What are you hang-on-to-your-hats, darn-tootin-with-a-cherry-on-top great at?

You might have no clue at all, or you might be pretty clued up. Either way, your strengths are a cracking way of feeling confident and getting results. Which in turn makes you more confident.

In the book ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths‘, Marcus Buckingham defines a strength as “consistent, near perfect performance in an activity“, and they’re a combination of 3 things - the accumulation and application of what you’ve learned works well, the skills you’ve worked at and gained, and the natural talents you’ve always had.

It’s always going to be a whole lot tougher to do consistently great work and see results without knowing what your real strengths are, so here are 5 keys to leveraging your strengths:

1. Don’t try identify your strengths from a shopping list. Looking at a list of words and saying “Yeah, got that one. That’s a good one. Got that one too.” is not the way to identify your strengths. You’ll end up with a homogenised list of what someone else deems to be a strength that may or may not have any relevance to you.
2. Figure out what your real strengths are by doing a strength analysis like StrengthsFinder, or better still by looking at the great results you’ve already had in your life and figuring out what strengths you applied that lead to those results. This is the best route to finding your real strengths that I know of – by looking for proof of where you applied them.
3. The whole point of strengths is that you use them. They’re there all the time, just waiting to be used to get you results, so it’s crazy to let them sit there doing nothing. Of course, you can only use them by making a choice to apply them, and that’s a conscious decision you have to make.
4. Your strengths can more than compensate for your weaknesses. At best you’ll only ever be average at a weakness, so pouring effort into improving a weakness needs to be a finite process or you’ll end up wasting time, energy and feeling frustrated. Applying a strength in an area that you feel weak in can transform it and give you an entirely different experience. Use a strength of rapport building if presenting is a current weakness. Use a strength of lateral thinking if planning is a weakness. Use a strength of empathy and honesty if handling conflict is a weakness.
5. Watch yourself when you start filtering and watering down your strengths based on what other people expect. Sometimes you might feel awkward when applying a strength that might be a little out of the ordinary, but editing your strengths is sabotaging what you’re capable of. Where you feel a strength might not ‘fit’ completely, use it in a subtle way or combine it with another strength to make it work.

You can have absolute confidence in your strengths. They’re not going anywhwere and are waiting to get you results.

Get out there and use ‘em.