Are you Setting Yourself up for Success?

How would you describe your typical day at work?

You spend most of the day doing things you don’t really enjoy, going through the motions because that’s your job.

OR

You spend your day doing the things you love, being highly productive and feeling satisfied with your achievements?

If you answered yes to the second question than there is no need to read any further. You are probably setting goals based on your strengths and talents and building your personal and professional life on your assets. Congratulations!

You’ve learned to recognise and develop your talents and find roles that best suit you finding ways to apply them when necessary.

If you answered yes to the first question then here are some tips on turning this around so that you can enjoy the work you do even more by playing to your strengths.

What are your signature strengths?

The first step to making this happen is to identify your strengths.

Strength is something that you exercise frequently and with ease. You may not even recognise it as a strength because it is so easy.

There are a couple of ways to do this one way is to ask people for feedback: 

• What are you the go to person for?
• What adjectives would people use to describe you?
• If I were to ask someone who worked for you to describe you, what would they say?

Another is to take some simple on line questionnaires:

•  Values in Action (VIA)
•  StrengthsFinder           

You can use either of these approaches or a combination – the choice is yours. Whichever you choose I would recommend that you take some time to really get to know what they are and how you currently display them.

Then… ask yourself:

How can you apply your strengths more to achieve your outcomes?

How can you build a bridge using each of your signature strengths to develop your road map to get you where you want to?

This is not about ignoring weaknesses or development areas that warrant attention it’s just that the intention is not to dwell there.

Then…apply a strategy for one week:

Day one = Identify one of your strengths and notice where is this strength in action.

Day two = Brainstorm new ideas, novel approaches to applying this strength. How can you apply this to make the most of a situation?

Day three to five = Put this into practice and review your results.

Then…Review how things have gone and adapt as necessary making sure you play to your strengths.

Top performers have very specific goal setting habits. They know their capabilities and set goals slightly above their current levels, whereas low achievers are unaware of their ability levels and often set goals that are unrealistically ambitious.

Knowledge of your strengths can be used to re-craft jobs, negotiate development challenges, construct teams on the basis of complimentary strengths and build better relationships with colleagues and superiors.

So what is your next step in being seen and acknowledged as the talented individual that you are?

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

Steve Jobs