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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

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

What Problems Do You Solve?

May 13, 2010 By

Photo by martinofranchi on Flickr

It’s a tough question, but asking yourself what problems you are solving for your company, customers or team is at the root of doing meaningful work. If you can’t answer it, you are not alone. I’ve asked this when coaching people and some look at me with a “deer in the headlights” gaze for a full 30 seconds before stuttering out, “Uh … well … I’m not sure.” Others take a minute to think and then blurt, “Not the types of problems I want to be solving.” Worse, occasionally I get someone who responds, “I don’t think I do solve any problems.” Any of these responses are a problem, but one that can be resolved with a little introspection. Let’s take them one by one.

“I’m not sure what problem I’m solving.”

If this is your answer, you might not have thought of your work in these terms before. You might be of the “ours is not to question why” philosophy, which either means that you are simply doing what you are told or that you are concentrating on the tasks at hand but not the ultimate purpose of those tasks.

If you are doing what you are told, you might be new to your job or company. In that case, starting out without knowing the problems you are solving with your work can be okay for a little bit. As soon as you can, however, start to question your team lead or manager about the impacts of your work. Is developing that website helping the client start a business in a new area of expertise? Or is it replacing a process that used to be done some other way? Knowing the problems you are helping to solve allows you to engage more fully with your work and to come up with new ideas for achieving that purpose quicker, more completely, or at a lower cost. Additionally, you will feel as if you are part of a larger picture and your work will take on new meaning. You will also learn quite a bit more about your company, clients or team when you discover what they are trying to achieve.

If you aren’t new to your position or company and you don’t know the answer, your time to ask those questions is now. Why? Knowing the problems you are solving ensures that your solutions will help resolve the problem. If you don’t know the purpose behind the work you are being asked to do, you can’t apply your own initiative and creativity to resolving it. This means that you aren’t contributing all that you can. You need to shine, and to do that you need to understand the need so you can fulfill it.

“Not the types of problems I want to be solving.”

This answer points directly to a mismatch between you and your role or between you and the type of work you are doing. If you are in the wrong role (look into Belbin team roles for more info), you will feel as if you are not able to be authentic in your work. If you are expected to lead the team but you hate conflict and you just want everyone to get along, you might be better off using your natural skills of mediation and community-building to shape the team into a tighter working group. In an opposite situation, if you are constantly butting heads with others on the team (or even your team lead – yikes!) about how things “should be done” you might be cast in the role of follower when your natural strengths are leadership and your commanding presence. Recognizing that the role you’re being asked to fill goes against your authentic tendencies is the first step in changing your situation. The second is learning how to communicate your authentic style, and the third is figuring out how you can change your role to one that suits you better.

If the role you occupy on the team fits you but you still feel unfulfilled in your work, you are probably doing the wrong type of work. Do you love working with tangible problems and objects, but feel pressured to focus on concepts and ideas instead? Do you love initiating new projects and getting things started, but find yourself being asked to create repeatable processes that can be applied over and over again? Are you naturally drawn to people, but expected to work on systems or tools? These are the questions that will help you determine the work that will seem meaningful to you and will help you find the work you were meant to do.

“I don’t think I do solve any problems.”

If this is your response, you are likely developing a solution for a problem that either doesn’t exist or isn’t a high priority. This can easily happen when you have a new idea to do something and you get so wrapped up in it that you haven’t taken the time to think through who will use it or how. In the small Texas town where I grew up, they called this “fixing what ain’t broke.” You might want to change a process to be more efficient, but if your changes don’t save a lot of time or money they will not be adopted and you will be spinning your wheels on creating a solution without a problem.

Today’s Strength Building Challenge

Take a few minutes during work today to identify the problem you are solving with the work you do. If you can’t come up with one, keep asking questions until you get an answer. Yes, it takes time – but it’s time well spent.

