Week 3 – Aim It Invest in and apply your strengths
Lesson 11 From Talent to Strength Appreciate Individual Impact
For the diagram below refer to Page 15 of your Black Workbook
A talent is a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behaviour that can be productively applied. It becomes a strength when you can provide near perfect performance almost every time. It has a positive impact not only for you but also the people around you. Turning a talent into a strength comes through
Knowledge and skills Investment in time spent practicing, developing your skills and building your knowledge base
Character Developed through our experiences and what we choose to learn and do from them
An Example of Character in Action
Never put the ACHIEVER strength in a meeting that it does not need to part of. It hates wasting time. I have ACHIEVER, and I would often write my to-do lists or would rest my head in my hand as I start to think about something else. As a result, I often got feedback that I appeared “disengaged” in meetings. I didn’t understand this feedback, because my view was, I was working! This changed when a very kind general manager at the time said to me “all you need to do is lower your arm.” To be able to do this, I dialled down my ACHIEVER strength, and I put partnership in place dialling up my CONNECTEDNESS strength. I asked the people I trusted to send me a signal if I was doing this automatic behaviour. I also put a process in place and dialled up my RESPONSIBILITY to volunteer and either facilitate the meeting or type the minutes. Using both these strategies the feedback stopped.
Theme Regulation
Gallup defines weakness as anything that gets in the way of your success. Often, our greatest strengths can also be our greatest weakness. A frame for this is when a strength helps, it is good for you and good for others. When it hinders, it negatively impacts others and you as a result.
When we are under pressure, or stressed, our strengths amplify as they are tools to help us manage. A sign of this is if a strength is “hindering.” For example, COMMUNICATION will talk more, ACHIEVER will work harder, RELATOR will narrow the number of people it confides in.
As per the example in the section above of character in action, using one strength to help balance another is called theme regulation.
Activity Theme Regulation
Review your Helps versus Hinders guide in My Signature Themes Impact Guide on Page 8 of your White Workbook. Highlight what stands out to you
Read through Page 19 of your Black Workbook and answer the questions
Share these outputs with your manager, team leader, a colleague, or your coaching buddy
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