How to identify the strengths you should build your career around
Here’s some clear, simple, obvious career advice—
Build your career around your strengths.
But people often struggle to identify what their strengths ARE…
Because they don’t want to be cocky.
There’s almost a superstitious or moral quality to this fear of saying that you’re good at something.
Underneath this fear are ideas like…
Pride goeth before the fall.
The moment you think you’re good at something is the moment you get sloppy and trip up.
People who go around declaring “I’m great at X” are annoying jerks.
I get it, because I’m like this too.
I also have an almost allergic reaction to saying that I’m good at something or celebrating my wins.
I almost have to “cross myself” with declarations of “well, it’s not a big deal” or “not to brag” or “I’m sure I have other areas to improve on” before I can just SAY “Hey, I’m good at this.”
This belief system comes from a good place.
You’re trying really hard to NOT be a jerk and NOT get complacent and NOT become close-minded to further learning and growth, all of which are admirable goals.
But this belief system can also make it very hard to acknowledge the things that you actually ARE really good at…
Which then makes it hard to identify the strengths that you should build your career around.
It’s impossible to build a product strategy if you can’t acknowledge the product’s competitive advantages.
And it’s impossible to build your own career strategy if you can’t acknowledge your own competitive advantages.
Today, I’m going to give you a way to do an end run around this fear of saying that you’re good at something.
You don’t have to address this fear.
You don’t have to change your belief system.
You can just go around it.
Here’s how.
Instead of asking yourself, “What are my strengths?” or “What am I good at?”
Ask yourself…
What would I do for free, for fun, on the weekends?
What DO I find myself doing for free, for fun, even though no one has asked me to do it?
What can I not stop myself from doing?
These could be things like…
Playing poker. Because I love being in a competitive situation and making bets based on my read of the situation.
Stepping up and organizing my friend’s bachelorette party. No one else was doing it, and I just couldn’t stop myself from taking the lead, figuring out what would work best for everyone, and making it the best possible party I could make it.
Pawning off my work on other people. My boss wanted me to do all this stuff, but dude, get real — I’m not doing all that. So I immediately found the right people in the company who could do most of it for me.
When I watch reality TV, I’m always yelling at the screen about how they should communicate and draw boundaries and stop blaming other people for their emotions. I wish I could just tell them that there’s a better way to handle things!
If a friend asks for my thoughts on their startup idea, I have WAY too much to say. I have to stop myself from constantly pinging them with all my thoughts and questions and perspectives because I didn’t want to annoy them.
Don’t worry about what you’re good at.
Think about what you can’t stop yourself from doing.
Think about the skills, activities, tasks, and way of operating in the world that are so inherently natural and fun to you that NOT doing it is harder than doing it.
Those are the things you should build your career around.
This is just Step 1 of developing and executing your career strategy.
Want to find out what the rest of the steps are, and how you can execute them consistently and successfully?
Come talk to me, and let’s get started.
What my clients have to say…
“Pretty immediately, I was able to break through the decision of whether or not to leave my job.
I was able to see: Staying at my job is hard. Looking for a job is also hard. Which hard do I want to sign up for? Because being here in limbo is not productive.
I was also able to rewrite the story of what had happened at my current job in a way that gave me more confidence and started to untangle some of the emotional turmoil I had with that.
And then I recruited for and got my next job and got comfortable moving forward with that as my next step.”
—Client | Early-Stage Tech Startup Director turned Design Consultant
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