How Leveraging Your Strengths Can Propel You to Success
As ambitious executives and entrepreneurs, we’re always looking for new ways to drive success and stay ahead of competition. Oftentimes, this visionary pursuit can be blinded to obvious success factors: our strengths.
Understanding and leveraging our strengths allows us to focus on what we’re good at, gain new levels of confidence and clarity, and unlock levels of performance that stand out in crowded marketplaces. To do this, we need to identify our unique talents and learn to apply them strategically. We also need to be honest with ourselves about our weaknesses and be comfortable delegating those tasks to the people who excel in those areas.
Start with a Self Assessment
Self-assessments are moments where we can have an honest reflection with ourselves without judgment. It is candid clarity. You can expedite your reflection with online assessments such as CliftonStrengths or the Kolbe assessments. These, rather than Myers Briggs or Enneagrams, give more insight into your natural mode of operations and work styles. On the other hand, you can take a personal inventory of the type of tasks that energize and excite you. These are often the tasks that you have a natural talent in or have enough intrinsic motivation to become an expert in.
When assessing your weaknesses, it’s important to be honest. Weaknesses shouldn’t be viewed negatively or as a place of incompetence - you’re likely capable of improving in these areas but it’s also likely that there will be others who enjoy these types of tasks and have more motivation to complete them. These are tasks that you frequently procrastinate on, are frustrated when completing them, or that you see more frequent errors in compared to tasks that highlight your strengths.
The Power Of Leveraging Your Strengths
Knowing your strengths is just the foundation; you then need to understand how to effectively leverage your strengths. This starts with curating your projects and to-do lists to focus on tasks where you can regularly apply your strengths to achieve the greatest impact. By doing so, you’re naturally increasing your productivity and efficiency by matching high motivation with areas of high competence.
Stretching Your Comfort Zone
It’s crucial to differentiate leveraging your strengths from staying in your comfort zone. Recognizing your strengths does not mean you cannot find areas to challenge yourself and step outside of your comfort zone. Staying in your comfort zone can lead to complacency and hinder not only your personal growth, but the potential growth of your business. There’s always new levels of leadership, new service offering developments, or new opportunities that at first seem unexpected or intimidating. The key is to lean into this discomfort using your strengths as a weapon, not a shield. If a new speaking opportunity comes your way and you’ve never spoken on a stage before, leaning into your key areas of knowledge and people-relation strengths, you can conquer the opportunity with confidence.
Delegating Tasks Outside of Your Strengths
Delegation provides you with opportunities for growth and development for both you, as a business leader, and your team members. Refer to the tasks that you’ve identified to bring out your weaknesses and evaluate the team members (or type of team member) whose strengths would help them excel with those tasks. By delegating these tasks, you’re eliminating potential stress, errors, and low productivity from your day-to-day. This simple switch in your to-do list allows you to show up in your business with more confidence.
To learn more about effectively delegating these tasks, read our blog post.
For example, many executive consultants and business coaches have a natural strength for strategy and connecting with people. They often lack an interest in organization and are thus inconsistent with data entry and CRM management. Delegating CRM data management, calendar management, and other administrative tasks to a virtual assistant, allows them to provide a better client success experience and show up with more energy everyday in their business.
To start building out a job description for your virtual assistant, get our Delegation Checklist, or schedule a call with us today.
Leverage Your Strengths To Reach New Levels Of Success
Effectively applying your strengths is a key strategy for leveling up your personal and professional life. By identifying, understanding, and effectively using your natural skill sets, you can work more efficiently, produce higher quality results, and provide greater value to your team and clients. However, it’s important to remember that leaning into your strengths doesn’t imply you’ll stay in your comfort zone. To continue growing, you should challenge yourself and step outside of your expertise from time to time. Though, day-to-day tasks that you’re weak at should be delegated out to ensure continued motivation and momentum for success. By finding the balance between applying your strengths and going beyond your current limitations, you can achieve long-term growth and success.