Do you have a chance to do what you do best each day at work? You know, to use your strengths - those things you're good at and actually enjoy doing.
When I was first asked this question several years ago I thought it was trick. Surely the most important part of my job was to fix my weaknesses, not to build on my strengths. And when I looked back over the performance reviews written by my bosses, it was clear that this is where they wanted me to focus.
Yet despite many of us believing we grow most in our areas of weaknesses, brain studies reveal we grow the most new synapses in those areas where we have the most pre-existing synapses. This is why building on our strengths has been found to help us be more engaged, more energized and more productive at work.
Willing to try any evidenced-based idea that would boost my performance, I rushed out and completed two of the most popular strengths surveys - StrengthsFinder and the VIA Survey - and basked happily in my results. After all discovering what we're good at makes a nice change from the constant flaw spotting our brains are hard-wired for.
As the glow of this good news faded however, I realized these surveys left me with more questions than answers. The most important being: How exactly was I meant to develop these strengths at work?
After extensively reviewing the research on strengths these are the five things I believe you must know if you hope to put your strengths to work:
- Know what your strengths are - It's estimated two-thirds of us have no idea what our strengths are. If you can't name your top five strengths, using one of the tested surveys is definitely the easiest way to start. Having trained thousands of people around the world in their strengths, I recommend the free VIA Survey for discovering how you like to work (these are the character strengths that intrinsically motivate you) and StrengthsFinder for discovering what you like to do at work (these are the talents that extrinsically motivate you).
What could you achieve if you focused more on using your strengths at work each day?
Join me for this free webinar, if you'd like a step-by-step, busy-proof plan to be more engaged, energized and happier at work.
This article first appeared on Psychology Today.