How to Turn Your Weaknesses into Strengths…That’s Not Right

This video title just landed in my Inbox. It didn’t sit well with me.

I coach Strengths every day. My clients are passionate people who are already good at what they do. Often, the people I work with don’t like comfort zones. By learning their Strengths, they learn how to step outside their comfort zone to stretch and to grow.

My clients come to me because they want to fine-tune what they do to produce a great performance. They’re interested in being maximized and they can’t wait to learn more about themselves.

STRENGTHS COACHING

In the realm of Strengths Coaching, we start off with an assessment that has been taken over 16,000,000 times around the world to identify a person’s unique traits.  We all possess the 34 traits that are identified through this assessment. What makes each us 100% unique is the order in which our traits line up.

The order in which one’s traits line up determines how they have potential to deliver a great performance. Everybody can deliver a great performance of some kind.

“Everyone has hidden talents and abilities that, once discovered, can be turned into superpowers.  Jeff is uniquely talented at identifying a person’s greatest abilities, then maximizing those abilities to produce true strengths.”

— Chief Information Security Officer

STRENGTHS MATURITY

The traits that show up near the top of one’s assessment report are the traits that can be turned into Strengths. Decades of research shows that when people are given the opportunity to do what they have potential to be great at, the impact on the individual, team, or organization can be powerful.

Some of the benefits include Personal Clarity, Self-Confidence, Direction, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Engagement with one’s work, Stronger Relationships and more.

DON’T FOCUS ON WEAKNESSES

The idea here is to identify one’s natural talents. From there, we can work to mature a person’s top talents into full-blown Strengths. Strengths have no cap on them in terms of just how great they can become.

I don’t ignore weaknesses. In fact, I help my clients to identify their weaknesses. Then, I help my clients to build a strategy around their Weaknesses so their weaknesses don’t derail the pursuit of maximizing their Strengths.

There is no value whatsoever to be gained in trying to turn a weakness into a Strength.  There is tremendous value in maximizing one’s Strengths.

When you’re ready to find Clarity around what your natural Strengths are, call me.

“Stand out from the crowd and get the job!  Jeff will teach you how to discover your greatest strengths, and then market yourself to your next employer. ”

— Chief Information Security Officer

Jeff Snyder’s, Jeff Snyder Coaching Blog, 719.686.8810

TOP 10 Business Skills for 2020

CREDIT: Future of Jobs Report, World Economic Forum

Top 10 skills required in 2020 according to the World Economic Forum report

All of the top 2020 skills listed above can be measured with the combination of the Clifton StrengthsFinder and the EQi-2.0 Emotional Quotient Inventory.

Your Unique Strengths

In the hands of an experienced Strengths Coach, the results of the Clifton StrengthsFinder™ can be interpreted to show a coaching client exactly and precisely how they are internally wired.  The 34 traits represented in the Clifton StrengthsFinder™ are broken down into Strategic Thinking Traits, Influencing Traits, Relationship Building Traits and Executing Traits. How a person's traits uniquely line up determine whether they'd be a better Engineer or a better Engineering Manager, a better Accountant or a better Chief Financial Officer and so on.

Notice in the chart above for example that People Management, Coordinating with Others (Collaboration) and Emotional Intelligence are all people-oriented topics.  People skills or Soft skills are, have been and will continue to be highly valuable skills moving into the future.

Emotional Intelligence

The EQi-2.0 Emotional Quotient® Inventory is an assessment used to measure a person's Emotional Intelligence.  This assessment can only be purchased and interpreted by someone who has invested in training and certification through the assessment's owner.

Through this assessment, a Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach can show their client where their Emotional Intelligence stands relative to other people who do similar work. The good news is that the 15 different emotional intelligence skills measured by the EQi-2.0® can be improved upon when working with an experienced coach.

The business wants, needs and expects job candidates who have a blend of Strategic Thinking skills and Emotional Intelligence skills to name just a few.  It takes time to fine-tune and polish the traits found in the Clifton StrengthsFinder™ into Strengths.  It also takes time to fine-tune and polish the skills found in the EQi-2.0 assessment.  

Those who invest themselves to learn about their natural Strengths and those who invest in themselves to improve their current level of Emotional Intelligence are the individuals who will earn the best jobs of the future.

