Defence or Offence – using strengths to be your best

We’ve all heard the saying ‘play to your strengths’, but do we really know what that means or how to truly apply it? Does it mean sticking to things that you’re good at? Being the go-to person for a certain task? Relying on the same old strategies to get you through every situation?

Strengths are a crucial aspect of wellbeing and has been extensively researched across the globe and over many decades. They are energetic, fluid, and inseparable from your best self, and when brought to life, are remarkable. Strengths use is responsible for higher levels of performance (Stefanyszyn, 2007) and resilience (Cappfinity, 2010), and lower levels of stress (Wood, Linley, Maltby & Hurling, 2010).

Additionally, if you’re able to use your strengths for 70% of your workday, your overall engagement and wellbeing also improve (Gallup, 2016), and that’s something worth striving for.

So, how can you immediately access and utilise this amazing resource inside of you?

Tips for spotting your strengths

There are many scientifically validated tools used to assess strengths, including Cappfinity’s Strength Profile, which was launched in 2009 and has been taken by more than one million people across 90 countries.

If you’d like a quick way to become more aware of your strengths, consider the questions below:

• What topics are you drawn to?

• What do you speak about with a fast pace, excitement in your voice and total engagement?

• What makes you say things like ‘I love to…’, ‘It’s so great when…’ and ‘It just feels right…’?

• In what areas do you seem to learn rapidly and easily?

• What activities give you energy and leave you positively buzzing?

• When do you lose track of time?

• What are you doing when you feel the most ‘you’?

Using strengths to increase wellbeing

No one will deny how challenging life can be, and how important it is to have tools in your toolkit for handling those challenges. It may come as no surprise then, that strengths is one of those tools. Let’s look at a few examples:

• Your appointment book has completely fallen apart and your day is not going as planned:

  • Use your strength of Time Optimiser to complete other tasks in the newly available time.

  • Use your strength of Centred to quickly shift your mood and not be thrown off course.

• Your patient is anxious and uncooperative:

  • Use your strength of Curiosity to understand what they need for a more collaborative appointment.

  • Use your strength of Service to build trust and mitigate any short-term stress.

• A patient has made a complaint against you:

  • Use your strength of Perspective to rein in catastrophic thinking and excessive distress.

  • Use your strength of Growth to learn from the experience and develop into an even better clinician.

Using strengths to charge forward

Strengths are not only wonderful when you’re on the defence of life, but also are powerful resources you can draw upon to help propel you towards your next goal. Have a look at the below examples for inspiration:

• You have a goal to complete further education in your area of interest:

  • Use your strength of Strategic Awareness to stay focused on the bigger picture.

  • Use your strength of Persistence to see it through.

• You’re stepping away from the tools and into a leadership position:

  • Use your strength of Legacy to create something that will outlast you.

  • Use your strength of Esteem Builder to nurture your team.

• You want to achieve more work-life balance:

  • Use your strength of Organiser to implement healthy boundaries.

  • Use your strength of Authenticity to create balance that’s true to you.

As you can see, strengths are pots of gold sitting within all of us, waiting to be excavated, harnessed, and deployed. Next time you come up against a challenge or an exciting project, instead of pushing against the ‘shoulds and ‘shouldn’ts’, step outside the box and let your strengths pull you forward; you may find that there’s actually no box to begin with. We all have unique and complementary strengths, so let’s use them to positively influence our environment, instead of simply becoming a by-product of it.

For further information on strengths and its history, research and applications, including the Strengths Profile assessment, please visit Capfinity.

“Using your strengths is the smallest thing you can do to make the biggest difference.” – Alex Linley