Why understanding our strengths can bring more choice…

Understanding our strengths brings more choice, more opportunities to approach things in different ways, to grow naturally and to have more flow in our work and lives.

I’m a massive advocate of strengths* based approaches in personal and professional development – (and in particular using the Strengths Profile tool) which is why it’s at the heart of my one to one coaching work.

When I start working with them, many of my coaching clients feel a bit beaten up the various assessments and leadership development processes that they’ve been put through; these assessments and 360s have done a very good job of identifying all their weaknesses and areas for improvement but often haven’t put much emphasis on the good stuff they bring which they can use more to be successful and happy in their roles.

Strengths Profile (which is based on positive psychology research) puts forward the idea that we are far more likely to be effective and successful by leveraging our strengths – things that we are naturally good at and which energise us - than spending a lot of time and energy trying to be good at the things that we struggle with or which are simply not within our gift. This isn’t about ignoring our weaknesses – we all have them and it’s important to be aware of them – it’s more about mitigating for them and reorienting the personal resources available to us (our strengths) to navigate around them.

What I notice when people really start to get under the skin of their realised strengths in their Strengths Profile is that there is a little bit of breathing out, a sense of reassurance – as if being reminded of a truth that had been forgotten for a while. And as people begin to explore their unrealised strengths – the things hiding just outside of conscious awareness – there is sometimes surprise or initial dismissiveness but this is often followed by a sense of opening up and possibility.

Understanding our strengths brings more choice, more opportunities to approach things in new ways, to grow naturally and to have more flow in our work and lives.

What I really want for my clients through this work is for them to have a solid sense of their unique blend of strengths, of their innate capacities; for them to know “this is who I am and what I bring…” and for them to begin to see the rich untapped resources that they have within, things that can be cultivated and used in service of whatever feels important.

So I invite you to discover what your strengths are – you have more resources within you than you realise!

*When I’m talking about strengths I’m borrowing from Dr A Linley’s description of a strength which is “a pre-existing capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking or feeling that is authentic and energizing to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development and performance”.

P.S If you are interested in exploring your Strengths Profile and would like to find out more I’d love to hear from you sarah@boldly-go.co.uk.

#strengths #strengthsprofile #leadershipcoaching #executivecoaching #careercoaching