I recently spent a few weeks in London, Paris and NYC , all amazing cities boasting hectic lifestyles at a frenetic pace. Most of my travel to date has been with a very good friend who has a fantastic ability to read maps in seconds and have us en route to our destination immediately. Over this time I had come to decide that maps and me were not friends! My sense of direction is terrible, so much so that if I was convinced we should be heading in one direction, it was almost certain that that the opposite would be correct! Never wanting to fail and convinced I can do anything, I persisted at proving my direction prowess. After a few years (yes it took that long for me to give up) of being proved wrong I finally abdicated any responsibility for direction, deciding to leave it to the experts!
So back to London, Paris and NYC...... this time I was alone and had no choice but to navigate the maze of streets and underground transport systems. Somewhat terrified at the prospect of ending up in some nasty neighbourhood, I armed myself with 3 versions of maps for every city and to the streets I went..... and what a star!
I became a tube hopping bandit! No mistakes, no nasty neighbourhoods and no fights because I had spent 30 minutes trying to prove we are heading in the right direction till proven we weren't!
The point.... sometimes there are things that you are brilliant at and actually enjoy, but have yet to discover. It can take the right role, manager, workplace or in my case a moment of sheer necessity, to open up opportunities to explore our unlimited potential.
"Now discover your Strengths' by Marcus Buckingham is a fantastic book with an associated online questionnaire which helps to identify your own strengths and those of the people you manage. It also opened my mind to how we language the strengths of our staff in the workplace. Try brainstorming 20 different words you would identify as a strength. Then try weaknesses or development points.
The StrengthsFinder provides 34 different themed strengths to help articulate your strengths which incidentally they define as 'consistent near perfect performance in an activity'.
Most organisations need to maximise internal resources, particularly with recent staff cuts and market pressures. Open up a conversation with your staff to identify and language their strengths. Not only will this create power within each individual but open up possible synergies within teams and functions, the ultimate in leveraging. I am sure that you will find pockets of gold everywhere, perhaps a creative genius in the finance department!
People love to do what they are good at! It gets more energy, focus, accuracy, creativity and ultimately success! And this type of momentum is infectious.
