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3 Ingredients of a Strength

July 31, 2010 By

Photo by 96dpi on Flickr

Photo by 96dpi on Flickr

What are strengths, exactly? We all have an idea that strengths are things we are good at, but is there more to it? Yes, there are actually three main ingredients:

Talent

Strengths start with a talent, something you naturally do well. That’s not to say you do always it perfectly or that you start off performing it brilliantly. When others notice that you do something well, that is a place to start. Oddly enough, we often disregard the comments of others in our areas of strength. When you begin to recognize something as a talent of yours, though, you will often recall several times that others praised you for that ability.

Drive

As Dan Pink spoke about in his book Drive (you can see his TED message here), intrinsic motivation is the most important. When you have the internal drive to do something, you want to do more of it and you are resilient in the face of challenge. Both are good qualities when you are working to develop a strength.

Experience

Experience is the third ingredient. It’s easy to attain that experience when you do something well and you have a strong drive to do more of it. Experience, therefore, is almost a default ingredient of a strength.

The sum is greater than its parts

It’s vital to recognize that all three ingredients are necessary parts of a strength. If you have talent, but it doesn’t thrill you do it and you hardly ever practice it – that is not a strength. If you have a drive to do something, but little natural talent and hardly any experience – that is not a strength. If you have experience in an activity, but no talent and no motivation to practice it – that is not a strength.

Your strengths can help you build a powerful life of meaning and purpose. Look for feedback about your talents, develop those that excite you, and prove yourself by doing it over and over. You will shine.

Your Turn

Do you have any talents that aren’t backed up by drive and experience? Experience that isn’t backed up by talent or drive? Drive to do something in an area where you are not talented or experienced in?

Share your experiences in the comments!

Filed Under: Developing Strengths

Two Truths and a Lie About Introverts

July 30, 2010 By

Have you ever played the icebreaker game of Two Truths and a Lie where you make three statements about yourself and the others have to guess which is a lie? I thought it might be fun to talk about Introverted traits and see if any of you can relate to the common assumptions about Introverts.

Two Truths and a Lie

  1. In conversation, it’s pretty easy to tell when someone has a preference for Introversion
  2. Introverts tend to keep to themselves
  3. If you want to be friendly with an Introvert, don’t just stop by to say Hi

I’ll give you a minute to decide which you think is a lie among the truths.

Seems like a good time to throw in a picture:

Photo by kelsiedipernaphotography on Flickr

Photo by kelsiedipernaphotography on Flickr

Okay, time’s up. What do you think? Let’s go over the statements.

In conversation, it’s pretty easy to tell when someone has a strong preference for Introversion

In my experience, detecting an Introverted preference during conversation is relatively easy. When you ask a question, how long does it take for the person to respond and how organized is their answer? How you interpret the answer will be based on your knowledge of the person and the context of the question, but generally an Introvert will pause before answering to process the question and their response will be more organized than that of someone who prefers Extraversion.

I consider this statement to be true.

Introverts tend to keep to themselves

There are many Introverts who hesitate to identify themselves as such because the American public seems to believe that means they don’t like to be around people. This is simply not the case. Being introverted is not the same as being antisocial. While it is true that Introverts need down time to recharge, this doesn’t have to happen in a vacuum. There are many Introverts who recharge around family or close friends, though generally not in conversation. They read, watch TV, hike – anything that gives them some time to reflect or just to not focus on the frenzied outside world. Introverts can’t recharge by interacting with people, but most will say that having a few folks around during a calm activity is quite nice.

This statement is false.

If you want to be friendly with an Introvert, don’t just stop by to say Hi

While Introverts can be quite social, stopping by to say a quick Hello just because you were in the area can derail their train of thought for some time. A Gallup study recently found that after an interruption it takes someone about 25 minutes (rounding up) to get back on task. With Introverts, it can take even longer. If you want to be friendly with an Introvert, send them a quick email or Instant Message (IM) and let them know you’re hoping to drop by in about half an hour. Don’t just drop in because they were sitting quietly at their desk. You’re relationship will be better for it.

This statement is true.

Your Turn

Do you prefer Introversion or Extraversion? Do my opinions about the above statements match your experiences? Tell me the in the comments.

PS – You can read more about 5 Ways to Guess Someone’s Personality Type in this earlier post.

