This article will talk about 3 Simple Ways To Supercharge Your Talents and bring your potential to greater heights.
So you did your CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) Assessment. You got your Top 5 Signature Talent Themes.
Now it’s time to SUPERCHARGE them!
Talents, as The Gallup Organization defines them, are your innate, natural and recurring patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviour that can be productively applied.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that their talents naturally equate to their strengths, but that’s incorrect.
Talents are not yet strengths. They are, instead, potential for strengths.
On their own, they are natural behaviours like an involuntary muscle twitch or a blink of an eye.
But they are more than just involuntary responses.
Think of your Talents, the way you think, feel and behave, as the muscles in your body. What do you need to do if you want to use your muscles?
Well, you flex them!
The same logic applies to strengths discovery through your talent themes. If you are putting your Talents to good use, you’ve got to flex them.
Leave them alone and they do nothing, like flaccid muscles.
You need to supercharge your Talents for them to come alive!
The next step, then, is figuring out how you can supercharge your Talents. How can we bring alive our strengths and discover what we’re really good at through our talent themes?
In today’s article, we’ve listed down 3 Simple Ways To Supercharge Your Talents that you can use to make your Strengths come to life by putting your talent themes to the test.
Let’s begin!
Find Out What Your Talent Themes Love
Firstly, what does your Talent Themes love? Here are some loves of the most common Talent Themes to kickstart your thinking …
- Activator loves starting things
- Achiever loves finishing things
- Consistency loves fairness
- Communication loves expressing themselves
- Developer loves searching for hidden potential
- Harmony loves fostering consensus
- Individualization loves the uniqueness of people
- Intellection loves thinking for pleasure
- Learner loves exploring new things
- Relator loves intimate relationships
- Strategic loves searching for alternatives
So, what are the loves of your Top 5?
If you have the ability to do whatever you do in any way you want, how would you do it?
The clue is in what your Talent Themes love.
Feed Them What They Need
Every Talent needs something to become alive, useful and impactful.
Just like a thriving tree needs water, food and sunlight, your Talents need those specific somethings to come alive and thrive.
If you have the Activator Talent Theme, then it loves getting things started and quickly! So what does it need? Here are some examples for you: –
- It needs to get things going. An environment that will unreasonably slow you down may not be the best soil for your Activator Talent Theme.
- It needs to have responsibilities or work that you can make your own decisions and start acting on them.
- It will likely thrive in a high energy, fast paced environment.
- It needs team members that value your pace and daring to start things.
- It needs skills and knowledge that will help you carry through your actions.
If you have the Harmony Talent theme, then it loves avoiding conflict and bringing agreement and consensus to the team. So some of its needs are: –
- It likes to be practical. It needs to have the ability and freedom to seek out practical solutions for the team. It is the starting point to consensus.
- It needs access to expertise and expert opinions so that you can bring the team together with fresh perspectives and insights.
- It needs an environment where different values and perspectives are seen as significant contributions to the team.
- It needs an environment where conflict and confrontation is not the norm.
- It needs the skills and knowledge of facilitating and listening.
Flex Your Talent Themes!
To flex your Talent Themes is to find out the 2 things above, your Talent Themes LOVES and NEEDS, and then putting them to work.
Here are 3 simple actions to get you started:
- Create more opportunities by talking to people and your teams, engaging your bosses, sharing your thoughts on how to be able to do more of what your Talents love e.g. get things going, bring practical resources to the team, create processes, help inject new ideas to projects, connect people, bring people from good to great, etc.
- Seek out people, resources, environments that will meet the needs of your specific Talents.
- Be ready to share and explain to the people you work with about how understanding and meeting your Talents’ needs will help you do your work and serve them and others better.
The best way to be great in what you do is to supercharge and use your Talents, which are your potential for strengths.
When you take care of just your weaknesses, you prevent failures.
When you supercharge your Talents, you are creating strengths and success.
Because the greatest area of development for you is in your Talents – the way you think, feel and behave. Your potential for strengths.
Go do more of the things that will impact people positively through the loves of your Talent Themes. If you do what your Talent Themes love, it is almost certain that you will be great in it!
We hope that you’ve enjoyed these 3 Simple Ways To Supercharge Your Talents, just as we’ve enjoyed writing it.
If you like this article and want to find out more about CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) and how you can use it, feel free to download the free guide we have prepared for you below.
Kim Pong is the CEO and Founder of StrengthsAsia, Creator of the REFRAME MasterClass and the first 20 Gallup Certified Strengths Coaches in the world. He is based in Singapore and works with organizations in Asia in creating an engaged workplace culture for leaders, managers and executives to thrive.