcefulness test." These are designed to help users place their own strengths with the idea that our own individual biases could take an affect on how we evaluate our own strengths. The test is implemented to help erase those biases.

The idea of leveraging your personal strengths in order to maximize your growth is one that we should all consider and aim to pursue. It'due south difficult not to be fulfilled using our natural gifts. Office of leveraging is investing in and developing those strengths/gifts. This requires action. If you're not doing something with your skills and your knowledge, it becomes useless, information technology stagnates, and y'all kickoff to feel bad about yourself.

What are you good at? How about becoming better at it?

If you are ready to identify and leverage your strengths, retrieve that success does not happen overnight. You as an individual have to work difficult to identify your strengths and then work out a mode in which to leverage them to your overall do good and growth. It takes time, and so exist patient.

When you lot are interviewing for a task, information technology's common to be asked nigh your greatest strengths and how they will help you perform on the job. It'due south always a practiced idea to have examples of your strengths ready to share with interviewers.

Exist prepared with examples to evidence the interviewer how you've used your strengths to succeed on the job.

What the Interviewer Wants to Know

Interviewers ask this question to encounter whether or not your skillset is a good fit for the position and the company. This question also helps interviewers come across whether or not y'all accept researched the chore and the visitor thoroughly.

How to Answer the Question

When you're asked to describe your strengths, exist conscientious to set the right tone. Some interviewers may inquire you to "brag a little nearly yourself." In answering, you lot'll want to display a gracious cocky-confidence.

Don't understate your talents, but don't come up off also boastful either.

The best strategy is to practice answers nearly your strengths before the interview, taking time to plot out how yous tin sell your strength past also explaining how and why y'all think it will fill an employer'south demand in a specific surface area.

This allows you the great opportunity to redirect the focus upon the employer and how you'd do good the company.

Examples of the Best Answers

Accommodate the following answers to your background and experience.

My greatest forcefulness is my ability to work effectively with many dissimilar people. My strong communication skills have made me an constructive project director on dozens of projects over the by five years. Considering this job involves a lot of team projects, I know that my advice and interpersonal skills make me an ideal fit for the position.

Why it Works: This response relates the candidate'southward prior piece of work experience to the skills the job requires, showing the employer why they are a good fit for the position.

My greatest strength is my power to stay focused on my work and finish tasks in advance of a borderline. I'm not easily distracted, and this ways my performance is very strong. This skill will come up in handy because I know this is a very busy office nether constant deadline pressure. My focus will allow me to run into these deadlines successfully.

Why it Works: The candidate shows the hiring manager that they know this is a deadline-oriented position and they have the ability to thrive under pressure.

My time direction and organizational skills are my greatest strengths. I'm capable of juggling multiple projects at the same fourth dimension. At my last chore, I was typically assigned to be projection managing director on team assignments due to my ability to adhere to deadlines and go along runway of the team'southward progress. These organizational skills will allow me to effectively juggle all of the day-to-twenty-four hours operations of the role equally your office manager.

Why it Works: This reply discusses the bidder'due south greatest strengths and explains how it will help them multitask to handle the job for which they are interviewing.

My greatest strength is my listening ability. I pay conscientious attention to what I am being told, including specific information relating to current projects, details about future projects, and even what my colleagues did over the weekend. Being a good listener, I am highly constructive at completing projects efficiently because I don't take to exist told something twice. My listening skills besides enable me to effectively motivate others, which would be a function of my job as head of the section.

Why information technology Works: The candidate explains how their skills can assistance in different facets of the job, enabling them to exist successful at both motivating employees and project direction.

I am a very methodical and organized individual. In my previous administrative assistant position, I restructured the office filing organization, which fabricated it easier and quicker to access client charts. These strengths mean I volition be able to keep department records and files organized and structured so that departmental tasks tin can be completed in a shorter amount of time.

Why it Works: This response shows the interviewing, by sharing a specific case of a success story at work, how they could bring those abilities to the new employer.

I think that my greatest strength is my curiosity! I'1000 fascinated by learning what makes people tick, and so I enjoy asking my clients questions about their backgrounds and hobbies, as well as about their requirements. This helps me to establish a personal rapport with them and ensures that our consultative dialogues are productive. Since I know that your company and your sales program emphasize the importance of quality human relationship building, I recall y'all'd find that I'd fit into your climate quite well.

Why it Works: In this response, the applicant uses the question equally an opportunity to show why they'd be a terrific fit for the visitor, equally well as a strong candidate for the position.

Tips for Giving the Best Response

An effective answer to this question will demonstrate how your greatest strength, or multiple strengths, will make you an asset to the company.

When y'all respond, specifically relate your strengths every bit they relate to the task description. It'south a good thought to employ examples from prior positions you've held to show how your abilities helped you perform successfully in the workplace.

If you're not sure which strengths to talk over, this list of the elevation strengths employers look for tin can aid you make up one's mind.

Read the chore description thoroughly in advance of the interview, noting key skills that fit your experiences. For each of these skills, think of a specific instance when you displayed that skill. Also, look closely at the responsibilities you lot would exist assuming and any projects you might be undertaking.

