Today we continue our journey of discovery into what our strengths really are. We saw yesterday that the results we get from tools like the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment are a great starting point for our journey of discovery. However, they are not our strengths; they are signposts pointing towards our strengths. So how do we actually move from getting our StrengthsFinder results to actually identifying our strengths? Marcus Buckingham in his new book Go Put Your Strengths To Work says that there are four telltale signs of a strength and that a good way to organise and remember them is through the acronym SIGN.

S is for Success

Buckingham says that identifying the things we are successful at is the obvious starting point when it comes to discovering our strengths. “For an activity to be labelled a strength, you must obviously have some ability in it, and your success, measured or otherwise, is the best indicator of ability.”

Whilst this is true, Buckingham argues that this is still not enough to truly label something a strength. “There will undoubtedly be some activities at which you are proficient but which don’t energise you in the slightest…So you do it, and you do it well…But from your perspective, if you never had to do it again, your life would be none the worse.”

I’m sure we can all think of things like this. We are really good at something - great even - and yet we don’t get a kick out of doing it and may even hate doing it. Clearly, from a long-term perspective at least, that can’t be considered a true strength.

I is for Instinct

As well as looking for the activities we are successful at, we also need to look at the things that we instinctively are drawn to, enjoy, and look forward to. “Your strengths have an I-can’t-help-but quality to them. You can’t quite articulate why, but you find yourself drawn to certain activities repeatedly…There’s no rational accounting for it, but you find yourself instinctively looking forward to doing them.”

Take some time to think about the activities in a typical week of yours and ask yourself which of them you instinctively find yourself looking forward to.

G is for Growth

If by success we can look back to activities we’re effective in and by instinct we can look forward to the activities that excite us, by growth we can look to the activities that when we are doing them they energise us. “It feels easy. It feels like you’re not trying very hard. It feels like an activity that, for some reason, proved quite simple for you to pick up. You learned it quickly and now, when you are doing it, you don’t struggle to concentrate.”

Think about the activities you’ve done in the last week or so. Which of them would you say you really felt energised as you were in the midst of doing it?

N is for Needs

Needs points to how we feel right after we’re completed a particular activity. “Some activities just seem to fill an innate need of yours. When you’re done with them, you may feel physically tired…But you don’t feel psychologically drained. Instead you feel fulfilled, powerful, restored, the exact opposite of drained.”

What have you done in the last few weeks that has left you feeling like how Buckingham describes right after you’ve done it?

In the next post we will look at how we can practically start to capture, clarify, and confirm our strengths. This will all emerge out of holding these four signs of a strength together. A true strength is something that will tick all four of the boxes. Start to think about the activities you do that do this.

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Strengths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.