Why You Need to Know Your Strengths

Are you wanting to get into the driver's seat of your work life? Do you want to shape your work to something that gets you excited about your work day?

One of the best ways to begin the journey of an invigorated work life is to consider your strengths. Do you know yours?  Why you need to know your strengths could make the difference between feeling dragged down by your work and feeling excited about it.

Below are 3 misconceptions about strengths and some ideas of how to look at yours in a different way.

Strengths are what you are good at. 

This is a common misconception. Often what you are good at is what you have done over and over again; sometimes you become an expert. It may be a skill or a trait that was encouraged by others or something that you fell into. For example, as a first job, you may have worked in a restaurant and became really good at interacting with irate customers. Is it a strength? Not necessarily. The clue is if it left you feeling drained. That would be a weakness.

A weakness, according to Marcus Buckingham, is something that leaves you feeling weak. Depleted. Spent. Done in. Worn out.

A strength is something that you do that leaves you feeling strong. Engaged. Energized. Enlivened. Invigorated.

Other people can tell you your strengths.

Identifying your strengths is challenging!  As you were growing up, strengths were not a focus. More likely you were taught about what needs improvement. This starts in school where there is an emphasis on not only being good at everything, but to spend more time on correcting your weaknesses, which were often pointed out by others.

This is the root of looking to others to tell you your strengths.

Why other people can't tell you what your strengths are is because they can't be you. A strength, as described above, is a feeling. And feelings are an inside job. When we think of being energized, it is a sense of feeling alive. I like to think of the word expansive when I am doing something that makes me feel alive. It gives a sense of space.

A strength is something you learn.

You don't decide what a strength is. It is discovery work. Think of your strengths as your natural gifts and talents. There are lots of clues to your strengths - like what you loved to do as a child. When Carl Jung was a child, he loved digging in the dirt. Later in his life, he noted that his work was about unearthing the unconscious and bringing it to light; he tied this to his childhood delight of playing in the mud.

What I appreciate about Marcus Buckingham's work is that he says that we will grow the most when we are using our strengths. Part of this is because we will be more engaged, more curious and more willing to learn more. The bonus will be experiencing more happiness.

Why Work That Matters

As we are saying farewell to 2024, there is an air of new beginnings. Even if you are not into resolutions, the slowing down after the festive season is a great opportunity to switch gears.

I have a couple of ideas for you for winding up 2024 and getting excited about 2025.

1. The first is a year-end review that I have done for years. In reflecting back on the past year, it helps me get clear on how I want to focus for the next year. I think of it as pre-planning. There also is a connection to a great on-line resource. Check it out here.

2. Some ideas on what you could do if you think it is time to change in your work life.

First though, I wanted to talk about why I call the work that I do Finding Work That Matters.

It's about work that is in alignment with who you are. It's about doing work that engages you in just the right way. Doing Work That Matters is about work that matters to YOU.

Do you recognize yourself in my story? One of my first jobs was working in a factory; what I had to do all day long was taught to me in 5 minutes. After a week it was achingly dull. But I had bills to pay so I stayed. What I learned from that job was the high cost of a horrible work fit. My life energy was being sucked out of me. Gratefully, I escaped. But it raised questions for me.

Like... Is it possible to find work that pays the bills AND where I am excited to get up in the morning? Could I find a job where I felt fired on all cylinders? 

Another way I ended up looking at it was...  "how do I find work that fits?"  Like a well-worn shoe, "how do I move towards something that is shaped to me?" Something that doesn't leave me at the end of the day feeling drained, and little energy for what is important to me. In short, work that matters.

Because of my own struggles with work, I was drawn to working with others who felt bewildered about where to take their work life next. I created workshops and worked one-on-one with people for over 30 years, and designed the Finding Work That Matters program.

Over the years, people have come to me frustrated with their work scene. They often say things like:

"What about the practicalities? Will the job pay enough?" Good question. The problem with the question is that if you ask it first, a bunch of doors close, possibilities that may very well lead to exactly what it is that you need. Practicalities have an important place in the discussion, but not at the beginning.

"But I have a great pension plan. I can't possibly quit my job."  Benefits like pensions are called "golden handcuffs," because they are so attractive. My answer to that is you don't need to quit your job. The idea is to keep yourself in exploration mode until the answer is found. There are often more solutions to problems than you think. But the trick here is that you have to spend some time with the exploration to come to ideas of work might work.

