Being aware of your strengths - the key to success
In today’s ever-changing work environments, many people don’t leave a lot of time for self- reflections. However, very often becoming aware of your strengths is the first milestone for success, especially at the start of your career.
Strengths are defined as “the ability to always achieve near perfect performance on a specific task with the performance being made up of a combination of skill, knowledge and talent”.
For many people, finding their core strengths and competencies can be a challenge, often due to a lack of inner self – awareness. Without us being aware of who we are, our values, interests and what is of uttermost importance to us, it becomes difficult to define us as a person and create self-awareness, the foundation for strengths finding.
Once we have a sense of self-awareness, the ultimate question to ask is “What am I good at?”. We can break this question down further, into “What do I enjoy doing?” and “What produces excellent results without me putting in a lot of effort?”. Those questions make up the first part of the strengths finding process, often described as strengths identification. Here, we become aware of and identify our individual strengths to form the basis of our career development.
The second stage is then to, especially for professionals at the start of their career, develop these strengths identified further. Here, knowledge and training play a large part and often add to skills and talents identified earlier. It is very important to have a precise idea of strengths you want to develop and prioritise. Through concentrating on developing your core strengths, you will ideally become an expert in certain fields of your profession, which will form another milestone for career success and progression.
Lastly stands the question, “How can I use my strengths to benefit myself and others in the best possible way”. Notice here, that the question has shifted from only being about yourself towards how you can use your strengths to benefit others. This is where using your strengths to develop into a true leader comes in. Leadership is about identifying your strengths and using them to benefit others in the best possible way.
The combination of a precise idea of your core competencies, as well as a clearly defined strategy on how to make use of them for the benefit of others will form the path to career success. If you have a talent and you can use it to benefit others, you will almost automatically be successful.
As a summary therefore, finding your strengths is a core element for a successful career. Strengths are determined by talent, skill, and knowledge. Finding your strengths can be overwhelming, however becoming self-ware and asking yourself “what you are good at” can often help. Once you are aware of your strengths and have clearly defined them, developing them and later using them to benefit others will results in true fulfilment and forms a recipe for career success.
