Developing Our Natural Strengths

During fresh starts (new years, new quarters), it often brings about reflection. We think about what we want for ourselves in the next 3,6,12 months, what we are enjoying, what we are not enjoying etc. One of the things I know a lot of us think about is areas of development, and ways to upskill and improve.

During this time of reflection, we often think about our weaknesses and sometimes over fixate on our weaknesses. We do this for a few reasons:

1. Societal conditions. From our school days, we are often encouraged to think about our areas of improvement and this is often what our teachers, parents/carers would focus on too
2. Negativity bias. There are countless studies which show that humans are naturally more negatively geared
3. We devalue what comes naturally to us - when things naturally feel easy to us we place less importance on it as it requires less effort and we feel as though we may not earned it

For some reason, when wanting to develop and grow, we focus on our weaknesses, and forget about our strengths.

Lets flip the script!

We have two types of strengths - general and innate.

General strengths are things which we learn through our environment, such as learning a new system at work or learning how to implement different frameworks etc.

Innate strengths are those strengths which come naturally to us. They are internally motivated, and they feel almost instinctual and that we don't even have to try. Because of how naturally this comes to us, we often dismiss these strengths.

Instead of working on our weaknesses, we can also focus on improving our natural strengths.

If you don't already know what your innate strengths are, you can ask yourself questions such as:

• What makes me a good contributor to my team and projects?
• In what environments or situations do I thrive in?
• Where do I feel like I stand out, where other people may struggle?
• What tasks make me feel energised?

You could also ask a mentor, colleague or manager to answer these questions to help you identify these, which may be more useful as we often miss things about ourselves which other people notice.

Another thing to note is we may not be in environments which allow these strengths to surface. If possible, try to put yourself in new situations at work which you find interesting, whether it be attending a meeting with a different colleague, or hopping on a project outside of your comfort zone.

Whilst it is so important to grow and develop, the easiest way to do so may be to actually focus on developing your strengths and use them more intentionally, than constantly focusing constantly on where we "lack".

References:

https://hbr.org/2024/06/identify-and-develop-your-natural-strengths