Developing personal strengths is the key to long-term success in any career. They provide job seekers with new opportunities and help individuals find goals and passions while discovering new elements of their personality. Often, failure to develop core strengths results in a lack of motivation, a greater occurrence of burnout, and a drop in career goals. Productivity and positivity also suffer as a result, leading to a negative impact on workers even outside of the workplace. To avoid these negative career and personal outcomes while focusing on the positive elements of developing skills, developing and improving your personal strengths is of utmost importance.
This article will guide you in identifying and furthering your existing strengths. To kickstart this journey of self-discovery and growth, consider taking the HIGH5 strengths assessment. This scientifically-backed tool not only reveals your top five strengths but also provides personalized insights on how to leverage them effectively in your personal and professional life. By understanding your unique strengths profile through HIGH5, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the strategies and tips we’ll discuss in this article, making your strength development journey more targeted and impactful.
What are personal strengths?
Personal strengths are innate or learned skills/characteristics that help an individual flourish in their environment. Personal strengths are innate or learned skills/characteristics that help an individual flourish in their environment. While everyone possesses unique strengths, identifying them can sometimes be challenging. This is where tools like the HIGH5 strengths assessment become invaluable. By utilizing a comprehensive, research-based approach, HIGH5 helps individuals uncover their top five strengths, providing a solid foundation for personal and professional growth. Understanding your strengths through such a systematic method allows you to align your actions with your natural talents, leading to increased satisfaction and success in various aspects of life.
Strengths encompass a wide array of behaviors, such as the way one acts, thinks, or feels. Every individual has strengths that should be explored and understood for better application. Strengths are incredibly important to positive psychology, as they allow people to better themselves while maintaining a positive outlook on themselves. The strengths-based practitioner behind positive psychology, Martin Seligman, specified that strengths contribute to the embracement of 6 virtues that help individuals live fulfilling lives. These virtues include wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Our strengths connect us further with each of these 6 virtues. Each virtue also has a set of strengths attached to it. This is depicted below:
- Wisdom: curiosity, emotional intelligence, creativity, and analytical thinking.
- Courage: perseverance, honesty, and integrity.
- Humanity: kindness, generosity, empathy, and acceptance.
- Justice: leadership, fairness, and equity.
- Temperance: self-control, diligence, motivation, and modesty.
- Transcendence: gratitude, optimism, passion, humor, spirituality, and hopefulness.
The strengths an individual possesses depend on their personality type, career, and current circumstances in life. Virtually all careers can benefit from personal development skills, which allow you to grow, plan, and work toward your career goals.
4 examples of using personal strengths in careers
Below are 4 examples of ways to utilize strengths in select careers:
- Surgeons and most physicians must have strong teamwork skills as they spend a large portion of their time working in groups. They must have stress management skills to overcome challenging situations. Finally, they must be empathetic when speaking to patients.
- Software engineers need a different set of skills entirely. For instance, technical skills like coding or cloud management are prioritized. They must be detail-oriented and independent.
- Businessmen must obtain strong leadership skills to guide a team toward success. Being a hard worker and trusting one’s intuition are also beneficial traits to leaders in this field.
- Customer service representatives must be able to communicate effectively and have strong social skills. They should be able to sympathize with customers, even in stressful situations.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
When exploring your personal strengths, don’t just focus on the obvious ones. The HIGH5 assessment often reveals ‘hidden’ strengths that you might not have recognized. Pay special attention to these as they could be untapped resources for your personal and professional growth.
How to develop your character strengths?
To develop any strength, you must first identify the specific strengths you possess and those you’d like to enhance. The HIGH5 strengths assessment offers a comprehensive way to uncover your top five strengths, providing a clear starting point for your development journey. Once you’ve taken the assessment and understood your unique strengths profile, you can use the personalized insights provided to create a targeted development plan. This approach ensures that you’re not just randomly selecting strengths to work on, but focusing on areas where you have natural potential for excellence.
Once you do so, the way to develop this strength will vary, but a general guideline is provided below.
Personal and professional development suggestions based on target strengths
1.) Creativity– also try to find more than one possible solution to any problem. Add meaning to everyday tasks.
2.) Curiosity– go outside of your comfort zone by spending time with new people. Consider trying an activity that intimidates you for the thrill.
3.) Justice– debate others on whether local sentencing was fair or not. Speak with others who have a different opinion.
4.) Learning passion– spend time researching ideas that fascinate you. Read novels that intrigue you.
5.) Leadership– find new ways to boost employee engagement. Have your teamwork toward a common goal you agree upon.
As you can see, these examples all show ways to identify ways a strength is intertwined into your day-to-day life. Developing a strength should start subtly by incorporating a mindset that revolves around strength. Always ask yourself what action you can take to further strength, and when the opportunity for action arises, make sure to embrace it.
Embracing a strength looks different depending on the specific strength and individual. However, it would generally involve you finding ways to apply the strength to everyday activities, starting from those that are less meaningful such as consistently doing household chores, to making executive decisions with the help of your new strength.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Create a ‘Strength Development Plan’ based on your HIGH5 assessment results. For each of your top five strengths, set specific goals and identify daily activities that allow you to exercise these strengths. This consistent practice will help you develop your character strengths more effectively.
How to improve your personal strengths?
Focus on productivity, but do not overwhelm yourself
You already have inherent strengths, but you might be looking for innovative ways to apply and enhance them. This is where the HIGH5 strengths assessment can be particularly beneficial. By identifying your top five strengths, HIGH5 not only confirms what you excel at but also provides unique insights into how these strengths can be applied in various contexts. For instance, if ‘creativity’ is one of your top strengths, HIGH5 might suggest ways to incorporate creative problem-solving in your daily work routine, even in roles that might not traditionally be seen as ‘creative’.
