What are your strengths?
I’ve been thinking a lot about that question. Knowing your strengths is important because it helps you figure out what you should or should not do. It determines what you chose and what you get chosen for. It impacts who you meet, where you live, and who you work with. For such a catalytic piece of information, we often misunderstand it and thus misuse it, often to our detriment. The popular speak is about identifying what you're good at doing, what comes naturally to you, and what brings you joy. Or it's about cherry-picking power words that would appeal to employers. I can't help but think that these views are one dimensional, maybe even egocentric. I posit that there is a holistic perspective.
We're communal beings, each with a different set of talents, that need to work together to do anything of meaning. That's how civilizations are created and companies are scaled. The things that you're good at doing must bring value to others. At the same time, it must also give you a sense of fulfillment. There is a balance. The things that help you achieve this equilibrium are your true strengths.
For me, I had to be unbalanced to see my true strengths. I’m administratively inclined and can be rigorously analytical. These strengths have served me well in my professional life but when they're the core functions of the job, it takes a lot of my energy and if I’m not careful, I burn out. I have burned out before. It's because these are learned skills that I, out of necessity, have practiced despite it being unnatural to me. When I was young, as the oldest of three (7 years older than my brother and 14 years older than my sister) with a single mom that worked seven days a week, I filled the parental gap at home. I filled it by helping manage the family finances, my siblings' school affairs, insurance paperwork, utility bills, etc. By the time I got to college, I was convinced that these were my true strengths and that my career needed to revolve around them. I wasn’t entirely wrong but through many other endeavors that I pursued out of pure interest, I quickly realized that I came alive when I was creating/orchestrating, visualizing, hypothesizing and learning. When I was exercising these things, they gave me life and I could tell I was a better version of myself to the people I worked with and to the people I was serving. I found my balance.
These are my true strengths.
If you found this post helpful or just liked it, you should check out "Following Your Passion is a Bad Idea".