Finding Your Own Strengths
Finding Your Own Strengths
Each one of us are unique. No one person is the same. You have your own strengths and weaknesses. The thing is, you can’t be good at everything. That is why most businesses have a variety of people with different skills and abilities. If someone isn’t detail oriented...you probably shouldn’t put them in charge of accounting.
Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what your own personal strengths and weaknesses are. It’s good to get an outside perspective to help you see what areas you thrive in. Understanding your strengths will help you know what kind of jobs suit your abilities and what jobs don’t. So, where do you even start?
Start by taking a variety of personality assessments to help you identify trends in the different test results. Personality assessments are not 100 percent accurate but they can help you identify areas that you do well and areas you can work to improve. Here are a few different tests to take and what they measure.
Strengths Finder establishes your top 5 strengths. This is a 15-20 minute quiz that asks you a variety of questions about how others would describe you, certain scenarios that you like or dislike, and the type of work styles you enjoy. Any of these books allows you to redeem the access code to take this quiz. Then you can read in depth around your strengths and how to apply it to your life and your career.
StrengthsFinder 2.0
How Full Is Your Bucket?
Strengths Based Leadership
Now, Discover Your Strengths
Discover Your Sales Strengths
Teach With Your Strengths
Living Your Strengths
“The purpose of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people's lives” (The Myers Briggs Foundation). These personality categories are extroverted or introverted, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. You can take a free version of this test online.
This test helps you see how you handle social situations, how you make decisions, how you deal with change, and more. It can give an overview of how you are in your work life, your strengths and weaknesses, and even how you are in friendships and relationships.
Within the enneagram, there are 9 different personality types. This test goes into a deeper level of specific personality types. Enneagram is very specific to the type of person you are. “At its core, the Enneagram helps us to see ourselves at a deeper, more objective level and can be of invaluable assistance on our path to self-knowledge” (Enneagram Institute). There are 9 types:
You can pay for the test, or you can read each of these descriptions and see which personality type most closely matches your personality. Most likely, you will relate to all of these in some aspect, but which one do you most closely align with?
The purpose of the DISC assessment is to help find your behavioral type or style. The main characteristic trait for each behavioral type measured in the DISC assessment are:
Dominant
Inspiring
Supportive
Cautious
Applying this to your future career
Understanding what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are will help guide you in what kind of career you want to have. Your strengths of course can always change and we can improve our weaknesses. Understanding your current strengths will allow you to choose paths that will make your strengths shine.
Look at the traits you are finding trends in and try to think of jobs that exemplify your strengths. Also pay close attention to your weaknesses. What weaknesses won’t work in certain jobs? If there is a job you really want but your weaknesses are holding you back, how can you improve these areas?
Knowing our strengths is like knowing our superpowers and how to put them to use. In the workplace, knowing your coworkers superpower will allow you to use them in the best possible way. Each person has their own set of superpowers that make them unique. In a team setting, putting your teammates with tasks that compliment their strengths will help lead your team to success!