Possible Follow-Up Questions

• What is your greatest weakness? – Best Answers
• How volition your greatest strength help you perform? – Best Answers
• What motivates you? – Best Answers

Key Takeaways

Make a Match: Employ your response to testify the interviewer why you're a perfect lucifer for the task.

Share Examples: Have examples of how yous used your strengths at work to show the interviewer how you can perform successfully.

Don't Overdo It: It's fine to exist proud of your accomplishments, but don't be boastful or brag about them.

Gain momentum in your personal and professional life

Posted May 07, 2019

Practise you desire to gain momentum and feel happier in your personal and professional life?

Capitalize on your strengths. Leverage your top character strengths not simply to atomic number 82 more than effectively but to feel greater well-existence in your life and work.

What are Character Strengths?

Your character strengths reflect your cadre personal identity and can bolster your thinking, feeling, meaning, and engagement. According to Martin Seligman, Ph.D., (2011) founder of positive psychology, the 24 graphic symbol strengths are the cornerstone of personal well-existence and a flourishing life. These strengths are: creativity, curiosity, judgment, honey of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, honey, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, cocky-regulation, appreciation of dazzler and excellence, gratitude, promise, sense of humour, and spirituality (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Know Your Top Strengths

To build greater momentum toward achieving your professional and personal goals, place your top strengths and learn to apply them more effectively. Building on our top (signature) strengths has been consistently shown to increase our happiness and amend work date, life satisfaction, and well-being (Niemiec, 2018). Using our strengths can increase our effectiveness beyond the domains of our lives, including work, schoolhouse, customs, relationships, and spirituality.

Strategy 1: Here are iv steps identified by positive psychologist Ryan Niemiec, Ph.D., to aid you identify and apply your top strengths. These steps have been validated internationally with populations of children and adults:

1. To boost your personal capital for life and leadership, identify your pinnacle strengths. Take the free VIA Survey, a quick (less than 15 minutes), self-cess of your personal strengths. It's highly evidence-based and has been taken past over seven 1000000 people throughout the world. You can notice the VIA at http://www.viacharacter.org/world wide web/Character-Strengths-Survey
2. Look at your VIA findings, and as Dr. Niemiec suggests, ask yourself what strengths are almost essential to who you are every bit an individual.
3. Choose one of these strengths and notice a style to use it in a new way each day for a week – at domicile or at work (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson (2005).
4. Notice how you feel and what thoughts and emotions emerge when you capitalize on this force.

Strategy ii: Use Your Top Character Strengths in Your Personal and Professional Life

Now figure out how to apply your top strengths to propel yourself toward your goals. Here are a few ways to use some of the 24 strengths:

Leadership – Developing and maintaining good relations among a group and engaging them toward accomplishment:

• Complement employees, colleagues, clients, family, and friends on a job well washed – 1-to-i, in a meeting, or past email.
• Strengthen interpersonal relationships past paying attention to your positivity ratio – share more than positive than negative messages with people when you communicate (Cameron, 2012).
• Create your own consultation team with co-workers or other professionals in your field, and offer each other moral support.
• Assist a colleague, co-worker, or team fellow member, who is struggling in the leadership procedure.
• Seek assistance and encouragement from others when you demand it.

Perseverance – Staying on task toward what you kickoff, despite challenges or obstacles:

• Gear up a meaningful long-term goal for your professional or personal life.
• On a daily or weekly basis, set small, manageable sub-goals to propel y'all toward this goal.
• Track your progress on your calendar or computer.
• When something gets in the manner, be adaptive. Figure out how to movement by it to reach your goal.
• Identify your almost productive hours of the twenty-four hours. Work on your goal during those times.

Kindness – Caring well-nigh the needs of others and existence willing to exercise a practiced deed without expecting a return:

• Offer a kind word to people as you become through the day, for example, at home, the role, coffee shop, via electronic mail, at meetings, or while traveling.
• Offering a small random act of kindness toward someone else – whether someone y'all know or a complete stranger.
• Share something with another person or offer to help them if you know something they don't know.
• Exist kind to yourself. Acknowledge your progress and achievements. Accept good care of yourself with nutritious foods, exercise, and enough sleep.

Strategy iii: Human action Every bit If

If, like many people, you have a negativity bias, focusing on areas of weakness rather than strengths, here'southward a strategy recommended by Shannon Polly and Kathryn Britton in their book, Graphic symbol Strengths Matter. "Act equally if" to pull up strengths at the lower end of your VIA strengths ratings. You lot can pretend you have that lower strength equally a height strength and act as if. Like an actor, practice positive outcomes and create new stories nigh how y'all utilize this forcefulness to build momentum and positive date. This strategy can make a difference in personal and professional realms – in your leadership office at work and equally a leader in your own life.

How will you leverage your character strengths to gain momentum and feel happier in your personal and professional person life?

*This post is for educational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.

Cameron, K. (2012). Positive Leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Niemiec, R. (2018). Character strengths interventions: A field guide for practitioners. Boston, MA: Hogrefe.

Peterson, C. & Seligman, E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

Polly, S. & Britton, K. (2015) Character strengths matter: How to live a full life. Positive Psychology News, LLC., Us.

Seligman, Chiliad.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new agreement of happiness and well-being. New York: NY: Atria Paperback.

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, North., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.

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