"But I have thought of many ideas and I haven't found anything that will work. I can't do what I love." Finding work that fits for you is not an easy answer. If it was, you would have done it already. The challenge here is to slow down and break it down into steps. That is what I've done. For more about what I offer, you can find it here.

One of the first steps is to look at our strengths.

Unfortunately, we haven't been trained very well in knowing our strengths. Even if we think we know them, we often diminish them. Let me tell you what strengths are not; something we are good at. Strengths are more complex and dynamic than our skills or abilities. Strengths are personal; nobody can really tell you what yours are. The key is to identify them for yourself.

For more about strengths, have a look at this blog posting. You are also welcome to check out my offerings on my life work consulting page.

Here’s to an amazing 2025! May your work nourish and feed your soul!

Work matters in the time of COVID-19

How are you doing? After nearly 4 months of COVID-19 hovering over our lives, how has your world changed?  Have you had some thoughts about your life?

As nearly every workplace has been affected by the virus threat, has it given you a pause to consider what you want?

At first, I was keenly aware of how so much of the busyness in my life stopped.

It was a weird sensation. As if I was going at warp speed (I’ve been watching old episodes of Star Trek), and then there was suddenly no place to go. 

While it took me a while to wrap my head around a global pandemic and settle down to new daily routines, I have been considering how this is connected to doing work that matters.  In the midst of this, is there perhaps a hidden possibility?

• Are we moving slow enough to finally, finally consider what it is that want to contribute to the world?

• In the midst of this uncertainty, are we reminded that uncertainty is always not far away? And that if we keep pushing our hopes and dreams into the future, will we really have that future?

• Are we getting enough rest to see how staying in jobs that are wearing out our souls has a high price?

What I have heard over the weeks has been lots of we-don’t-know. We don’t know the nature of the virus, how many lives it will take, when the curve will flatten, and how we are going to get this all running again. That is a lot of not knowing.

• Not knowing is scary business. What if… we get sick? can we really get the help we need? what about the economy?

• Not knowing is sometimes okay with a big dash of overwhelm. Our nervous systems are on high alert. Are you experiencing times of fatigue or agitation? These are signs of a revved up system.

• Not knowing is unsettling. What else is around the corner? Will life ever be like it was before?

Certainty and uncertainty - the complexity of being a human

We want certainty. It helps soothe our busy, anxious selves. We need it – to a certain degree. We also need a nudge of uncertainty. They are both a key part of this life.  But we have been playing the certainty hand for a long time, and we need a reminder that life has this big other component. There is so much we don’t know. Scientists who studied for many years talk about what they know is very small compared to what we don’t know.

Can we befriend uncertainty?

If we can develop some relationship with the unknowing, that will help keep us on track. And it will help us go to places beyond our own limitations of our lives. 

I hope the pandemic gives us space to look more deeply at our lives. I hope it gives us breathing space to move in a new direction, especially if the old direction was holding us back and keeping us focussed on what doesn’t really matter in the long run. And maybe we are making some connections with our being unhappy with our work and how it touches every other part of our lives. 

Here’s the trouble. It isn’t very easy to change course once we are in motion. The pandemic offers us some hope. What we have shown over the last few months is that we can stop the maddening pace. We’ve done it. And could we possibly do it without a pandemic? Yes. And. Sometimes it takes something big to wake us up. To help us look at our lives with a new lens.

The response I got pre-COVID-19 was – it is overwhelming to even know where to begin when we consider what work will get us excited to get up in the morning. 

The answer is in how we do anything big. Don’t expect to do it all at once. Buildings get erected one floor at a time. Trains get to their destination one kilometre at a time. It is all about breaking it down into steps.

There are some caveats that will help in the process:

1. This does not mean that you have to hand in your resignation tomorrow. First of all, you need to get clear and then make a plan. And that plan may mean staying right where you are (with adjustments).

2. Anything this big and this important needs to have a fun component. That helps with motivation and not abandoning ship too soon.

3. Can you be open to new ideas or where ideas may come to you? That will help you see things you just can’t see right now.

What to do next

Ready for the step by step process?