Jeff Snyder Coaching

Hey Technology Professional…They Didn’t Teach You This in Engineering School

Psychological research suggests that a person’s IQ (Cognitive Intelligence) is worth +-10% of career success. The same psychological research also suggest that EI / EQ (Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient) could be worth +-60% of career success.

If you want to progress in any career, what initially gets you going and what gets you to a certain level of success is frequently going to be a different skill set than the skill set you need to continue progressing.

What is the skill set required to progress in any career?

Here are some specific examples. This is what the business is currently asking for from the Director to the “C” Suite in technology job descriptions. Every trait or skill mentioned below that can be measured can be improved upon if a person is naturally gifted with a specific trait.

For some skills or traits, you either have them or you don't. We're all wired differently and we all have potential to deliver a great performance. It's simply a matter of figuring out how a person is uniquely wired and then aligning them with the right work to maximize their performance.

Notice that most of the traits or skills mentioned below are people skills or soft skills.

• Leadership Presence (can be developed)
• Leadership that is both Visionary and Strategic (can be measured)
• Leadership that inspires people (influencing skills can be measured)
• Thought Leadership (can be measured)
• Deep Problem Solving Skills (can be measured)
• Complex Analysis Skills (can be measured)
• Excellent Verbal Communication Skills (can be learned)
• Excellent Written Communication Skills (can be learned)
• Excellent Collaboration and Partnering Skills
• Superior Presentation Delivery Skills
• Integrator of People, Process and Technology
• Change Management Skills
• Consensus Building Skills
• Budgeting Skills
• Business Analysis Skills
• Contract Negotiation Skills
• Vendor Management Skills
• There's more...this list just gets the discussion started!

It is a person’s cognitive skills that gets them into an engineering degree program. It is their cognitive skills that gets their technology career started. Cognitive skills are the skills the brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, calculate and pay attention.

What you see in the list of employer requirements above require some cognitive skills. Most of what is required to move beyond leaning almost purely on cognitive skills are emotional intelligence skills, soft skills or people skills. 

These are the skills that when developed, enable us to lead, influence, persuade, mentor, manage, collaborate, build partnerships, negotiate contracts, manage vendor relationships and more.  Additionally, beyond what a person learns in engineering school, the further up the ladder one wishes to climb, roles require much more emphasis on business skills than on technical skills.

What if you don’t want to be a manager, director or “C” suite technology leader? 

At the Analyst, Engineer or Architect levels, development of the soft skills mentioned above will provide exponential return on investment to your career. Not everybody is built to lead, guide, mentor and grow other people and you shouldn't feel as if you have to move in a managerial direction in order to progress in your own career development.

In addition to people skills, there are also business skills mentioned above. Business skills in this case include the ability to read and interpret financial statements. The ability to present one’s case for technology in terms that a business audience can clearly understand without having to bring in an interpreter. The ability to speak to a CEO, COO, CFO, etc. in their language rather than your technology focused language.

When you invest in yourself to master skills that go above and beyond your IQ or cognitive skills alone, your career progression will go places.

Jeff Snyder Coaching

There’s Great Value in Understanding One's Personal Strengths

I’m referring to Strengths as described in the Clifton StrengthsFinderⓒ assessment. One of my strengths coaching clients is a technology sales professional.  I’ll refer to this client as Bob.

In addition to learning about himself, his own Strengths and how he could fine-tune his Strengths, an interesting realization came to Bob this week. This is what he shared:

“I fully expected to learn quite a bit about myself but what I didn’t see coming was how much I’ve learned about everyone else around me.  I now find myself in meetings and conversations where I’m able to get a much quicker handle on other people, who they are, and what’s making them tick.  In many cases I’m able to make an assessment of who I’m dealing with and adjust my expectations accordingly.  It’s actually reducing my frustration level and in some cases has helped me make better connections with clients and peers while giving me a better understanding of why I may not be making the progress I’d anticipated.  In certain situations and I’ve been able to make some adjustments.”

I look for results everywhere with my coaching clients.  The results Bob is reporting is his new-found ability to understand people more quickly because he now understands his own unique wiring and he is beginning to see the unique wiring of everyone around him.

By understanding the wiring of people around him, Bob is now able to tailor his communication to each unique individual he approaches in his audience.

How much more effective might you be if you intimately understood your own unique wiring and you learned to understand the unique wiring of people around you at work, at home and at play?

Jeff Snyder’s Jeff Snyder Coaching Blog, 719.686.8810