Know Yourself & Use Your Strengths
We each have a unique combination of preferences, tendencies, and styles that play a critical role in our quest for success. Perhaps, certain ways of expressing one’s self (extroversion), creating routines (being a morning person), and approaching work (systematic and orderly) have been promoted as being better than others. The reality is that your natural preferences, however different they may be from what’s praised in society, are better utilized as strengths to build on to create a more fulfilling life. A better understanding of your own unique preferences enables you to better express your needs to the people in your life, understand how you might be perceived, develop strategies to enhance your style, build support mechanisms, especially with people who would complement your style, and most importantly enable you to seek (or create) an environment where your unique qualities serve as your superpowers.
Through assessments, we can get insights into how we prefer to think, act, and behave, and why functioning a certain way works better for us. Take a look at some of the tools that can help you better understand, embrace, and use all your unique qualities, your superpowers, to set yourself up for success.
HABITS & ROUTINES
Let’s start by looking at our natural tendencies as it relates to forming and changing habits. I’d like to emphasize the “natural” part because we tend to put so much effort into fitting the definition of “the successful individual” that we may overlook the fact that some things just don’t work for us. For example, if you actually feel most energized, productive, and motivated late in the evening, then you are “naturally” a night owl and should not put too much effort into becoming a morning person, as it would not only drain your energy but also might lead you to a path of disappointment. Additional questions to consider and to build the right systems around:
Are you a marathoner, a sprinter, or a procrastinator?
Are you a moderator or an abstainer?
Are you an opener or a finisher?
Do you prefer to take small steps or big steps?
Once you understand what works better for you, then you can build the right systems to help you build good habits, break bad ones and create routines that amplify your energy, productivity, and motivation levels.
A QUICK LOOK AT SOME OF THE ASSESSMENT TOOLS
I use various assessment tools in my practice with individuals and teams to achieve increased self-awareness and improved performance on their personal, professional and leadership development journeys.
These tools help us understand numerous aspects of how we show up in the world:
Communication, conflict and change management styles
Learning preferences
Approach to tasks, deadlines, decision-making and feedback
And much more. Check them out below!
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®)
Grounded on the psychological type theory of Carl G. Jung, the MBTI, in my opinion, is a great initial assessment tool offering an extensive and insightful report including strategies to enhance your styles. Unlike other tools that place you on a spectrum, the MBTI sorts you into one of the psychological opposites of the four preference pairs (e.g. Extroversion-Introversion, Thinking-Feeling). It’s great for individuals to increase their self-awareness as well as for teams, even for family and friends, as it demonstrates how we each have natural preferences in regard to the way we communicate, receive and project energy, gather information, make decisions, and approach the outside world.
As a certified MBTI® practitioner, I use this tool with my coaching clients and they report tremendous value when I walk them through the process, interpret their reports, and discuss it with them.
Step 1: Take the assessment at this link.
Step 2: Book a session with me to get your report and interpretation.
The “Big Five” Personality Test
This widely popular test assesses what contemporary psychologists consider as the five fundamental aspects of your personality (OCEAN): openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Your score on these five dimensions offers insight into why you behave a certain way, react in different situations, and can even help you identify careers that align with your personality.
The Enneagram
© 2023 Cloverleaf
By evaluating the different ways people interpret the world and handle their emotions, the Enneagram describes nine interconnected personality types (the perfectionist, the giver, the achiever, the individualist, the investigator, the sceptic, the enthusiast, the challenger, the peacemaker). It’s a great tool to increase self-knowledge and help with personality development both for professional and psychological purposes and for parents and educators as it also includes areas for development for each personality type.
The Power of Character Strengths (VIA)
Copyright © 2023 VIA Institute on Character.
Built around the 24 character strengths that make up the best aspects of our personality, with all of us possessing each strength to a certain degree, the VIA survey identifies your “signature” strengths (e.g. creativity, love of learning, perseverance, kindness, bravery). By putting your signature strengths into action you start to find more joy and meaning in your personal and professional life.
CliftonStrengths
Copyright © 2023 Gallup, Inc.
This tool, compiled from decades of research led by Don Clifton, offers 34 themes categorized into four buckets: strategic thinking, relationship building, influencing and executing. The results demonstrate your unique combination of what you are naturally good at and what you might need support with from others. It aligns with my belief that self-awareness about our natural strengths is key to improving individual and team performance.
Additional Tools
Kolb Learning Styles: Especially great for teams and students to better understand their cognitive processes.
Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode: Assessing a person’s behavior on two dimensions (assertiveness and cooperativeness) to identify their conflict-handling modes.
Knowing your preferences, your communication style, your habit-forming tendencies, and other aspects of your personality enable you to build the right support systems on your path to success, have better relationships, and turn them into superpowers that can add more meaning and joy to your daily life and your work.
WORKING WITH A COACH TO EXPLORE YOUR STRENGTHS, STYLE AND PREFERENCES SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVES INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM PERFORMANCE.
This article was first published in TheEvolveMag.