Filed Under: Action Steps, Developing Strengths

Turn a Creative Spark into a Bonfire: Part 2

April 24, 2010 By

camp fire

Photo by jackol

If you read part one of this series last weekend, your own creative muse has probably given you some fresh new ideas this week. You’ve captured them, given yourself permission to put them down if you lose interest, and you know exactly which friends to share them with. Using the bonfire building analogy, you have a few creative flames that you are shielding from the harsh winds of disapproval and expectation. Now, how do you take those flames and build them into a fire that’s big enough to withstand not only those harsh winds but is also able to covert a big wet log or two into fuel for the fire?

We’ll get there. This week, let’s work on three ways to grow that creative flame into a nice medium sized fire.

1) Keep your “but” small

In part one we talked about identifying your “kindling” friends – those friends who welcome your fresh ideas and inspire you to think of more. When you talk to them, what do you do when they start to suggest alternatives? Is your first reaction to say, “But if I do that, I’ll never …” or “But that wasn’t what I meant!”?

Don’t have a big “but”. In fact, do your best to strike that word from your vocabulary. This is your friend who supports you, who inspires you, who joins you in the creative dance of developing ideas. The last thing in the world you want to do is cut off their feedback with a knee-jerk response.

Instead, try “Great! What else would you suggest?” or “Thanks! Tell me more!” Then sit back and listen, because encouraging them will likely bring up one or two more additional suggestions.

2) Add more fuel

You’ve received feedback from a few friends. Now take that feedback and see if you can make your fire bigger.

What suggestions did you like? If you incorporate them, how does your idea take shape?

What feedback did you not like? You are coming at this from your own perspective, and your friend is giving you feedback based on theirs. How can you use that? Others you share this idea with later will probably approach and react to situations the same way your friend does. Will incorporating your friend’s ideas help you appeal to a wider audience? Think about those points again – really think – and see if there is anything in there that you can use after all. What happens if you give those suggestions a try?

3) Play the “What if?” game

Once your fire gets going, it needs a small challenge or two in order to grow. Before you expose your fire to your more challenging friends, play “What if?” in your mind and predict the objections or critiques your friends are likely to bring up.

Do you have an action-oriented friend (perhaps with a red temperament) who has a hard time seeing the intangible? What examples of this idea in action can you give them to help them envision it? What do you think will happen as a result of your idea?

Is one of your steady, persistant friends (perhaps with a gold temperament) likely to ask how you know this idea will work this time when your other 42 ideas haven’t? What past experiences of yours will tie into this idea to increase the likelihood it will work? How can you express to this friend that it might not work, but you want to try it anyway because if you try nothing you know it will result in nothing?

Will your objective, rational friend (perhaps a blue temperament) challenge you to come up with a logical application of your idea? What problem do you think your idea will solve? Are there competing products or ideas that solve the same problem? What makes yours different than the competition?

What can you say to your sensitive, people-oriented friend (perhaps a green temperament) who asks how this will make the world better or how it will benefit people? Why do you feel so strongly about this idea? What personal story can you tell that illustrates the problem or explains the benefit?

Today’s Strength Building Challenge

If you liked the ideas on turning your flame of an idea into a nice sized fire, here are some actions you can take to engage your strengths:

  • Create a new phrase to replace your “But …” response. It must be simple enough to use whenever you encounter an objection or critique, even when you are feeling vulnerable. Something like, “Great!” or “Thanks! What else?” works for me.
  • Explore new ideas, even if they are different from yours. When someone gives you their own ideas, see if you can connect them to yours even if it doesn’t sound like it will at first. Can their idea make yours better or expand it in some way?
  • Incorporate other perspectives. Read through the descriptions of the four temperaments and see how you can develop your idea to stand up to the questions that people with different perspectives will ask. What actions, past examples, logic and stories will make it even better?

The next post in this series will you take your energetic, healthy fire of an idea and grow it into an unstoppable raging bonfire.

