Do You Know Your Top Strengths? Focus On Them!

Isn’t it so easy to get lost in the things we are not good at? Not surprising, since we really do not like to suck (excuse the language) at something. Especially if it is something, that we thought we should be great at. But we are not going to be geniuses at everything. It would help though, if we really knew our top strengths.

Most of us might be “intuitively” aware of the things we are good at and that’s a great start. It can be really helpful though, to learn more about our top strengths using a scientific testing method. First of all it can give us clarity and structure regarding our strengths. For some it might even be an eye opening outcome.

Secondly it provides us with language to describe our strengths to others and and with this awareness, our leader will be able to build teams in which the members compliment each other. And you, as a hiring leader, will be able to hire to compliment your skills vs. defaulting to people with similar strengths like your own. Interestingly that’s a tendency we have and awareness can help prevent this behavior.

Now I honestly would not have thought about testing myself regarding my strengths, but my employer and the VP of our department are huge fans of the Gallup / Clifton strength finder and so we did that as an employee development exercise. I loved it. Like almost everything that’s new and that I do not want to do in the first place. Yes, typical me. Thankfully self-awareness is one of my strengths. And thanks to the test, I know that.

Here you can find a selection of online strengths tests. Some of them might be free of charge. Gallup is not free, but there is a low budget version and if you pay a little bit more, you can obtain the full results report with recommendations. You can find the Gallup / Clifton strengths finder here.

So we did this test and I now know, that my top 3 strengths are Individualization, Achiever, Strategic.

And my bottom 3 (aka weaknesses) are Harmony, Deliberative, Analytical. And honestly I am only sharing my less strong skills for completeness. Because I am not focusing at all on improving these. Thankfully the Clifton test did not only give me clarity on my strengths. I also got confirmation of a suspicion I had all along – I am not likely going to turn a weakness into a top strengths.

In fact, they only experienced once that a person retook their test and had a completely different strengths profile than the first time around. Between those two tests that person had lost family members, changed job and basically turned her entire life upside down. Not something that is likely to happen to many of us.

I am sorry, if you are aspiring to become a successful and famous painter, but actually really suck at painting, I did not mean to destroy your illusions. At all! If you still love doing what you do, keep going! Just manage your own expectations on future success and then go and have fun!

I really love singing. In the car. And I am absolutely not good at it, as my husband would likely confirm. I know that and I am just fine with it. It’s not about this being a strengths, it’s about the fun. So I am certainly not going to waste my money on a vocal coach. Sorry, hubby. It would not help anyways!

On a little more serious note, we have to make a decision. We can invest our energy, or worst case money, trying to catch up on a subject matter, that is just not a natural strength of ours. And in doing so limit our time and ability to further deepen our strengths. Or we can decide to focus on our strengths. And acquire the necessary minimum level of knowledge in our weaker areas. Just so that we can understand / follow what the experts, we are going to consult instead, are talking about and advising us on.

As a people leader i.e., should we really try to become an expert in everything? Or should we focus on our strengths and hire people that can cover the other skills. The ones that we are not likely going to be great at? I would suggest to do the latter.

As you now know, based on my strengths finder results, I am not a very analytical person. Not that this is news to me. I do of course make my decisions based on data, more than on assumptions (check out my post about assumptions here). And I totally do not feel uncomfortable making a decision with a lack of comprehensive data. I also know that there are people in my team, that are much faster in gathering and structuring the data, that will help me with my decision making.

Developing a strategy based on the data and “selling” the same through communication? Count me in. Exactly my top strengths. And not so much a strength of the colleague, who is awesome in identifying and analyzing the data for me. Win win.

I am not a very competitive person. Never have been. My Clifton results absolutely confirm that. In my skill portfolio competition is #27. If competition is one of your top strengths, it means you are measuring your progress against the performance of others. You strive to win first place and revel in contests.

Now I would not be great in any kind of competitive sports. I could not care less for the performance of others when it comes to assessing my own success. I am motivated by seeing my own progress. That’s what I am striving for.

As an employee I am not motivated by competitions, which is important to know for my leaders. Put me into a competitive situation and wait what happens next. I will pull back and get demotivated instead.

And I honestly never wasted any time in changing this. I personally think comparison is the thief of joy and me doing my thing has been the best approach for me. Corporate America is rather competitive. I am not and I will still be fine. Trying to change this, would not make me more successful. It would make me more miserable instead.

I have a team member, who is really, really awesome in everything data. Identifying the “right” data, analyzing the data and drawing the right conclusions. All exactly their strong suit. However they themselves did not know how valuable this strength was. Instead they were aspiring to become a partner manager like their colleagues.

This person is rather shy and introvert. Due to this, their communication skills are awesome, when it is written communication, but impacted by nervousness when speaking. They focused on improving these “weaknesses” instead of making the most of their many valuable strengths. Even though the mere attempt of working on them made, them feel uncomfortable, even miserable. Glad I was able to stop this, when we started to work together.

As a people leader, we really want to support our team members in identifying their strengths. And if they feel they need to improve on their weaknesses to be valuable to the team, we should be right there correcting that impression. Instead we should celebrate their strengths!

My colleague is striving in his role, using all his strengths and each day improving on them. He is enjoying his work and the entire team is relying on his strengths as an instrumental part of the overall team contributions.

So bottom line is, while you should understand the basics of the what every member of your team is responsible for, you do not need to be an expert. That’s why you are hiring experts for. Trying to be as good as they are usually stems from an “underlying” feeling of having to outperform others to be their leader. And this could not be any more wrong!

We should not waste our time trying to become someone we are obviously not. I am not going to be math genius and I am just fine with that. But I am strong in identifying the right talent and then arranging team members and tasks to best execute on the strategies my brain defaults to, when presented with a challenge. I am absolutely focusing on this and since I am also a learner, I am learning something new every day.

Let’s use our scarce time wisely and focus on continuously growing our strengths. If we can successfully do that, we will be a very valuable colleague, friend and partner. Do you agree?