Your personal strengths are the unique qualities and abilities that energise you and help you excel in your personal and professional life.
Discovering and learning how to work with your personal strengths is one of the most effective and fun ways to boost your growth, happiness, and performance. By understanding and using your strengths, you can unleash your awesome, create more value, and achieve the results you desire—while feeling more engaged and fulfilled every day.
What are personal strengths?
Firstly, let’s clarify that I’m not talking about physical strength. It’s nothing to do with muscles, tendons and ligaments! Instead, I’m talking about “character strengths” or “personal strengths”. They are qualities and competencies that each individual has in varying amounts and combinations.
When I mention personal strengths, most people’s thoughts go to “Something I’m good at”. While the definition seems logical, it’s missing a key part of the puzzle: how we feel when we are using our strengths.
You see, it’s possible to be really great at something, and not enjoy it in the slightest. You might never have enjoyed doing it (but felt like you “should”). Or perhaps you used to enjoy it, but no longer do. Maybe you overused it, and that somehow drained the energy out of it for you.
When you get stuck doing that stuff you’re really good at but don’t enjoy, you’re putting yourself at risk of feeling disengaged and de-energised, if not completely burned out.
Strengths definitions
Strengths Profile: “…we define a strength as consisting of Performance;… Energy;… [and] Use”
Ryan M Niemiec: “…positive traits/capacities that are personally fulfilling, do not diminsh others, ubiquitous and valued across cultures, and aligned with numerous positive outcomes for oneself and others”
VIA Institute: “…positive parts of your personality that impact how you think, feel and behave.”
Daria Williamson: “things you are great at and that light you up”
But when you are able to do the stuff you’re great at and that lights you up, you’ve got the recipe for getting great results while looking after your wellbeing.
Why personal strengths? What about my weaknesses?
There are some pretty common questions that come up when I start talking about personal strengths. They include:
- Why shouldn’t I focus on my weaknesses? After all, it’s all my boss talks about!
- Shouldn’t I try to improve my weaknesses?
- Does focusing on my strengths mean ignoring my weaknesses?
- Isn’t it more important to fix my weaknesses than develop my strengths?
Our work and social cultures excel in shaming us for our weaknesses. As a result, most of us are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of claiming, and developing, our strengths. And we’ve come to believe that the only worthwhile pursuit is trying really, really hard to “fix” those weaknesses.
Does that sound like an energising, fun and productive way to be? Is working really hard on things we aren’t good at a good investment of our time and energy, compared to honing what we’re already good at? Absolutely not!
The downsides of focusing on weaknesses
It shocks a lot of people when I say this, trying to “fix” your weaknesses is a waste of time and energy. A weakness focus will make you feel disengaged, decrease your performance, and can even make you want to leave your job!
So can we ignore our weaknesses?
Only if you want them to trip you up!
It’s not helpful to totally ignore our weaknesses. What we want to do is only focus on them as much as is helpful.
There are two key ways that I recommend you do that:
- Understand your personal weaknesses and how they affect you; and
- Take smart action to minimise any personal weaknesses that create problems for you.
Some weaknesses cause enough trouble that we need to bring them up to a basic level of competence. But I haven’t yet encountered a scenario in which trying to develop a weakness into a strength is advisable.
The upsides of focusing on personal strengths
Strengths-focused teams and organisations have significantly higher levels of engagement, productivity, customer service ratings and organisational citizenship behaviours, and lower staff turnover.
People who use their strengths regularly are happier, have higher self-esteem and self-efficacy, are more resilience, learn faster and achieve more goals. Regular use of strengths is associated with lower reported levels of stress, and lower turnover.
Imagine how good it would feel to understand, use, and hone your strengths, and help others do the same!
How do I know what my personal strengths are?
There are many ways to identify your personal strengths. There’s no one right way to do it.
I’ve created a table that covers the five most effective ways that I have come across. Click on the image to download a PDF of the table.
I developed The Strengths Deck to give my clients a tangible way to think about and play with their strengths. There’s something about picking out cards, moving them around, pairing them up, and seeing them all laid out which helps the thinking and creative processes.
The deck contains 75 different strengths, and has room for you to add your own. I use it in face-to-face workshops and coaching, and it always leads to multiple ‘Aha!’ moments.
My clients tell me that they enjoy being able to “take charge” of their strengths, instead of relying on a computer programme to give them an answer. It’s a much more powerful and engaging experience to be sorting and choosing the cards for yourself.
The Strengths Deck is great for teams and individuals who want to get up-close-and-personal with their strengths, and to learn new approaches to weave their strengths into their life and work.
And, to help spread the word about personal strengths even further, I wrote a book! Unleash Your Awesome is your practical, down-to-earth handbook for identifying your strengths, and putting them to work for you, to create the kind of life and work you’ve been dreaming of.
I offer strengths-based coaching programmes to help you get clear on your strengths, and put them to work for you. If you’re interested in finding out more, check out my strengths-based coaching page.
The Strengths Profile
Researchers have found hundreds of methods for increasing the use of personal strengths. Here are a few simple ideas:
- Pick one strength to practice more consciously for the week
- Use a key strength in a new way (for example, bringing a “home” strength to work)
- Pay it forward – use one of your strengths to help a friend, family member or colleague
For a more thorough approach, I recommend one of my strengths coaching programmes. You’ll take complete a personal strengths assessment, then we’ll work together to help you find smart ways to use your personal strengths to achieve great results. We’ll also identify strategies to use your personal strengths to support your learned behaviours (things you’re good at but find draining) and weaknesses (things you aren’t good at and find draining).
The effective manager uses his [sic] strengths for more productivity. To achieve results, we must leverage all the available strengths—our own, the strengths of our colleagues, and those of our supervisors. The purpose and goal of the organization is to make people’s strengths productive and weaknesses insignificant.
Strengths coaching, facilitation and training
I offer coaching, facilitation and training in personal strengths for individuals and teams, from frontline through to executive levels.
To find out more, you can reach me through my contact page, or book online for your free, no-obligation discovery call today.
Resources
- The Strengths Deck by Daria Williamson
- Driving engagement by focusing on strengths – Gallup.com
- Measuring and managing employee work engagement: A review of the research and business literature – Mark Attridge (download)
- Personal Strengths & Weaknesses Defined – PositivePsychology.com
- Strengths Research – The Positive Psychology People
- Ten reasons to focus on your strengths – Psychology Today
- Character Strengths Interventions (book) – Ryan M Niemiec