Filed Under: Developing Strengths, Ideas

Turn a Creative Spark into a Bonfire: Part 1

April 18, 2010 By

Strike a Match

Photo by laszlo-photo

What do you do when you have a new idea, want to share it, but hate that “Really? Another idea that you’ll never follow through on? Not again!” response from people you’ve shared ideas with before? This is the first of a three part series on turning your creative spark into a bonfire. After following this first step, you will know exactly how to nourish your fledgling ideas so they will grow into a brilliant solution, product, or blog post instead of allowing them to be sent to an early grave where they’ll come back to haunt you as regret or guilt for not acting on them.

The Scenario

Let’s imagine that you have just read a book, heard a lecture, or seen a billboard that sparked a new way of thinking. Now you have a new idea that you are all enthusiastic about. What now?

Should you talk about it to some of your closest friends and family and share your enthusiasm?

Or should you keep it to yourself for a while, mull it over, develop it into maturity before you discuss it with anyone?

Yes.

The truth is that both reflection and sharing are important to helping your idea blossom, and your preferences will influence which comes most naturally to you. If your personality type is outgoing and flexible,you will probably have lots of ideas and share them with most everyone you know. That’s great when you have a friend who is similar to you (like a retriever or another otter), but when you encounter the people who are reserved and structured (and there are a LOT of them) your new creative spark can be quickly smothered by their wet blanket reception or squashed by their heavy expectations.

When you are building a real fire, you start with a match and some newspaper to get a flame going. Your match is your burning desire to create that killer blog post, be known at work for developing brilliant solutions, or develop the product that changes people’s lives. Your newspaper is a daily feed of fresh ideas.

Here are the three steps to subscribing to your own “Muse News”:

1) Capture the Ideas

If you don’t catch the ideas your muse sends to you and put them somewhere for safekeeping, she will quit tossing them to you and start throwing them to someone else. Find a way to record your thoughts so you can come back to them later.

I use either yellow sticky notes or Dragon Dictation on my iPhone or iPad, depending on where I am. LaVonne Ellis at completeflake.com suggests some more great tools to help you do this. If you are a blogger, you can also save a draft post with the main points of your thought (Don’t forget to draft the main points you will make, because you can easily compile a list of draft themes and later have no idea what you intended to say about any of the themes. Not that I have much experience with this problem.[blush]).

You don’t have to write a complete post, and sometimes it helps to not even use a computer. Your thoughts might come more easily if you make a quick mind map on a blank sheet of paper to get yourself started. This series of posts was created that way.

The important thing is to capture those ideas so you can go back to them later. Once you’ve done that, you can get on with your day (or your shower, or your drive, or whatever you were doing when the idea came to you).

2) Give yourself permission to entertain the idea and get wildly excited, but put it down at any time

Once you have it, nurture that little flame. See if there are any other ideas you’ve captured in the past that link to this one. How do they relate? Together, do they start to make a process? If so, where do they lead?

If not, how might this idea apply to a problem that someone has? Could it be part of a solution for someone? If so, who and what else would they need to solve the problem?

Is this something you can follow through on now? Can you use it to make a product in a weekend, create a website in three days, or help your work team become brilliant? If so, take action on it!

What other thoughts are related to this one? If you can’t think of any more good ideas to bring into the mix, challenge yourself to come up with 10 bad ideas. I bet one of them will end up helping. (And you are recording those bad ideas too as part of step one, right?)

If your idea starts to wither away and your enthusiasm wanes, give yourself permission to drop it. The joy of having lots of fresh ideas and capturing them for future reference is that you can abandon any that don’t cry out for action right now. Later on, you might find that another idea down the road relates to it and you’ll be happy to recorded it.

3) Share it with your kindling friends

If you take the flame you’ve created and wave it around to all your friends and neighbors, the harsh winds of criticism will snuff it out almost instantly and you’ll be left holding nothing but ash. Instead, use the friends and family who are similar to you as idea “kindling” and save the sharing with the structured folks for after you have a hearty fire going.