Step 1: 

What are your gifts and talents? There are hints along the way – what makes you say yes!!

Step 2: 

Get others on board. Tell them your gifts and talents and then ask them if they have any ideas for you. Write them down. Later, look over them and find what leaps out at you.

Step 3: 

Brainstorm a list of job possibilities. If you find it yourself getting stymied, look at the job postings or an Internet search on your strengths and career possibilities. Here’s some ideas if you like working with people.

Step 4: 

Talk to people doing various occupations that you have selected. Try several so that you get a broad view of possibilities. Find out what the work entails. Afterwards, do some stocktaking on what you learned through the process and how these occupations fit and did not fit for you.

Step 5: 

Make a plan. Do you need education? Do you need to connect with people in the field? Do you need a conversation with your boss?

Does that sound simple? Here’s the wild card. With important matters like this, the answer may not be where you might expect. It may not come in the time frame you want. What I know is that if you turn your attention in that direction, the answer will come. Even if it has eluded you for a long while. 

Often those answers happen when we are still.  Are you ready for the lurking of the corona virus and the resulting isolation to allow you to deepen some ideas you have about your life?

Can you turn away for a short while from fear and worry, be quiet and consider what it is that you truly want?

 If you liked this blog posting you may also like:

The Secret to Getting the Work of Your Dreams

Great Advice About Work from Albert Einstein

The worst career advice I ever received

I was one of those people. Looking for a job without experience. I had just moved to the big city, ready to spread my wings, and getting away from that small town that was holding me back. 

Three months later I still didn’t have a job. My meager savings were drying up.

 Now, here’s the thing you might have noticed. In desperate times, people offer a lot of advice. It is all framed in a tidy parcel – “You just need to do this.” 

The majority of the advice I got was this: 

Take an inventory of your skills.  Use that to pound the pavement.

 What I know now is that focussing on skills is a bad idea. The worst idea. For the following reasons.

Employers don’t hire for skills.

They hire for the right fit. After all, when you are at work, you are representing the company or organization. The employer would like you to represent them in a good way, probably like they do. Or even better.

You can always learn new skills. Especially ones that are called hard skills. That might be a computer program or how to operate a machine. 

Soft skills are also learnable.  Examples of soft skills are communication skills or working with a team. But often they are part of the attributes that make up a good employee. 

I read a survey once of what skills employers look for in new hires. The entire list was soft skills. Third on the list was passion. I definitely wasn’t expecting to see that. But it makes sense. The upshot is employers want people who want to be there.  

What if you hate using that skill?

When I was just starting out in the work world, I was focussed on gaining skills. Accumulating them like some packrat. There was a vague idea that if I had enough skills, I would always be able to get a job.

I liked the idea of learning new things so that held my interest. For a while. I moved on to the next thing. At that time, I didn’t give much thought to whether I actually enjoyed what I was doing. I noticed that I was feeling frustrated with my work and wondered what was wrong with me because all of my co-workers seemed to be able to grin and bear it just fine.

I know now that those jobs were a terrible fit for me. It didn’t matter what skills I had.

Even though I had the skills, I had zero interest in doing them. 

How I finally came to shift my wonky perspective was actually doing something that I enjoyed. Eventually I saw that what was behind my work enjoyment was when I was using my strengths.   

Strengths are where it’s at.  

Want to find out your strengths? Check out this article. 

What do you think?  Leave your comments below. Feel free to share what your worst career advice was. 

Why we stay in jobs we hate - Part Three: Self Doubt

This blog posting is the third in a 3-part series on why we stay in jobs we hate. Links to the first 2 articles are at the bottom of this page.

How we land in our jobs has a lot to do with circumstance, happenstance and being in a certain place at a certain time. Then it is easy to see how we stay; it’s the path of least resistance. Have you seen the opportunity to do something different but don’t act on it? Do you want to make a change but don’t know how? Deep inside of us is a belief, a belief that holds us back. How it shows up is self doubt.

Here’s the story of my crossroad and how I wrestled with trying to find my way.

I was paying for groceries with my credit card the day I was invited to a party, my bank account with only enough funds for the next month’s rent.

A plan needed to be made. Soon.

A single parent of 2, out of a long-time invigorating gig which sopped up a good deal of my energy and focus, I had no idea of where to turn. After several months of EI, I hadn’t figured out my next step. My claim had ended. I felt like I had squandered my time.