Filed Under: Personality

The Acid Test for Limiting Beliefs

July 29, 2010 By

Photo by 34053291@N05 on Flickr

Photo by 34053291@N05 on Flickr

Today is my son’s birthday. He’s no longer a baby and not yet a pre-teen. Yep, we’re at that fun transition stage where he’s still young enough to want to cuddle sometimes but old enough to want his own independence.

He’s also old enough to develop his own limiting beliefs.

This morning as I thought about this, I realized I might be responsible for some of them. There are some beliefs I want to encourage. There are others I want to actively try NOT to pass along to him.

Some of the limiting beliefs that I want to encourage in him:

  • I should treat others the way I want to be treated
  • I should be respectful to adults, and also to other kids
  • When I feel shame, the best way to get rid of it is to apologize and ask forgiveness

They are limiting, but in a good way. If he follows them, he will change his behavior when necessary and will get along a bit better in this world.

Here are a couple that I recognize in myself, and that aren’t always true. These rules of thumb I want him to use generally, but realize that sometimes they don’t apply:

  • I should always do what adults and authority figures tell me
  • I should do my best to look at the bright side of life and be cheerful

Here are some that I fight against myself, and hope he doesn’t inherit:

  • I need to please everybody
  • If everyone isn’t happy with me, I must be doing something wrong
  • If someone doesn’t like me, I need to work harder until they do
  • When I feel angry, depressed or frustrated I should stuff it down and cover it with false cheer and happy behaviors

The Acid Test

For each of these limiting beliefs that I’ve grown up with, the test I ran them through to see whether they were helpful or hurtful is this:

Would I like my child to believe this and act accordingly?

Your Turn

What limiting beliefs do you hold? Which ones help you get along better in the world, and which should you modify or abandon?

Filed Under: Leading Your Life

Find Your One Eyed Kingdom

July 28, 2010 By

Photo by 66176388@N00 on Flickr

Photo by 66176388@N00 on Flickr

In a meeting with my team at work, I was becoming more frustrated by the minute. I’ve used my strengths as a programmer, web developer, help desk manager, database architect, and a business analyst. I’m also an ENFP, honed in on the needs and motivations of people and keenly interested in building relationships – whether in my personal life or with a customer. However, in this group of brilliant engineers (almost all of them ISTJ‘s, honed in on the need for planning and organizing and keenly interested in how things work – not people) my ideas were falling on deaf ears. Actually, I can’t even say they were deaf ears. They were definitely hearing me, they were just dismissing everything I said.

Stung by what I took as criticism and angry that I wasn’t being heard, I stopped voicing my ideas and waited the meeting out. My strengths were useless in this situation. Suddenly, a saying I had read before popped into my head and helped me take a new perspective:

In a land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

In my previous roles my analytical and technical abilities were valued because I was working with a team of like-minded people eager to build customer relationships and not all of them had technical experience. Here, my team was technically proficient and analytically talented and my strengths were nothing special. In fact, my focus on people and building relationships was actually a detriment because everyone was focused on solving the problem with a technical solution.

In this world, I was average. I realized that if I seek out situations where we are trying to solve problems that I am well suited for and where my strengths are different than those of my team, I am more likely to be heard and appreciated.

Your Turn

Where do you shine? Are your strengths different than your team? Do you work on the kind of problems you are best at solving? How can you make yourself a one-eyed king? Share your story in the comments!

Filed Under: Leading Your Life

3 Steps to a Small “But” and a More Positive Life

July 27, 2010 By

Photo by thebusybrain on Flickr

Photo by thebusybrain on Flickr

Do you feel like you aren’t enjoying life as much as you could? Do people ever accuse you of being negative? Do you want to become more passionate about life? Here’s a tip for living a more positive life – strive for a small “but”.

How many times have you heard an authority figure – a manager, a parent, a teacher – say something nice about you or your work and you can’t enjoy it because you’re waiting for that, “BUT … ” part of the statement? Have you ever been surprised when it didn’t come, and then found you couldn’t remember the positive things they said because you were focused on defending yourself against a criticism? Here are some ways to get the “but”s out of your own discussions:

1) Replace “but” with “and”

I read once that impromptu actors practice their skills by using one rule when they get together – each person begins their segment with the word “and”. It seems like a simple thing to do, but and you’d be surprised at how difficult it is to switch that one little word in your responses (see?).

If you do nothing else this week, give this first step a try. When a friend comes to you and asks you to look over a report she wrote, try something like “This is very well organized and easy to follow AND if you changed the wording of the introduction a little it would really grab the reader’s attention so they would absorb every word.” When a co-worker has an idea during a brainstorming session, you could say “That’s pretty creative AND I think we could also …” Responding in a positive way will encourage your friends to seek you out for your feedback.

