We are continuing to work through Marcus Buckingham’s new book Go Put Your Strengths To Work. So far we have looked at the first two of a six step process he guides us through in the book. The first step was about identifying and overcoming the myths that may be holding us back from living from our strengths. The second step was all about getting really clear about what our strengths specifically are. Today we will start looking at the third step when we’ll look at freeing our strengths and discovering how we can make the most of them.

Hopefully, after going through the process of capturing, clarifying, and confirming our strengths, we have something more specific to hold onto. In fact, if we haven’t reached this point, it’ll be difficult to move forward. If you are ready for this though, then this third step is about taking control. Here’s what Buckingham says: “There are powerful forces pulling your week away from your strengths: the needs of your customers, the demands of your colleagues, the expectations of your boss, your own career aspirations. It will take a rare concentration of the mind to push back these forces, channel them, and thereby restore them to their proper place and influence in your time at work.”

Of course, these forces are normal and healthy. The adjustment that we need to make is to bring our strengths of bear on these demands. How can we use our strengths to meet these demands rather than being dragged into areas of weakness that drain us? Obviously, the most extreme answer may be that it is simply not possible. It may be that the only way to utilise our strengths is to leave our current role. Buckingham says that this should be the last option though. Before that we should consider these four strategies:

1. Identify exactly how and where each strength helps you in your current role.
2. Find the missed opportunities to leverage each strength in your current role.
3. Learn new skills and techniques to sharpen each strength.
4. Build your job toward each strength.

In the next post we’ll start to look at these strategies in more detail using a tool Buckingham has developed called the FREE interview. This process is all about getting specific with things you can do to capitalise on your strengths more this week that you did last week.

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 6:52 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.