Building on Your Strengths

Identify, Acknowledge, Access Your Strengths

Build on your strengths

Each person in an organization, company, or group has strengths that add value to that unit.  Those considered leaders of the unit as well as those that go unnoticed will be well served if they learn to identify, acknowledge and access their strengths to best serve the unit.

When assigning or taking on tasks, careful thought needs to take place to ensure that the best person for the assignment is selected based on the strengths and knowledge of the one to perform the task.  Let’s use an example of a 5 member team’ assigned to research and create a report on reorganizing a company’s structure.  There may be one member that is absolutely terrible at research and data collection.  This member’s strength may lie in writing in a clear, concise and well organized manner.  Perhaps this team member could be assigned the task of combining the results of everyone’s research and putting the data into report form to be represented to management.

It may seem a bit unfair that everyone except the skilled writer is busy researching and gathering data for a period of up to several weeks.  In the meantime, the writer of the group lays in wait until the end and then only spends a few days organizing the data into report form.  Wouldn’t that be better to assure delivery of a quality product (the report) than to risk an ineffective and sub-par outcome.

Once everyone’s strengths are identified, recognized and acknowledged, then that group will add value to the entire unit.  Even a member that barely or rarely gets recognized for his/her efforts and contributions is likely to possess strengths in areas where team members lack.

Everyone brings value to a group in some way. Take a second look at someone in your organization that isn’t a standout type of person. That may very well be the next emerging leader.

“Every day presents another opportunity to hit the reset button on your life.”  Life Coach, Charita Cadenhead