How can you be successful if you don’t know who you are? How can you be successful when your success has no springboard? Okay, so I was discussing the concept of leadership with a group of young professionals I coach recently and I asked them to enumerate their individual strengths. Simple enough question isn’t it? You will be surprised to hear that nary a one was prepared to answer this question. I asked the same question a few days later to another set of mentees and it was the same – blank stares.
Do you have a ready answer to this question? Can you name your five major strengths without the aid of some psychological questionnaire? Have you ever thought about your strengths at all? What are those things that give you your edge; things that make you better than the rest? Do you know? Or have you never given it much thought?
It’s amazing how we are all so intimately aware of our weaknesses – I eat too much, I am lazy, I cannot communicate well. I am quick tempered; I didn’t have a very sound education, I stutter; I am timid; I don’t have the right connections… I could go on, but you get my point don’t you? We all rehearse our perceived weaknesses daily as the things standing in the way of our success, right?
While we seem so intimately aware of your weaknesses, why are we so oblivious of our strengths? Yet we say we want to be successful. Which do you think is the harbinger of success? It’s ironic that our strengths can be so easy to overlook, because they’re clamoring for our attention in the most basic way.
Whenever we exercise strength we feel strong, don’t we? When we do something so effortlessly that people find extremely hard to pull off, you wonder what all the fuss is about, right? That’s your strength clamoring for your attention. It wants you to be intimately aware of its existence and dedication to make you shine. It’s no error that psychologists term some of these strength unconscious competences. We take them for granted, yet they are our ticket to fame, fortune and success.
To enjoy success on a regular basis we need to turn our minds on and be conscious of our strengths – be conscious of yourself and how you feel as you’re completing your day-to-day tasks. Most of the time, we’re so focused on getting our work done that we don’t really have time to notice how we feel about it. At the end of the day, we go home and tell our loved ones that it was a good day or a bad day, but we haven’t made the effort to notice why the day feels good or bad as it happens. When you make the conscious effort to notice yourself at work (or at play, for that matter), you will find that you really do have more strengths than you ever believed. Marcus Buckingham calls them “strong-moments” —times when you feel energized, engaged, and yet successful. Your strong moments point to your strengths. Knowing your strengths can help you replicate behavior that will almost guarantee success every time.
When you know your strengths, you will pilot your life tasks towards those strengths, you will take jobs that will have you excel in those strengths; most importantly you will know your secret formula for success – for if you can replicate a winning formula (strength) enough, it’s only a matter of time before you hit the jackpot. But first we need to find the means to identifying these strengths each day.
What I am about to share I learnt from Marcus Buckingham as well, he says that if you can remember the simple acronym SIGN you can identify strengths when they are exhibited in your daily routine. And ‘SIGN’ simply means:
- S— Success: Do you feel a sense of triumph about finishing this task?
- I— Instinct: Do you unconsciously look forward to this task?
- G— Growth: Are you mentally focused? Does the task easily grab your attention? Are you uncommonly creative when executing this task?
- N— Needs: Does this task fulfill one of your needs e.g. for affirmation, recognition, and sense of accomplishment?
If you notice yourself feeling any of those feelings while doing a task, chances are that activity is one of your strengths; and you need to replicate this task as often as possible.
It’s important to discover your strengths because the luckiest people are the ones who get to say to themselves every day: “Today, I had the chance to do what I excel at.” You end the day feeling accomplished, and you are applauded, respected, promoted.
Is it luck? No, far from it – it’s simply playing to your strengths. And playing to your strengths consistently will bring you success.
I hear someone ask “Liz, what about my weaknesses? Don’t they have any impact on my success?” Another person I hear is asking “do you mean I should live in self-denial, Liz?” No and No, to both questions.
What I am saying is that as much as you are intimately aware and ever conscious of your weaknesses, you need to be even more intimately aware and conscious of your strengths. Have you ever heard that your life flows the direction of your most dominant thoughts? Do you believe that? Have you ever had a period where you were thinking so hard and consistently of something, and after a while that thing you were thinking about happened? Why do you suppose that was? Luck? No, that’s the Law of Attraction at work.
Now let me ask you, which would you want to attract to your life – your weaknesses or your strengths? What you think about the most you will become. So please choose to become your strengths, so that you live your strongest life and enjoy consistent success.
Does being more conscious of your strengths over your weaknesses mean you don’t have any weaknesses? Absolutely not! If you have no weaknesses, you may as well sprout wings and go on up to heaven. I personally feel that our weaknesses keep us humble and honest. When you are tempted to grow a big head and get puffed up by your strengths, your weaknesses will anchor you. Kind of like the ‘Yin and Yang’ making a perfectly balanced universe.
Your strengths are more evident in the presence your weaknesses; and all the more precious and delightful. We never deny our weaknesses; we work on turning them around, becoming with humility better human beings.
It’s been a lovely conversation, hasn’t it? We have explored ourselves. Hopefully you are more intimately aware of the powerhouse that you are, and the potential for success that lives in you. There is absolutely nothing wrong in knowing your SIGN and daily working your strengths to be a success. And once you do that, you can chart a course to mastery.
Speaking of mastery, check out my blog on the subject here.
Go get ‘em tiger!
