Want to fly in your career? Then you need to know your superpower

You will only excel by maximising your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses

marcus buckingham

This goes in contrast to what we learn at school, and every personal development plan ever written. But a focus on our weaknesses just keeps us mediocre, because our intersection of strengths is unique, and while they may seem mundane to us, to others they are superpowers. 

But back to basics, what is a strength? 

Traditionally, we have defined strengths as “something you are good at”, which are generally hard skills like data analysis, writing or systems knowledge. 

But we can be boxed in by this definition, meaning we are only seen as “the numbers gal” or “the systems buddy”. While these may have been true when we first came out of school, they won’t help us to move upwards or across in our careers. Plenty of us are better than other people at certain things, but we don’t want to be doing more and more of them. 

What if we flipped it on its head, and looked at strengths as “what gives me energy”? “What makes me feel strong”?

If we spend time on weaknesses (what drains us or makes us feel weak), we may improve in those areas slightly but we will end up tired and demotivated.

When something gives us energy, the more we do it, the more energy we will have. The more time we spend in our best energy, the better we will become at the thing we are doing. It’s an infinite positive cycle which will make us the absolute go-to person for that skill. 

Better than being stuck as the  “numbers gal” forever, right?!

So how do you know if something gives you energy?

• Have you ever been so stuck into something that you didn’t realise it’s got dark all around as you’ve been working? 
• Have you ever been so excited about a project that you accidentally missed the first ten minutes of a meeting? 
• Have you ever woken up buzzing to get started on what you didn’t manage to finish yesterday? 

That is a feeling of flow, being in the zone or… working to your strengths. 

Here’s an exercise to help you identify yours: 

1. Take a screenshot of your calendar (this works very well if you timeblock which I’m sure you’ve heard about from those time management online courses!) and make a note of what you have been doing throughout the week: small meetings, big meetings, phone calls, individual work and group work. 
2. Colour code the calendar based on which activities gave you energy, and which drained you. Maybe that big meeting with the regional director filled you with dread and anxiety, whereas a 1:1 with a team member felt rejuvenating. 
3. Then, look at how much of your calendar is highlighted in your strength zone. In an ideal world this could be about 80% or more, but when I first did this exercise it was nearer 20%. Imagine if you could move from 20% to 40% of your week spent on energising activities, how different you would feel! You could end the day feeling balanced, without a tension headache and satisfied that you deserve the evening off. 
4. Next, try to understand the quality of those activities. Were they individual or in a group? Were they related to numbers or to people? Were they about thinking and creating, or about executing? What are you doing when you are doing your best work? 

Don’t be disheartened if at first it is hard to name your strengths. We aren’t just talking about hard skills any more. 

• It may be that you excel at working in groups at the early stages of a project, using your negotiation and influence skills, and your project management skills to create a timeline and ownerships. 
• It may be that you work best independently, diving deep into data to come up with new insights and then creating a game plan to get everyone else on board.
• It may be that you are fantastic at thinking on your feet, in high pressure situations in front of a big audience. 
• It may be that you are the best person to diligently ensure work is getting done to deadlines, without missing a single detail. 

Once you have a clearer idea of your energising strengths, you can articulate them, ask your boss for more of them, put more of them in your calendar yourself. And for those things which simply have to be done which are draining for you, you can prepare yourself with kindness to get ready for them, perhaps with an enforced break before and after, with a nice lunch or a walk with your dog. 

These strengths may seem mundane to you, or like everybody must be able to do them just as well. But don’t be fooled! They seem easy to you precisely because they are your strengths. They come to you naturally and probably have since childhood. It doesn’t mean that they are commonplace.

The more you speak to others about yours, the more you will realise that everyone has a different combination of strengths.

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