Gift Yourself a Gift of Self Knowledge!
Anita Polite-Wilson, Ph.D., CPC
We’ve often heard that the most precious gift you can give anyone is the gift of your time. During this season of gift-giving, have you forgotten someone? Someone special, amazingly talented, and like no one else on this planet? I’m talking about you. Yes, you deserve to get in on that gift-giving, but I’m not talking about anything tangible like your dream car (save that for a milestone birthday!). I’m talking about the gift of investing in yourself.
These days, there isn’t much time for self-reflection. However, we must make regular appointments with ourselves to evaluate where we are in life, where we want to go, and how we’re going to get there. That is the beauty of self-assessments. These tools help us to “figure it out.” My favorite tool is found in the Gallup book StrengthsFinders 2.0.
Gallup book StrengthsFinders 2.0.
In a nutshell, the Strengths philosophy is that everyone has innate gifts, or natural talents, that can be developed into strengths. By leveraging strengths in the workplace, new possibilities, increased engagement, and productivity will present themselves. Let me share a prime example:
A mid-level manager contacted me specifically for Strengths-based coaching, wanting to develop his skills in conducting effective career conversations with his staff.
After completing his StrengthsFinders 2.0 assessment, he discovered that his top strength was as a “Maximizer”, or a developer of people. Being technically focused, he needed to cultivate this strength in terms that would be relevant for him. Therefore, he created a tool that translated his technical mindset into more relational terms, and posted this document on his wall as a reminder of how best to engage with each team member during career conversations.
This method of deploying his Maximizer strength, initiated planning and facilitating a series of Strengths-based team building activities. These activities impacted the entire team by improving internal collaborations and enhancing customer partnerships.
Give yourself the gift of discovering, developing, and deploying your unique combination of strengths. By investing just one hour of your time, you will begin to shift yourself into new levels of success that are sustainable throughout the new year and your entire life, both professionally and personally!
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Dr. Anita Polite-Wilson is a Gallup Certified Strength Coach and a Certified Professional Coach with a background in human and organization systems, organizational leadership, and management. As the newest member of Parrish Partners, we encourage you to reach out to Dr. Anita for any number of Strengths-Based solutions, from coaching of your early to mid-career professionals, to devising team charters, to facilitating strategic leadership off-sites focused on leveraging individual strengths that accelerate organizational performance.
