What do you do best? Do you do it everyday?

"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?"

- Benjamin Franklin

The StrengthsFinder website (http://www.strengthsfinder.com/home.aspx) begins by asking a simple question: Do you do what you do best every day? It then continues with a sad reality, “chances are, you don’t.”

From cradle to cubicle, most people spend more time focusing on what they can’t do right, versus what they do right. And, often times, what comes naturally to people (whether it be designing great architectures or giving great speeches or motivating the masses) is what people like to do.

I don’t know about you, but StrengthsFinder resonates with me. Personally, I am tired of living in a world that revolves around fixing weaknesses versus harnessing strengths. 

Ask Yourself: Do You Do What You Do Best Every Day?

Gallup says, “Society’s relentless focus on people’s shortcomings had turned into a global obsession.  What’s more, we have discovered that people have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies.”

Peter Drucker, business guru extraordinaire, knew the secret of focusing on strengths.  He said, "Most people think they know what they are good at.  They are usually wrong...And yet, a person can perform only from strength."

Tying StrengthsFinder to our own team member engagement surveys, is critical. Over the past decade, Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide on the topic of employee engagement (and how positive and productive people are at work), and only one third “strongly agree” with the statement of “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best everyday.”

Talent x Investment = Strength (StrengthsFinder, pg. 20)

And for those team members that do not get to focus on what they do best – their strengths – the costs are staggering.  In a recent poll of more than 1,000 people, among those who “strongly disagree” or “disagreed” with this “what I do best” statement, not a single person was emotionally engaged on the job.” (StrengthsFinder 2.0, pg 1-2)

They go on to say having someone at work who regularly focuses on strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged and more than three times as likely to report having a excellent quality of life in general. Interesting enough, they also report that having a manager ignore you is even more detrimental than one who focuses on your weaknesses.

Who is focusing on your strengths?  Are You?

Now, to my team, some of you, reading this, are reading to jump in and take the assessment. Others are rolling their eyes and saying, “why, oh why?” Please, humor me. Take a leap of faith. Take the StrengthsFinder assessment and, upon completion, send me a copy of your five theme report so we can harness those Strengths. I think our collective themes will be a very interesting story to celebrate.

The rest reading, buy the book either hardcopy or kindle/reader and take the survey and take a chance on doing what you do do best everyday.

Thanks for letting me share,

~Stacy

StrengthsFinder. 2.0. Gallup Press 2007. Rath, Tom. Cllifton, Donald.

What We Can Learn From The Porcupine. A Fable.

My Mom sent me an email the other day which included a story about the porcupine. I read it, then deleted it and went on my day. Later, it kept surfacing in my thoughts. It went something like this:

It was the harshest winter ever known to man. Many of the forest animals died because of the extreme cold and lashing winds. 

The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together so that they would be covered and protected from the extreme temperatures. But upon huddle, the quills of each one wounded their closest companions.

One by one, they began to focus on the quills and soon forgot the heat they were sharing. Finally, one porcupine said, “I would rather be cold than be pricked!” And she moved away from the group. Others nodded fervently and they too decided to distance themselves one from the other.

The first porcupine who left the group, relieved that she no longer was being poked, started to grow very cold and fell into a deep sleep and then died alone and frozen.   Others seeing this, panicked as they watched their friends who had separated die one-by-one. They realized they had a choice, either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.  Wisely, they decided to go back to being together.

Through this they learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companion while enjoying the heat that came from the others. And, they survived.  

Now, my mom gave me a moral to the story that I can’t repeat to this kind audience. Instead, I would argue the true moral is that the best relationship is not the one that brings  together ‘perfect’ people, but the best is when each individual can admire the other person's good qualities and live with the imperfections. After all, we are all just human and even the best of us prone to mistakes.

In the spirit of true thankfulness, I would encourage anyone who is holding a grudge to let it go. Forgive and move forward. If you have wronged someone, be accountable for your actions, say you are sorry and move on. Release the weight of the luggage you carry, keeping only the lesson as a memory, so that your head and heart will be lighter on your journey.  
Thank you for letting me share,
~stacy

Rebound with Enthusiasm

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” - Pablo Picasso
In last weeks thought grenade, I shared how fear of failure is the root cause of so many failed ideas. “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage,” Dale Carnegie had said. Imagine the deer in the headlights effect, fear drives people of action to freeze dead in their tracks. Only the deer that is quick on its feet and has its wits, will break out of the paralysis and bounce out of the car’s headlights and out of harms way.

“Do, or do not. There is no try.” - Jedi Master Yoda
If you are a Star Wars fan, Yoda’s words to Luke when he wasn’t trusting the power of the force are a good reminder of our choice for action or inaction. If Luke hadn’t embraced Yoda’s thinking, Luke would be stuck in the swamp and the movie would not have created the Lucas Star Wars dynasty that exists today. While my husband says the last paragraph was a bit dramatic, I would add this...what would Star Wars be if Luke did not fulfill his dynasty? He would have squandered his talent away. (and, wouldn’t Leia still be trapped on the death star?)

“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure” - George Edward Woodberry
Taking it another step further, if you believe that failure is part of living. And, if you live your life to the fullest, there is no question about it, you will make mistakes. You will enter into ventures that don’t succeed. You will throw out your best ideas only to have them fall flat. You will be unprepared at a critical moment. You will overreact and you might even offend.

Richard Carlson, Author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff writes, “I've yet to meet a person who is exempt from these oh-so-human facts of life. So, perhaps the most important question isn’t so much whether or not you will mess up, but rather how quickly you can recover when you do.”

If we aren’t exempt from our own humanness, it is inevitable that we will make mistakes. We will have setbacks. We might even make those problems into much larger problems because of our lack of ownership or accountability or maybe our sense of rightness. I think some of my bigger faux pauxs have occurred because I ignored the problem or avoided addressing the misunderstanding. In one case specifically, I trivialized the act making someone feel very insignificant and found out later it was huge disappointment to them.
But, there is hope. Because It is how you deal with these things which determines what happens next. I say recover quickly and rebound with enthusiasm.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill
Recovering quickly involves the recognition that something is wrong coupled with the insight that what is wrong might be your fault and if so admitting it, apologizing for your involvement in it and moving on. If it isn’t your fault, recall the old adage which says “To err is human, to forgive is divine,” then forgive, let go and move on.
Rebounding with enthusiasm isn’t forgetting the event happened, but using it as a foundation in learning. Malcolm Forbes agrees with this. After all, he is quoted as saying, “failure is success if you learn from it.”

Despair.com has a wall calendar that includes a picture of a ship sinking. The tag is Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others. After I laughed and realized how very wrong it was, I had another thought. As student on this planet called Earth, we all learn a thing or two from our failures and what a very human gift to allow others to learn from our mistakes.

Thank you for letting me share,
~stacy