Find Your Passion and Play to Your Strengths
A recurring bit of career advice from the women with whom I conducted interviews across the globe was to find your passion. It sounds simple but I am shocked at how few people are actually in tune with their personal passions. I’m not talking about romance but I’m asking you to consider what motivates and inspires you on a regular basis and how you can incorporate that into your career.
In his book, The One Thing You Need to Know About Great Managing, Leading and Sustained Individual Success, Marcus Buckingham shared a statistic:
“Only twenty percent of people report that they are in a role where they have the chance to do what they do best every day, and that the rest of the world feels like their strengths are not being called upon every day.”
The operative word is role – the rest of the eighty percent are not mediocre or incompetent, they are just not in the right role. I challenge you to consider what gives you strength and discover your passion.
A small step in owning your strengths is to query the people in your circle of trust. Find friends, family members or colleagues whom you believe will give you authentic feedback. Ask them to share 5 things they believe you do well. It can be very empowering to see how others perceive your strengths.
Ultimately, you are in charge of what you believe you do well that actually gives you strength but this is a great point of departure on your personal strengths quest.
If you prefer a more structured approach, I recommend Now, Discover Your Strengths a book by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton coupled with an online resource tool that will take you through a personalized strengths assessment.
It can be very liberating to focus on your strengths and not fixate on your weaknesses. After all, you are not broken – it’s possible you simply need to unlock your passion by discovering your strengths.
I’ll discuss my personal strengths journey with you soon to give you some step-by-step examples that you can test drive yourself.
