Do you get to do what you do best everyday?

Do you get to do what you do best everyday? Not once a week but every single day. Think about it for a moment. If you’re not the chances are you are one of the 87% of employees who are disengaged in their work. And when you’re disengaged the likelihood is that you will be spending at least 2-3 hours per day being completely unproductive.

Every single one of us has strengths and potential that we are living well below. Don Clifton, a positive psychology pioneer and inventor of The Gallup StrengthFinder, once said:

“Everybody does one thing better than 10,000 other people. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most of us have no idea what that one thing is.”

It’s depressing to think that most of us go through life not really understanding or applying our strengths, failing to reach our true potential for both ourselves and for the benefit of others.

Employee engagement is at an all-time low. It has been that way for many years yet nothing is changing. Whilst the finger is often pointed at employers I believe the responsibility for engagement starts with an individual. We have to first understand our own strengths and how to practically apply them.

Let’s be honest - the job descriptions and responsibilities we have are rarely developed around our strengths. When we start a new role we are full of enthusiasm and then our managers start to tell us about our weaknesses and what we need to do to improve. Whilst we thought we were employed for what we are good at we are suddenly dealing with being told we need to get better at the things we don't like doing.

It’s a horrible place to be when this happens. When you have to get up every-day knowing you are going to go to work and spend time doing things that you just aren’t good at. These are the things that you try and put off because they drain you of energy, frustrate you and by the end of the day you leave with a huge headache. Although the headache might come from the people you are dealing with because they are in your strengths blind spot (read more about that here).

The above has been me by the way so I get this. I got to the point where I realised that the only thing that could change with me. I had to take responsibility for being in this place and do something myself to change it. So I got a curious. What was causing this? When was I feeling energised by what I was doing? When was I feeling frustrated and what happened to my energy levels? Why did I put off certain tasks but went full steam ahead with others?

Someone mentioned the Clifton StrengthFinder assessment which would help me find out my innate talents. That’s how you naturally think, feel and behave.

I took the assessment and when I read the results thought yes, this sounds like me. Brilliant. Stuck it in my draw for about 3 months and carried on feeling rubbish. Then I got it out again, read it and thought how do I go about actually doing something with this?

Without realising it at the time a number of my strengths went into overdrive and I went on a quest to find out as much information as possible. I researched organisations who have implemented strengths into their organisation, gathered statistics, watched videos, listened to podcasts and connected and talked to strengths specialists worldwide. My team at the time, friends, family all took the assessment. I coached them, mapped them and thoroughly did my homework.

When I got to the point I had gathered as much as I could I was sold on this as the answer. The answer to engagement, fulfilment, productivity and happiness.

I wanted to know even more so I put myself on a 26 week programme with Strengths Strategy to become a master in how to understand strengths and apply them. Because it’s all very well understanding our strengths but unless we know how to apply themeffectively it’s pointless. And if you don’t discover and apply your strengths you will never fully fulfil your potential. Which is sad.

So how can you begin to find out what that one thing is that you do better than 10,000 other people? Here are 3 tips to get you started:

Step 1: Take the Clifton StrengthsFinder Assessment

Step 2: Review your report. Highlight all the things that stand out to you. Review the action report which outlines some steps of how you can put those strengths into action.

Step 3: Consider what you find fulfilling and frustrating. How do your strengths contribute to this? Keeping a diary over several weeks helps you to start to see commons themes.

Learning how to apply your strengths is a journey. A reminder of this is knowing that the chances of you having the same top 5 strengths as someone else is 1 in 33 million. I think that makes us all pretty special, don't you?