by Kevin
Adam clearly demonstrated his awareness--thanks for the transparency! He must have had a strong mentor (or, more likely, just a good friend).
Our third post in this realm of self awareness is the identification of your strengths and weaknesses. This can certainly be the most impactful assessment you can make of yourself. It should be the primary tool to set you on a smooth sailing to success. However, you must spend the proper amount of time reflecting on this. I have found that many mentees quickly rush through this essential step (where’s the thrill?) and therefore miss out on starting their journey with full knowledge of their strengths. They don’t start their journey working within their strength zone. I mean, if you were only given two zones to choose from--strength or weakness--which would you choose? I suppose you don’t even need a mentor advising you on that one. If you do, I'm a little concerned about you, but glad to be of service! Strengths is the obvious choice, so why do so many young professionals remain unaware of their intangibles and--by default-- try to work within their weaknesses or the strengths of their peers? Working from your strengths is the ONLY way to reach your maximum potential. If you aren’t working within this zone, you will be continually frustrated, burned out, and will eventually lose motivation for growth altogether. If you are currently burned out, now you know why. Please don’t accept this fate that is embraced by so many of your peers. Be different: work within your strengths!
I’m not a huge fan of the Avengers (sorry, there is just too much going on I can’t keep up!), but I love the team they have assembled to achieve their common objective--overcoming evil. Each member has their own strengths--and weaknesses--which are beautifly utilized to continually complement one another. If Hulk gets too angry, Black Widow calms him down. Where would Iron Man be without Pepper Potts keeping his ego on the ground while he is soaring in the sky? It’s the perfect balance of strengths and weaknesses in order to achieve a winning effort. Each member knows his/her strengths, yet each member knows his/her weaknesses. And even more powerful, they know each other's strengths and weaknesses. This complete understanding creates a powerful and forceful team….and about 15 (very long) movies (and counting) to boot. Just like the Avengers, you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses so you can work effectively with your team--and win!
I know there are a plethora of strengths assessments to choose from, if you are so inclined. I’m definitely a fan of these types of tests and I encourage you to participate in them. However, I don’t believe these tests are the only way to truly identify and understand your strengths…..or weaknesses.
In my opinion, if you can spend the proper amount of time reflecting on the following questions you will be well on your way to identify your strengths and weaknesses:
- Activities: what do you do well? What activities can you easily self-motivate yourself to complete? You know, those moments when you lose track of time and miss your next meeting ? Be specific as possible. Perhaps it is writing a memo (or blog), performing a presentation, researching an issue, or communicating with a customer?
- Praise: what do others praise about you? Do they like your smile? Your humor? Perhaps your kindness and encouragement? Maybe be quiet and listen for it, or if you are really bold, ask about it. Feedback can be positive and encouraging.
- Competitive Advantage: what is unique about you compared to your peer group. Don’t be confused: i’m not asking you to assess your potential based on a comparison to others. I’m only suggesting that you use this as a tool to identify what is different--or unique--about you.
- Accomplishments: what is the consistent theme of your most significant accomplishments? Think about your nine most significant accomplishments going back to your high school years (yes, those years can still have meaning). Write them down. Is there anything that jumps out at you that touches on all of them, or even several of them. You may have just found a strength.
Those are just four suggestions to identify your strengths. Hopefully you found some value with that.
I also think it is important to be aware of your weaknesses: it is possible you might have to work on some of them to achieve your fullest potential (or recruit an appropriate Avenger). The easiest way to identify your weaknesses, in my opinion, is to think of the converse of the questions. Which activities don’t you do well? What seems to take “all day”? When you reflect on your setbacks, is there anything that jumps out at you? What have others said negatively about you in the past? Disregard the comments that were said out of anger, but listen to the comments intended for constructive feedback. Perhaps a performance review in the past? I remember some constructive feedback that has still stuck with me and helped me stay focused. In fact, those comments may be the most valuable kind of feedback, even though they can be difficult to hear.
Don’t just brush by this too quickly without understanding the necessity of working within your strengths. Perhaps you might even go back to that friend you found to help you with the previous post? Finding--and working within--your strengths is an excellent way to distinguish yourself from your peer group and remain energized and motivated for future endeavors, especially if Doctor Doom (ok, I had to research actual Avenger enemies, but per Wikipedia, he is on the list) decides to drop by!
by Adam
Reading Kevin’s post made me smile in a very particular way. Do you have any memories of childhood, where you did something really stupid but also kind of funny? Or, maybe you have kids around you in your personal life. Do you ever smile at something really cute that they do, that is also patently absurd, but they do it because they just don’t know any better?