Who are your kindling friends? Those who encourage you to talk more about your idea and join in your enthusiasm. Those who ask questions that help you expand your thoughts. Those who contribute their own ideas to help yours grow healthy and strong. These are the people you want to go to first.

This doesn’t mean you ignore your more robust “log” type of friends. You will need them later on to help your small fire grow into a raging inferno. We will cover that in step three of this series. For now, though, nurturing your flame means sharing it with a limited audience.

Today’s Strength Building Challenge

If you liked these ideas, here are your action steps to start engaging your strengths:

  • Choose one system for capturing ideas. Commit to one week of carrying a digital voice recorder around, writing ideas on little yellow stickies, or making mind maps. If this week’s solution doesn’t work out very well, choose another one next week (and don’t forget to transfer this week’s ideas to the new system!).
  • Connect the dots. When you get a new idea to add to the collection, see if it can buddy up with an idea that you’ve captured earlier. If so, see if having the two parts together can form a new process, product or solution that you can share to solve a problem.
  • Identify your kindling friends. Which of your friends leaves you feeling happy and energetic whenever you go to them with a new idea? Or, identify them with these 5 steps to guessing a personality type. Make a list of these friends and stick it on your bathroom mirror, your car’s dashboard, or your computer monitor. Those are your “go to” people to share your fledgling ideas with this week.

The next post in this series will help grow your ideas from new flames to crackling, energetic fires to fuel your passionate life.

Filed Under: Developing Strengths, Ideas

Is the Work You Love Already in the Job You Have?

March 21, 2010 By

jumping with joy

Photo by bingramos


Do you have a good job and a decent salary, but feel dissatisfied and in need of a career change? Do you dream of breaking out of your current job to do the work you love? Do you already have a sideline business – or desperately want to start one? If so, this will soon be your website of choice for ideas, tools and action plans to help you find the work you love while still supporting yourself in the job you have.

Why I Started this Site

I had a conversation with a coworker this week that helped me fine tune my ideas for this website into a laser beam directed at those of you who say “Yes” to the questions above. I started this blog because I had been going through the above dilemmas. To some degree, I still am. I’ve made some headway and I wanted to share what I’ve learned with others about career change, finding your strengths, and doing work you love. That’s what started this, that’s the core reason.

What I found was a lot of information about how to quit your job and become successful doing something else. A few people make an instant career change and find success. Some do it and fail, and it destroys their hope to the point that they don’t ever dare to try again. Many more people never try at all, because they have an all or nothing mentality. They believe something like, “I want to do [my passion] but I can’t give up my job because [it pays the bills, my spouse would kill me, my parents would disown me, etc, etc, etc].” Some people discover that the work they love was theirs for the taking all along, even in the job they already have.

This blog is for everyone who wants to make a change, and it will talk you through how to transition – in big ways, in little incremental ways, in ways that work for you.

My Goal

I want to help you find your strengths, develop your talents, and communicate what you bring to the table that makes you unique. For some, that’s a long process and it needs to happen gradually. That’s okay – there are many people that are going down the same path. Others already know the career change for them, they just need someone to cheer them to victory. Some don’t have any idea where to start, which is where I was not too long ago.

It’s so important for you to find your spark, your motivation, your joy. Life is too short to feel depressed, anxious, and drained all the time. Or worse, to not know how you feel – a topic I plan to address this week. Hopefully, you will find some parts of this site that speak to you, inspire you, or make you think.

When I was going through it, I wasn’t sure where to start and I muddled my way through. Doing it that way takes longer. It’s a tougher fight. I needed to read or listen or talk with someone who had been there and could tell me what they learned and how. Not to be the master, the guru, the director of my life – but to be my friend through the process and share what they learned.

If I can do that for one person through this site, it will be worth it.

Your Turn

How can I help? Let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: Developing Strengths, Ideas