Taking Action
Fitness advocates, healthcare professionals, your boss, perhaps even your spouse, challenge you to take action. Does this sound familiar?
Exercise more. Eat Less. Lower your stress. Get started on this project. Paint this room. Perhaps you know you need to do these things but you just can’t get going?
Sometimes, taking action or not taking action equates to inconvenience. Other times, taking action or not taking action can equate to life or death.
Do you personally find it difficult to take action? Care to know why? Keep reading.
Steve’s Challenge
Recently, I ran into a guy named Steve who described his challenge with taking action like this.
“I know the, I think I can, I think I can approach to taking action,
will never work without a goal and a plan.”
This quote comes from a deeply talented relationship building, communicator. He has so much potential to become more than he is today but he has trouble getting started. His inability to get started is keeping him in his current comfort zone.
Alternatively, taking action to step outside his comfort zone would propel Steve to a level of personal and professional growth he’s never experienced before.
Steve was mostly right in his quote. A goal and a plan to execute by themselves are useless until they are attached to taking action. Apply action to a goal and plan and you have forward momentum.
Activator®
The CliftonStrenghs™ Assessment measures action taking in a trait called Activator®. When the numbers were crunched numbers based on 15,000,000 assessments taken worldwide, .098% of people who took the CliftonStrengths™ Assessment possessed Activator® in their Top 5 potential Strengths.
Stated another way, out of 34 total traits, Activator® comes in at number 29 in overall frequency. That’s frequency of Activator® showing up in a person’s Top 5 potential Strengths.
There are 28 traits that show up more frequently in a person’s Top 5 potential Strengths before Activator® shows up for most people.
Go Button
People who are gifted with the Activator® trait have a built-in “Go Button”. These people who possess the courage, confidence and “Go Button” required to propel an effort or project into motion.
People who are not high in Activator® generally have trouble getting things started.
Solution
If you are low in Activator®, find someone who is high in Activator® to partner with to help you get going.
If you possess high Activator®, it is your job to discover, to develop, to mature and to polish your Activator® into a full-blown Strength.
When you take this decisive action to develop your Activator®, you’ll turn it into a game-changing Strength that very few people around you possess. Your Activator® will become a life and career differentiator that sets you apart.
Jeff Snyder Coaching, Career Coaching Blog, 719.686.8810