That’s the feeling I had reading the post. It’s so true, and it seems so obvious, but I failed to understand those points as I lived in complete contradiction to those teachings. Part of me wishes Kevin had typed that all up and emailed (or mailed!) it to a much younger me, helping me avoid some of the pitfalls that have littered my lived experience. But, again...I’m pretty stubborn. It’s probably best that I aimlessly careened down the freeway of life for a while. It helps me see the value in the more orderly approach I’m taking now.
Yet, I’m going to ignore Kevin’s advice here, and start with a weakness. I actually don’t think this is me reverting to my careening-down-the-freeway mentality. Instead, I think it’s a sneaky fifth method to identify my strengths. Hopefully you (and Kevin) are comfortable coming along for the ride. If not, Kevin, I really appreciated the chance to write on the blog and look forward to (maybe?) guest posting again in several years!
So, let’s get on with it!
I am terrible--I repeat, TERRIBLE--at remembering things. Birthdays, addresses, dollar amounts, or any other “facts.” As a corollary, I can’t learn squat through rote memorization. The only way I can reliably retain information, is if I learn from a conceptual angle, or understand the context around the facts. It even makes me cringe a little bit to say it: I’m the “numbers” guy who really, really needs a good story.
In my first job (as an auditor for a public accounting firm), I remember being frustrated to borderline insanity by all the acronyms, report names, and seemingly arbitrary numbers that were thrown around. The individual pieces of how to do the work were explained to me dozens of times. I couldn’t remember any of it to save my life. By my estimation, everyone else felt the steep learning curve, but no one else seemed to be experiencing this same massive level of frustration with the details as me. So, there I was: the insufferable new hire, that couldn’t do a darn thing unless I knew why. It wasn’t insubordination or laziness, it is a weakness in how I learned.
...or...as i slowly came to realize...maybe also a strength? I started doing something that, at first, I thought was a coping mechanism. Whenever I worked on a project, I would write down why I thought I was doing what I was doing, and why my findings were important. But not just one level of why, like “why is it important to identify invoices that don’t match the detailed listing.” I’m talking multiple rounds of why. Maybe even ridiculous levels of why. Asking “why” so many times that the answer to the last “why” ended in a totally different universe from the work I was actually doing.
“...I mean, if you think about it, the invoice needs to match the detailed listing so we know the account balance is accurate. And we need to know that so we can conclude their financial statements are right. And we need to do that so investors have confidence in capital markets. And they need to have confidence in capital markets so that productive people in our economy can raise funds for projects that improve people’s lives. And we need to improve people's lives because…”
That’s right, I just drew a line from audit evidence to the welfare of humanity. That’s a bit exaggerated compared to what I actually did, but not totally exaggerated.
Now, that probably annoyed you a little bit, and I’m sure it initially annoyed my supervisors. But, over time, I noticed something pretty magical. Since I was the only one doing this, I started to become fairly capable in situations where our audit work forged a bit beyond the boundaries where it had gone before. Because I (at a very premature phase in my career) had attacked the details through the lens of the conceptual, I was capable of adapting to new situations where only the concepts (not the specific facts) could translate. Out of my uniqueness...I built a bona fide strength!
Or, take another example. At the risk of sounding like a third grader, I’ll just say it: I learn best with pictures. Further, I actually formulate my own thoughts more clearly when I put together visual representations of those thoughts. Sure, this is often a handicap in a numbers-heavy world. But, it also gives me a tool to be highly capable in explaining numbers-heavy concepts to definitely-not-numbers-people (a pretty useful talent for whenever the numbers-people’s world clashes with the...uh...real world!).
So, for me, the development of my own self-confidence involved reframing my “uniqueness” as a strength. It was not always fun, and not always easy. Sometimes it required vastly more work to overcome my handicaps. But, it resulted in strengths that help me do my job in a unique, and valuable, way.
Now, I could have found those same strengths through another lens. I could have recognized my gravitation toward story-telling by remembering that my friends tended to deputize me as the storyteller. I could have remembered my accomplishments in high school, which sometimes involved producing funny videos to promote school activities. I could have reflected on the activities I gravitated toward (and often got carried away with), which usually involve building things from scratch (often visual representations). In fact, my eventual epiphany on this category of strengths was recognizing my competitive advantage, after stumbling into it by accident. As an auditor, I couldn’t go toe-to-toe with anyone on the minutiae of existing processes, but I could clearly imagine how an existing framework could be applied to a new set of facts.
Recognizing that latent strength laid the foundation for many positive things that followed.