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Find Your Strengths… and a Career to Match Them
Advice from Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston
Step back and think about what you really do well. What kind of work comes easily to you? In which work situations did time seem to fly by—and when did it drag? “Be honest, not just with other people but also with yourself about what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing,” advises Abby Joseph Cohen, the investment strategist and a managing director at Goldman Sachs. “I know it’s called work, and you can’t love every aspect of how you spend your days. But at the end of the week or the month or the year, there has to be a sense of accomplishment. There has to be a sense of satisfaction.”
What strengths set you apart from others? Do others see these capabilities as a part of what makes you you? Are you excited and energized when you use them? If your answers are yes, then you have discovered your core strengths.
Many women we’ve met who are naturally outspoken seem to clam up when asked about their strengths. Modesty is a strength, but we wondered if there was something more going on. Using a premade list made it easier for women to spot themselves. That’s why we turned to a strengths framework developed by positive psychologists Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson. They identified twenty-four strengths with universal application, based on an extensive review of societies across geographies, religions, and the ages. Their six groupings may spark your own thinking on core strengths that can be building blocks to meaning for you:
- Wisdom: curiosity, love of learning, judgment, ingenuity, emotional intelligence, and perspective
- Courage: valor, perseverance, and integrity
- Humanity: kindness and loving
- Justice: citizenship, fairness, and leadership
- Temperance: self-control, prudence, and humility
- Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, spirituality, forgiveness, humor, and zest.
If you rank each of the twenty-four strengths according to how they resonate with you, you’ll find which ones characterize you. Everyone has a Top 5 when it comes to personal strengths…
One way to discover your own Top 5 is to ask those who know you best. Children, spouses, or friends may see you more clearly than you see yourself. What would a senior executive at work who knows you well say? What would a customer say? What would your mother say?
Now, see how these strengths are used in your work. Think about a few experiences where you were a clear success. Dig deeper to understand why. Chances are, you’ll find some core strengths at the bottom of them.
Of course, some jobs are genuinely the wrong fit. If your current job does not afford you sufficient opportunity to tap your signature strengths, think about what role might be more meaningful. Not sure? Talk to colleagues who seem turned on by their jobs; what do they love about their work? If, after several interviews, you don’t recognize your own feelings in their descriptions, you may want to broaden your exploration.
But don’t wait for a job change to start deploying your core strengths. For example, if one of your Top 5 strengths is kindness, choose to perform a random act of kindness daily. You’ll feel great because of the positive feedback loop. If a top strength is curiosity, exploring new problems at work should energize you. If that avenue is not open, use your time after work to continue to learn and grow. Try to steer what you do every day to your strengths. You’ll be surprised at the positive results-energy, a feeling of lightness, satisfaction with work and with yourself.
Finally, remember that this is not a once-in-a-lifetime exercise. Your Top 5 core strengths change over time; that means you’re growing. And with your new strengths, you’ve just expanded your capacity to lead.
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Copyright © 2009 by McKinsey & Company, Inc. From the book HOW REMARKABLE WOMEN LEAD published by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission. |
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