2) Receive feedback with something other than, “But …”

These points might make more sense with an example, so I’ll share an experience of preparing a speech for a Toastmasters contest. First, let me acknowledge that I am a strange animal because I truly ENJOY public speaking. Joining Toastmasters has given me an opportunity to find my voice and share my thoughts with groups of people. That is not to say that it’s an easy path. While I love talking with people and see public speaking as an extension of that, creating a planned speech that educates, inspires and entertains is difficult.

I brought my fledgling speech to a dear friend and coworker of mine, who suggested that I bring up a point that I had already included. I could have said, “But I talked about that point here, in paragraph 5 …” It was hard not to say that. Instead, I substituted it with “Great! How do I make that point stand out?” This positive response allowed my friend to continue on and give me some excellent suggestions to incorporate. If I hadn’t changed my response, I wouldn’t have received that additional info. He would have closed down, not wanting to offend.

3) Replace “But I can’t do that!” with “I’ll give it a try”

Do you greet new ideas with suspicion and worry that you’ll fail? If so, you might be cheating yourself of growth opportunities. Trying and failing gives us a chance to grow new skills. It also gives us a rich resource for embarrassing stories later, though you might not consider that a positive.

When you give something new a try, you join in the fun others are having. If you approach it with a sense of humor and tell people this is new to you, it gives you a chance to enjoy life more fully with the support of others. Those experiences can help you engage with life more fully rather than sitting on the sidelines. So give something new a try!

Your Turn

There are many benefits of having a small “but” and being more positive. Your friends will seek out your feedback more when you deliberately replace “but” with “and” in your suggestions. You’ll find that others are more willing to collaborate with you when you add to their ideas instead of criticizing them. You’ll open to new experiences that will make your life more meaningful and fun when you try new things.

Will you try one of the steps above this week? Let us know what happens in the comments.

Filed Under: Ideas

5 Steps to a To Do List that Gets Done

July 26, 2010 By

Photo by robandstephanielevy on Flickr

Photo by robandstephanielevy on Flickr

I read recently that “Saying you don’t have time for something is the same as saying ‘I don’t want to’ do it.” I fought that for a minute, because it stung. Of COURSE I want to do [all the things I haven't had time to do]. When I thought about it a little more, and forced myself to be honest, I found that there might be a bit of truth in it.

What about you? Try this little thought exercise and see where it leads you.

1. Make a list of 5 things you had time for this week

Not the list of small chores you don’t think twice about and not your job, but those [almost] every day activities lasting 30 minutes or more. For me, that list was:

  • Watching 1-2 hours of TV with my family
  • Reading blog posts from emails, RSS and Twitter links
  • Writing responses on a membership bulletin board
  • Shopping for and cooking meals
  • Tweaking this site (design and features)

2. Make your case

Are there any activities that don’t help you advance toward your main goals? If so, make a case for why it’s important to do them. Some of my excuses responses were:

  • I need to spend time with my family
  • Reading other blog posts inspires me to write my own
  • Being part of a community makes me feel happy
  • We have to eat
  • My site has to appeal to readers

3. Go deeper

Ask yourself some questions about each activity and excuse response:

  • Is my response true?
  • Do I spend more time than needed on this?
  • If I stopped doing this, how would it change my life?
  • Is what I want/need to do more important than this?
  • Can I be more disciplined or efficient with this?

4. Are any of these covering up fear?

What we say we don’t have time for is often something that we’re afraid of doing or (more accurately) afraid of doing poorly. I spend a lot more time than truly necessary reading other blogs and tweaking my site design. Why? Partly because I truly enjoy it, but partly because it relieves my anxiety about coming up with a topic of my own to write about.

Be ruthless about this part, because this exercise is only beneficial if you are completely honest with yourself.

5. Fish or cut bait

Now that you’ve examined each activity and its true value to you, compare it with the things you want to do and make some decisions. Are you going to give an activity up in favor of another one? Reduce time spent in one area so you can fit the things you want to do in? Or, when you really think about it, are you truly happy just doing what you are doing?

If you decide to keep doing the things on your activity list, do yourself a favor and put the things you “want” to do on hold for a while. Commit yourself to the activities you are doing so you can enjoy them completely. Put a reminder date on your calendar for 3 months or 6 months to run through this exercise again. Your answers might be different, in which case it might be time for a change. Until then, deliberately push it out of your mind.

