What are the most effective ways to identify and leverage your strengths as a social impact professional?

Finding an area that you are deeply passionate about and good at. On top of personality tests, getting peer feedback is also just as important, helps you validate your areas of strengths and weaknesses. One of the things that I find interesting within the sustainability sphere is that people are quite open to sharing new knowledge, tools so find your trusted circle and grow together.

Everyone possesses unique talents and values that can make a valuable contribution to any movement. There is always room for your abilities and principles to play a part in shaping the change we earnestly seek. However, it's crucial to recognize that your position in your activist journey may affect your understanding of how to effectively utilize your talents. In some instances, you might not be fully aware of how to activate or apply your skills, but that doesn't diminish their potential impact. Embracing a learning mindset and seeking guidance from experienced activists can help bridge this gap and amplify the positive change we all strive for.

I'm a changepreneur passionate about empowering women to become changemakers, I believe that recognizing and utilizing our strengths is crucial in creating significant social impact. Here are my thoughts on the most effective ways to identify and leverage your strengths as a social impact professional: 1. Self-Awareness: Start with introspection. Understand your values, passions, and skills. Reflect on past experiences and identify instances where you felt most fulfilled or successful. This self-awareness can help pinpoint your unique strengths.

You don’t have to quit your job to reinvent yourself in a new career as a “social impact professional.” We all have the capacity to be social impact leaders in our current work. In fact, you may be able to have a greater social impact as a change agent in your current field. You’re a deep expert in what you do, right? So who better to call out its problems and advocate for change from within?

Start with why- Identify the issues that matter to you and establish why they matter to you. Engage the community in the sector that matters to you. Find out what is important to them, what's working, and what's not. Explore the solutions you can offer in that area and develop your offer and skills around that. Partner with others- you can learn from others, develop your strengths, and maximize your impact through partnerships.

Feedback from Others: Often, others can see our strengths more clearly than we can. Seek constructive feedback from colleagues, mentors, and those you've impacted. Their insights can provide valuable perspective on your strengths.

An area here that is important to consider is the proximity of impact. Do you have a neighborhood, a community, a population, or a city that you are passionate to support? Is there a cause that inspires you, something like ending homelessness or animal rescue? Depending on the work you do, you may find incredible supplemental value in driving social change in an area you cannot reach through your career path.

Strengths Assessment Tools: Tools like Wealth Dynamic Assessment or B.A.N.K code can offer objective insights into your core strengths. However, remember these are guidance tools and not definitive answers.

A huge opportunity for professionals in this space is to develop leadership skills that may not be available as quickly in other career paths. NPOs value your focus and passion more than your hard skills, and will reward your whole investment with authority and influence that could take decades to earn in a corporate structure. Embrace this. Avoid getting hung up on pay and benefits; they'll never compare. The number of well-paid people who feel a chasm in their soul will always outweigh the number of professionals who live with a full heart but more modest compensation in the world of social change. Maintaining a selfless relationship to the impact you drive will keep you fulfilled.

Get out of your comfort zone. I wanted to get hands on leadership experience, and instead of just waiting for a promotion in the corporate setting - I turned to something else that I loved: working out. I was able to dive into learning real-life management skills (i.e. leading a class of up to 100 people) and learning how to make sure that everyone felt brave enough to show up as their best self. Just like in a work environment, people had different skill levels, backgrounds, abilities, and motivations. Learning how to effectively meet people where they were, and still have them leave class feeling accomplished, allowed me to learn how to effectively lead, manage and continuously motivate people.

Align Strengths with Your Mission: As a social impact professional, it's essential to align your strengths with your mission. If your strength is in communication, for example, leverage it to advocate for your cause effectively.

Continuous Learning and Development: Identifying your strengths isn't the end. It's a continuous process of learning and developing these strengths. Attend workshops, webinars, or courses that can help enhance them.

Leveraging your strengths for short and long term impact is also important; within your skill and strength set you can apply them to different projects then measure them against shorter and longer term goals. Also aligning your strengths with the strengths of others in your team / organisation to maximise group impact.

Collaborate: No one can do everything. Recognize the areas where others excel and collaborate. This not only amplifies your impact but also cultivates a culture of mutual growth and learning.

Though there are many tools around, the question remains: How do we measure the success of an impact that is not easily quantifiable? We all know that when it comes to social impact, some effects are often intangible & rooted in transformative change. Conventional metrics may not capture the essence of it. Surely, we can use tools like Return on investment (ROI) when it comes to tangible outcomes such as financials. However, the challenge arises when attempting to quantify shifts of perspective or emotions - the change of hearts & minds that sometimes are a prerequisite for a successful social impact. Sometimes, only our inner moral compass might be a success indicator. Valuing that might require a paradigm shift in how we define success.

Learn to do more with less: Be thoughtful in the contributions made towards operational decisions. There is no shortage of human beings waiting to be impacted by the scarce dollars available, and being able to do more with less may the key to saving one more life, reaching one more person.

You need to identify whether your strength is in networking, community building, prototyping, financing and then find the company that values your strengths.

The article poses an interesting question. It's a somewhat monochromatic question (typical AI) that creates a somewhat monochromatic discussion. Rather, the article should ask another question beyond personal passion to one that elicits a broader conversation and goes beyond issue-based, passionate skills-based workers to those that are passionate, skills-based workers who aptly apply their skills to issue-based work. The conversation is important and frankly, more inclusive. You do not have to personally live your issue to exact the maximum social impact and target outcomes as part of a personal measure of success. The success lies with the organization for whom you leverage your skills.