August 28, 2007

Promoting Your Strengths

There's a great article in the September issue of O Magazine, called "Your Brilliant (Next) Career and How to Find It" by Susan Choi, about finding and applying your strengths at work. It reminded me of how difficult it can be for wellness professionals to promote their own strengths.

Your strengths, according to Marcus Buckingham, author of "Go Put Your Strengths at Work" and who was the expert featured in the article, says that "sometimes people mistake their true strengths for simply "what they're good at." In his "strength's test" featured on the O magazine site, he writes that you have to be able to differentiate between your true strengths (a distinct competitive advantage), a talent (something you have a natural appetite and ability for) and a skill (something you are capable and competent at but lacks the passion, performance and prestige of a true strength). Your true strengths are what to build your career around.

Which is to say, just because you do something well, doesn't mean you should be doing that or building your business around it.

So why can't we easily do this for ourselves?

For one, it's hard to take an unbiased look at your business when what you do is a passion and soul calling. You're just too close to it. When there is little difference between who you are and what you do it can be challenging to see it clearly and with fresh eyes. I know this has been true for myself and is a big reason why my clients hire me.

When it comes time to create powerful marketing materials, you have to be able to access your unique strengths and build your brand and message based on that. In essence, you must be willing to authentically promote your best self.

Having said this, how do you access your strengths? The first step is to first know yourself and leverage all of who you are, your background and your experience.

Here's a way to do this on your own….

The article an exercise from Buckingham's coaching toolkit. You write down whatever makes you FEEL strong at work (anything goes) on one side of a piece of paper and whatever you loath about your work on the other side of the paper for one week.

I've been doing this exercise to see what would come up. What I noticed is that the things I didn't like about my work were, procedural things that I felt put a hold on my work progress and project completions.

It dawned on me that I could "fix" these irksome situations by implementing a new policies and procedures of working with me. I had done this in my health coaching practice and it never occurred to do this with my marketing materials clients.

As I look at my list of strengths and loaths list, not only did what I do become clearer, but it inspired me to re-orient the way I work more around my strengths, and eliminating, delegating or re-organizing what I don't like. Who knew such a simple list could do all that! And if I got that much out of one simple magazine quiz, imagine what's in the book. I ordered it.

Find out what it can do for you and your business here. Take your strengths exercise here.

To your professional expansion,

Karin

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Filed under Blog, Business Inspiration, Honing Your Message, Stand for Something by Karin