If you are killing time at work by reading this article I’ll have you know that you are about to acquire some profound knowledge about your very workplace. But first, let’s play a little game together.
Look around your office. What do you see? That mix of talented individuals buzzing through your offices might be your friends, your closest confidants, your team members but they are definitely your coworkers. You know them by name (hopefully), by their status and their overall approach to your place of work. Some of them will join you in the lunch room this very day and some of them will simply pass through your life unnoticed.
To your superiors those same coworkers, along with yourself, present a whole different specter of both liabilities and opportunities. All chances are that your manager has a well developed system for tracking your productivity, your happiness, your mistakes and the development of your very best qualities. If you are in a managerial position, you definitely need to conduct an internal CRM system for your employees.
Every worker has a particular form of strength. Not talent, but actual centered endurance and focus to deliver top quality results. There are many ways in which you can utilize strength of your workforce and get the best out of the worst jobs. But before we discuss how you should narrow yours and your employees focus, let’s define what strength actually means in this context.
Understanding your Strength and its Importance
A renowned American psychologist and positive thinker, Martin Seligman, defined this form of strength as something that can be acquired. While talent is something that you are born with, having a particular talent won’t get you as far as dedicated work and self-improvement will. It can give you an advantage but not necessarily preeminence if you aren’t ready to roll up your sleeves.
Persistence is a fundamental factor of progress. Let’s assume that you got your current job because you are extremely talented in a particular field – let’s assume that you have a keen eye for technical analysis. Comparing and understanding correlation of certain figures is something that comes natural to you and you are ready to face and handle any challenge. As far as first impression goes – you are in the clear. However, when it comes to scalability, and your ability to handle more complex work in a much greater volume – that is a matter of strength.
Understanding your strength is tremendously important. This is why analytics and advice oriented research company Gallup insists on increasing awareness about this issue. Currently, only 3% of their respondents are aware how much utilization of strength is imperative for progress and personal professional development. Leaders should recognize strengths of their employees, and instead of insisting on diminishing their weaknesses, they should vigorously work on improving the actual strengths.
Identifying Your Strength
#1: If you want to define what your best quality is, sometimes the simplest way to obtain this piece of information vital for your further development is to simply ask someone. Your superiors and your employees could provide you with a valuable insight on that matter. Assessment by others is simply performed by obtaining 10 different reviews. After that it is up to you to focus on the ones that emerge as the most frequent answers.
One thing that you have to be prepared for are negative reviews. In this occasion, you shouldn’t forget that you don’t want to diminish your weaknesses but improve your strengths. Focus on your qualities and get the best out of them. For example, if you are working in sales – you might have a bad initial pitch delivery. You can’t handle cold calls, it’s not an unusual occurrence. Instead of wasting time trying to surpass that issue, focus on your other qualities. Maybe you are a born closer and you should focus your time in closing more deals for a lesser amount of time for instance. Or even up-selling additional products once the client is interested. Precision is everything.
#2: In case that you are planning on performing a self-assessment, remember that it is vital to stay true to yourself. Here is an extremely thorough test that you might consider using as a general guideline. After you have the results in front of you, you might ask yourself a series of questions such as the following:
- What are my best qualities?
- How do I employ those qualities at my place of work?
- How do my qualities benefit me personally?
- What can I do to improve them?
Once more, it is imperative that you stay true to yourself. This is a more complex issue in our day and age in fact. For example, if you are working in technical support and analysis is your best quality, be aware that there are certain aspects that you can absolutely diminish so that you could focus on actionable ones. If you are good at spotting an issue in your server system, you should be absolutely aware that there are services which allow remote server monitoring with reports that are very detailed and comprehensive. There is no need in emphasizing qualities that you cannot utilize. Focus on answering the need instead of creating one that will fit your profile. Being honest to oneself might be hard, but it is extremely recommended.
At the very end, you will have to find a custom tailored solution about how you will improve your strengths. You can make it a group project between your coworkers with a constant feedback and tracking time. Remember to stay persistent and honest to bring your top qualities to perfection.