The worst action you can take for your personal development skills is to overwhelm yourself and constantly dwell on your strength development progress. You just understand that the goal of the strengths-based approach is to incorporate these strengths into your routine naturally. So each day, find a new way to utilize your strength for your benefit. But do not overwhelm yourself by overanalyzing your behavior. This leads to a damaged self-image and sabotages your hard work.
Learn from experience
From your own experiences, you can improve your strengths. If you failed at meeting a goal, reflect and think about ways to apply your core strengths would have helped you in this potentially stressful situation. Also, look to see the ways others adapt to situations. Implement strategies that coworkers with similar strengths use. You may have to ask them, but most of the time, simply observing their behavior is enough to see how they apply their strengths daily.
Stay positive and motivated
Having a source of motivation can be extremely beneficial in your strength development journey. Find an inspiring and honest reason why you would like to gain strength. Is it for career progression? Do you wish to develop mental toughness through the journey? It can be any reason as long as it resonates with you and keeps you motivated. Additionally, you must stay positive. There may be times when identifying your strengths is difficult, or applying soft skills can be complicated.
Understand that is a part of the journey. In the end, you will be satisfied if you persevere through these moments instead of giving up. This will also build up your persistence, and if you truly need outside help, ask for support from your loved ones.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Use the ‘strength pairing’ technique. Look at your HIGH5 assessment results and experiment with combining two of your top strengths in a single task or project. This can lead to innovative approaches and accelerated personal growth.
Benefits of improving personal strengths
Communication
Strength development allows you to understand yourself better. Thus, you can set clear boundaries with others. Additionally, gaining skills such as leadership forces you to find ways to communicate effectively with your team. People with interpersonal skills also understand their team better and wish to create seamless streams of communication so everyone remains on the same page.
Problem-Solving
Problem-solving skills are beneficial to nearly all careers, and they allow individuals to flourish in a wide array of environments. When learning any skill, you will inevitably find problems with your initial approach and may have to adapt. When doing so, you are simultaneously learning to skills: the initial skill you set out to learn and problem-solving.
Build your self-awareness
When developing your strengths, you embark on a journey of self-discovery that reveals much more than just your abilities. The HIGH5 strengths assessment facilitates this process by providing a comprehensive analysis of your top five strengths. This insight goes beyond simply listing your strengths; it offers a deep understanding of how these strengths shape your personality, influence your decision-making, and impact your interactions with others. By leveraging the HIGH5 assessment, you gain a powerful tool for self-awareness that can guide your personal and professional development in meaningful and targeted ways.
You will see which abilities and strengths you have and how to utilize them to your advantage in your skill development journey. Additionally, you will find any weaknesses you might have to work on. Doing so increases your self-awareness and helps you understand new ways to apply your strengths.
Helps you understand other perspectives
Once you understand your own strengths, identifying other’s strengths and weaknesses becomes easier. As a result, you begin to empathize with those around you. Listening to others becomes more natural when you are self-aware of your strengths. This is so because you are confident enough in your own abilities, so you do not seek outside validation. Rather, you can focus on understanding other perspectives.
Allows you to identify areas for improvement
Before you start analyzing your strengths and building skills, you may already have a rough idea of your weaknesses. However, your understanding of your weak points develops further once you begin reflecting and thinking analytically about your strengths/weaknesses. Understanding your strengths can also serve as a motivation to initiate improvements in your weaknesses.
Increase your positive vocabulary and positive self-talk
When reflecting on your strengths, you have the opportunity to find new positive language to describe yourself. This applies to both writing about your strengths and the way we think about your abilities. Positive self-talk has also been proven as a way to increase positive behavior.
Greater appreciation for the areas you may have previously undervalued
You may not fully understand the way your everyday behavior contributes to your strengths. The activities that you find odd or negative may be contributing to your success. You begin to understand which habits are productive and positive and which are negative during strength analysis. This comes through connecting your strengths/weaknesses to your behavior. You may be surprised that certain activities allow you to apply your strengths, but it is always helpful to understand yourself and your habits. The habits you previously judged may turn out to be the key to your long-term success.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Leverage your HIGH5 strengths profile in team settings. Share your top strengths with colleagues and learn about theirs. This mutual understanding can improve team dynamics, enhance collaboration, and help in assigning tasks that align with each team member’s strengths.
Improving personal strengths FAQ
How to overcome weaknesses?
Overcoming weaknesses first starts with recognizing and accepting them. After all, you are human. Next, build a support system around you. It is beneficial for you to have someone providing you with advice on overcoming weaknesses. This can come from someone who has already overcome the flaw or someone who knows lots of information about the particular weakness.
How can I use my strengths to help others?
Make sure you are able to communicate well with the rest of your team or with your coworkers. Through communication, you can provide feedback to individuals and lead them toward a goal. Motivate those around you by reminding them of the goal you agree upon. Then, you can use your leadership, analytical thinking, and empathy skills to benefit those around you.
How to enhance your strengths in life?
Firstly, identify your strengths. Look back on your successes and ask yourself: what skills or traits helped me achieve this? Once you understand your strengths, seek new ways to apply them. This could mean going outside your comfort zone or using your strengths in social situations with new employees or employers.
Conclusion
Skills are necessary for every aspect of a career. They make up a part of your personality, contribute to your motivation and passion, as well as play an important role in your relationships (even those outside of the workplace). When you decide to improve your skills or develop new abilities, you choose to further your career and improve yourself as a person. Investing in yourself will not only make you a more efficient employee and more appealing to employers, but it also allows you to be more successful and satisfied in your day-to-day life.