Guilt and “should”s can drive you crazy and waste a lot of energy. Take a few minutes to get to the truth about what you really want, and then allow yourself to have it.

Your Turn

What activities came up on your list? Which were more important or more scary than you thought? Did you change anything as a result of this exercise? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Filed Under: This and That

5 Ways Your MBTI Personality Type Results Can Help You

July 20, 2010 By

Photo by jakeprzespo on Flickr

Photo by jakeprzespo on Flickr

Do you struggle with using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as an assessment tool for figuring out your personality type? Do you think it’s a bunch of hype, or that it will box you into a role or persona, or that it will predict your success in life?

Here are some benefits of the MBTI assessment to consider:

1. When it’s used correctly, you get a description of all the types – not just your own

When you take a free quiz online or from a book, you are alone in assessing your own results and interpreting how others might score. When you take an MBTI assessment from a certified Myers Briggs professional, a key element of the assessment is an explanation of each preference spectrum. This explanation provides many “Aha!” moments – not only in understanding yourself, but in recognizing how the preferences might explain the behaviors of other people in your life.

2. You get confirmation that you aren’t alone in how you act and react

If you grew up in a family with types very different from yours, you might feel as if every behavior that feels natural to you is wrong. This often happens with children who have strong Perceiving (flexible) preferences growing up in a family with strong Judging (organized) preferences. If you are strong on the Perceiving scale, you might have received messages that you’re a complete flake, or that people can’t take you seriously, or that you are too scattered. If nothing else, the type report assures you that you are completely normal and, what’s more, there are millions of people in the world who share your flexible nature!

3. You get an objective framework for viewing people in your life

Do you have a co-worker who nitpicks every new idea or whose first reaction is to say why it won’t work? “We’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work because …” or “That isn’t the way we do things around here” or “You can’t just …” might be phrases that appear often in meetings with your team.

Instead of reacting personally, with type knowledge you can recognize the traditional, conservative tendency of a teammate with strong Sensing (focused on what is or was, and what can be proven real through the senses) and Judging (organized and structured) traits. Once you recognize the pattern of a Gold, you can begin to understand that they aren’t trying to squash your ideas. They merely want reassurance that the direction you’re suggesting has a rock-solid foundation and can be trusted. This makes working with those who have opposite personality traits much easier.

4. You begin to understand why some activities drain you and some energize you

You might be very confused at your tendency to get depressed or come home drained when you’ve been working at your desk all day. Why would that be? Don’t most people around you talk about getting more energy after coming in on a Saturday because they can get so much more done and get energized again? Does it make you feel like there’s something wrong with you?

There isn’t anything wrong. You are likely an Extravert who gets energized by interacting with people or situations in the outside world. They are likely Introverts who gather energy from time spent reflecting and thinking. Neither is better, it’s just that the types differ in how they refuel.

5. You can use your personality preferences as a guide to finding your strengths

As you read through your assessment results and discuss them with your certified Myers Briggs consultant, jot down those sentences that spark a realization of “Yes! People are always saying that about me” or “Oh, that’s funny. My boss just congratulated me last week on that trait.” Go through each trait that your assessment suggests, and list them along with examples from your life that relate to that natural talent or trait.

Maybe you prefer iNtuition (looking toward the future and what could be) and Feeling (making decisions based on your own idea of what’s “right” and how others will be affected). You notice during the assessment that some of the other traits of your reported type are the ability to constantly produce new ideas and the ability to motivate others. Suddenly you remember how your coworker vented to you yesterday. Today she said that having you listen, be encouraging, and offer several alternatives really helped her break through a challenge.

With a little thought, you can work that into a strength statement that you can weave into job interviews and talks with your boss. Suddenly, you find that you are earning a reputation for doing those things well. Best of all, they are activities that you love and that come to you naturally. Eureka! Suddenly, your life feels much more enjoyable.

Your Turn

Learning about type, your own and others, can be of enormous benefit in helping you build a life you love. If you want to take the Myers Briggs assessment and find your strengths, I am certified to offer and interpret the assessment. Just contact me to get started.

