Your areas of strength provide consistent, near-perfect performance. Talents (innate), skills (learned) and knowledge (learned) all come together in strengths. When you do something that is a strength, you feel effective. Before you do it, you actively look forward to it. While you are doing it, you feel inquisitive and focused. After you’ve done it, you feel fulfilled and authentic.

So, to identify your own strengths, pay close attention to how specific activities make you feel. Your feelings reveal your strengths. Once you identify your top four general activities in the sense that you really feel great doing them, you need to ask yourself four simple “does it matter” questions to identify which aspects of each activities really matter and therefore absolutely must be present if they are to make you feel strong week after week; and conversely, which aspects of the activity are largely irrelevant and can be ignored.

1. Does it matter WHY I do this activity?
2. Does it matter WHO I do this activity with/to/for?
3. Does it matter WHEN I am doing this activity?
4. Does it matter WHAT this activity is about?

The next key question is “How can I use this strength precisely to fulfill my customer’s needs, to listen to the demands of my colleagues, to meet or renegotiate the expectations of my boss, and to honor my career aspirations?” Your answers to these questions will not sap your energy but neither will they be smooth sailing. The world out there is, at best, indifferent to you and your strengths. Before deciding that the only way for you to free your strengths is for you to leave your current role or get out from under your misguided boss, there are four distinct strategies to consider:

1. Identify exactly how and where each strength helps you in your current role.
2. Find the missed opportunities to leverage each strength in your current role.
3. Learn new skills and techniques to sharpen each strength.
4. Build your job toward each strength.

The majority of us will be able to realize that our job isn’t stopping us from doing what we love. It is just camouflaged beneath activities we loath. If we can change these activities, we can change our life.

Capture, clarify and confirm your strengths in the ways described on this page and then take these steps with each one of your strengths:

FOCUS: identify how and where a specific strength helps you in your current role.

1. When do you get to use this strength at work? In what activities?
2. How often do you get to use this strength?
3. When and how has this strength proved really helpful to you on the job?
4. What feedback, if any, have you received about this strength?

RELEASE: find the missed opportunities in you current role.

5. What new situations can you put yourself in to use this strength more?
6. Can you change your work schedule (shift) to put yourself in these situations? Do you need to talk to anyone to make this happen? Who?
7. What new systems or techniques can you try to accelerate this strength?
8. How can you measure/track how much you use this strength?
9. Are you struggling with any of your current job responsibilities? Which ones? How can you use this strength to help you overcome this?

EDUCATE: learn new skills and techniques to build this strength.

10. What new skills can you learn to leverage this strength?
11. What actions can you take to learn these skills? Are there books you can read, classes you can take, online research you can do?
12. Who can you job shadow at work?
13. Who can you talk to about how to use this strength more effectively? (a friend, teacher, manager or mentor)

EXPAND: build your job around this strength.

14. How can you share your best practices around this strength with others? When can you do this?
15. How can you expand your role to make better use of this strength?