The IU Alumni Association’s Career and Professional Development team is in full swing with delivering relevant career content in our monthly Career Navigator Webcast Series to IU alumni around the globe. For the month of October, we focused a topic that transcends many career development themes—Identifying your strengths.
A common question asked in an interview is “What are Your Strengths?” Whether you struggle with the question or you are confident with your response, taking a deeper dive into identifying meaningfully authentic responses will help distinguish you as a strong and competent professional.
Why strengths?
Strengths are the cornerstone of your professional brand. Understanding what value you bring to your job and organization elevates your level of self-awareness and can help guide you like a compass in your career. Those professionals who actively play to their strengths have more positive interactions at work, have higher career satisfaction, higher productivity, more creativity, and are more likely to contribute positively to profitability.
Strengths are also linked to well-being. Sixty-seven percent of Americans are disengaged in their work and high levels of disengagement lead to health issues including depression. However, when managers focus on the strengths of their employees, the chance of being disengaged drops to 1% (Gallup, 2014). When professionals have the opportunity to play to their strengths they are six times more likely to be engaged in their job and three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life. Strengths at work matter!
How to discover strengths
Giving thought to a few strategies prior to taking a strengths assessment is the first step I give clients (even though I am a StrengthsFinder assessment evangelist). 1. Ask those you trust what they believe are your greatest professional strengths. This also gives you a clue into how other perceive you as a leader and colleague. 2. Keep a journal of daily tasks and projects you work on. Keep track of your excitement and enjoyment level for each. 3. Brainstorm questions like “What gets me excited to go to work every day?” and “When do I easily lose track of time?” Taking some time to reflect on what brings you joy and identify when you’re in the “flow,” are indicators of when you’re in your strengths zone.
An amazing resource we can suggest with 100% confidence is the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment and unpacking the results with a coach. Unlike other assessments that require a certified interpreter, you can certainly visit the Gallup Strengths website and take the assessment on your own, but many times, we have clients who have completed the assessment and never activated their results. All three of our coaches have been through comprehensive certification training with Gallup and can create an action plan in any life stage to get you in the strengths zone and thriving in your life and career.
Strengths can transform teams too! StrengthsFinder provides a common language and highlights the incredible appreciation for diversity in teams. Team building toward more effective communication techniques and interpersonal understanding are just a few of the outcomes when our coaches meet with managers who want to elevate their team’s success, professional growth, and team dynamics.
We hope you’ll contact us to set up an opportunity to dive deeper into your strengths (or facilitate a group session with your team) and how your strengths can make a lasting impact on your career. Please visit www.iualumnicareers.com for more about scheduling the one-on-one coaching session with any of our strengths-certified professionals or email careers@alumni.iu.edu for organizational development training.