Have you taken the MBTI? If not, why not? If so, how did it help you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Filed Under: Finding Passion, Personality

Personality Type and the Selective Attention Test

July 15, 2010 By

I read a Myers Briggs personality type article on Careers in Theory and it led me to a neat test on YouTube called the Selective Attention Test. Watch the video and see if you come up with the right answer. It only takes two minutes. I’ll wait:

I couldn’t believe it, so I asked my husband to take it. I was certain he would be surprised, too, but he got everything during his first viewing. How is that? This is the man who gets so focused on a task that it takes him a full 30 seconds to register anything else that happens in the room. I’m an Extravert with an off-the-scale Perceiving preference, which means I focus on the outside world and am very reactive to new things. How could I miss something so obvious? My husband is an ISTP and my complete personality type opposite, so I would think that if I didn’t catch something like that he certainly wouldn’t. It mystified me.

Forcing yourself to perform in an area of weakness can have odd consequences

I finally came up with a theory that makes sense to me. One of my weaknesses is that it’s very easy for me to get distracted. It’s practically impossible for me to concentrate on one solid effort for a long time – unless it’s using a strength, like public speaking. I was determined to get the right count, so I worked VERY HARD to focus on the video. I was so busy with overcoming a weakness that I overlooked something obvious which I never would have missed if I had been acting naturally.

Since my husband finds it easy to concentrate for a long time on one task, focusing on the video for two minutes was no challenge at all. Therefore, his could use more of his attention on everything going on.

Your Turn

Did you get the right answer? Did you miss the obvious? What’s your personality type? Tell me in the comments.

P.S. You can learn more about the video at this link (but don’t go until you’ve watched the video!).

Filed Under: Personality, This and That

The Engage Your Strengths Google Search Story Video

July 13, 2010 By

One of the benefits of insomnia is that when you wake up at 4am, you have a couple of hours to surf Twitter and RSS feeds before getting ready for work. This morning, I came across an article about creating a Google Search Story. I watched some of the examples on YouTube and then decided to create my own.

Here’s the Google Search Story I made for Engage Your Strengths:

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Filed Under: This and That

Turning Passion into a Strength

July 12, 2010 By

Photo by jcoterhals on Flickr

Photo by jcoterhals on Flickr

Yesterday I commented on a post by David Siteman Garland about why blogging on a subject you are passionate about trumps blogging on a subject you are skilled in. After I commented, I realized that those of you who read this blog might be interested in a more detailed answer.

We’ve heard over and over again, from Marsha Sinetar to Gary Vaynerchuk to Marcus Buckingham, that working in your area of passion will bring you personal fulfillment (and often fame and fortune as well).

Some people have a tough time with that, thinking it’s a Utopian fantasy. However, you have the power to live in a Utopian world of strengths if you do three key things: feel passion, take action and claim your strength.

Feel Passion

Passion is a starting point, not a strength. Finding out what drives you is an essential step in developing your strengths. Many are lost when it comes to identifying what they are passionate about, and its no wonder considering that most of us live in a culture that over emphasizes the intellect and dismisses emotions.

Did you know that people with brain injuries that have lost the ability to feel emotion cannot make decisions? In the video below, scientist Antonio Damasio talks about his work with patients who have suffered brain injuries. Though they can process data, they cannot make even simple decisions without the use of emotion.

If you are struggling with finding your passion, the key is opening yourself up to emotion again. What makes you feel happy? Excited? Involved? These feelings are all keys to finding your passion.

Take Action

Once you find your passion, what do you do about it? Most people dream about it, study it and talk about it. Then they complain that they aren’t seeing any results and they just KNEW that “do what you love and the money will follow” was a myth. But what did they do?

Do is a verb. It requires action, real action. Speak in public about your passion. Start a blog. Write a book. Create a product. If you want more ideas for taking action in your area of passion, get the book Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields. It guides you through several types of thinking exercises that will prompt you to think of some amazing opportunities. The trick is to select one and follow through on it.

Claim Your Strength

Once you’ve taken action and have built up your experience and some success, you are ready to claim your strength. Start thinking of yourself as an expert in the field. Communicate that expertise. Look for opportunities to build your credibility by reaching out to people who haven’t heard of your work. Refer back to the work that has built your reputation so that you capitalize on the action you’ve taken to date. Make your strength the focus of your 30 second elevator speech.

When you claim something, it becomes a part of you. You own it. You have confidence. These traits inspire confidence in others, and the people you talk to will open doors you never imagined.

Your Turn

Do you have a passion you’ve turned into a strength? Are you stuck at identifying your passion? Not sure how to take action? Write a comment, and let’s talk about it!

Filed Under: Developing Strengths, Ideas