Up to this point, everything was about something or someone else. Parenting. Changing the world.

What do you want to do with your life? I kept asking myself.  I had no idea how to answer that question.

My parents had a totally different life. When my dad was only able to make a piecemeal living in southern Manitoba, my parents decided to go up north where there was the promise of many jobs and lots of opportunities.

My father never had a career plan. With a Grade 8 education and a strong body, his opening appeared in the construction field.  Which he did until he died. I didn’t ever know if he liked his job. Since he was an unhappy man, I am leaning towards no.

My mother worked in the family business, kept a busy family clothed, organized and fed; she went into the workforce when we were teenagers, having found the opportunity through a friend in the community.  

What I had learned from their role modeling was that you keep your eyes and ears open and grab those opportunities where you could.  

I wasn’t seeing any.

I had been doing financial management, having learnt the field from on-the-job training. Was that enough to land me a job? Before that I was self-employed as a typesetter for a recipe book company. Were there any jobs like that?

Confused and lost

I realize now that the approach I was using was taking me in circles. By focussing on what I could do or where the jobs were, I was confused and lost.

What was clear is that I needed to get a job.

Unemployed and no prospects, I was questioning my ability to find work even though my job search was meager and unfocussed.

Later I would hear that 80% of people who found jobs were already employed.

Confidence was the ticket I heard from employers when they talked about how they chose their candidate.  That wears thin the longer you are unemployed.

Self doubt and fear

Self-doubt and fear are poor companions on a job search journey. Not only did I have a lot of confusion about where to go next, I had these other two responsibilities along for the ride. They needed me to get in gear. 

All of that self doubt and fear resulted in me being paralyzed. I wanted to make decisions but I couldn’t. I wanted to leap into my brilliant future but I couldn’t even imagine it. 

Many years later, there was an incident that shone a light on what was happening for me.

As a young employment counsellor, I met a former client on the street, a fellow who I hadn’t seen for a long time, not since he dropped out of the course he was taking and then vanished. He said he had wanted to talk to me for a long time.

He said to me, “Do you know why I didn’t follow through with that program?”

“No,” I said.

“Because you believed in me more than I believed in myself.” 

I realized that this is what happened to me long ago when I was scrambling to find work. I didn’t believe in myself.

What we hope for when we are struggling is there is someone who believes in us enough to get us going. What we need is to understand what is holding us back.

At the party, I saw people I hadn’t seen in a long time. Inevitably the question of what I was doing came up.

“Nothing.” I wanted to crawl out of the room.

One of my former teachers in a women’s studies program asked if I would consider working for the magazine where she was on the editorial board. “Yes!” I said. We set up a time for the interview.

Start where you are

Here’s what I learned from that situation (and others). Parties, as a job search tool, work.

And even amidst self-doubt, I had a lot to offer. I couldn’t see it. But my former teacher could. She believed in me. 

I ended up staying in finance, not an ideal match for me but it allowed me the flexibility to be with my homeschooled children, pay the rent and I gained some pretty useful skills.  The pressure was off.

This allowed me to have space to really think about what was a good fit for me. And to address the real elephant in the room. There was a core belief that was tripping me up.

What holds us back

What I had brought along from my childhood was a belief that I didn’t matter. This threaded its way throughout my life but those threads formed a massive screen when it came to thinking about what it was that I wanted in the work scene. 

I didn’t know. Because it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter that I find work that was a good fit for me. It didn’t matter that I enjoy myself at work. It didn’t matter when I dragged myself to work and felt like there was no hope for anything different.

That translated into not going to school to get the skills I needed.

Like my client, I did not believe in myself.

Someone to believe in me would have been helpful. But now I understand that you can have a lot of people rooting for you and that is not enough to dint the wall of not believing in yourself.

Believing in yourself is not something you can just decide to do. It means looking closely at that screen to see what is behind there.

Self doubt is the screen. What is holding that up is a belief, a core limiting belief that has been playing in the background for a long time. Once I saw how it operated, everything changed. 

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like the other 2 in the series:

Why we stay in jobs we hate: Part 2 - The Comfort Trap

Why we stay in jobs we hate: Part 1 - Unhappy is the Norm

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