1. Identify Your Strengths 
There is a reason the books, Now, Discover Your Strengths and Strengths Finder 2.0, have been consistently on the business best seller list; focusing on your strengths is very powerful and the Gallup organization has a lot of research to back this up.
Identify your strengths; don’t assume you already intuitively know. It is best to use an assessment tool for yourself or a customer/internal survey to understand your team’s and/or customer’s perceptions of your business’s strengths. There is a personal assessment tool in Strengths Finder 2.0 with Gallup’s most recent assessment based on additional research.
2. Maximize Your Strengths
Once you figure out what your strengths are then take actions to maximize them to the hilt. In Now, Discover your Strengths, there is a story of Tiger Woods’ focusing on his swing strength rather than his weakness of chipping out of a bunker (he has one of the worst ratings). He only works on his weak skill enough so that it does not undermine his strengths and spends most of his time working on his very strong swing to make it even better.
Imagine rowing up-stream in a river with a strong current compared to rowing down-stream with the flow. If you utilize your strengths and talents in your daily work then you will be rowing with the current, enabling more success with a lot less stress!
Figure out how to maximize your strengths in your business strategy. Delegate or outsource those tasks that are outside of your strong areas (e.g. accounting or payroll); focus your business in your niche. Let the other stuff go.
3. SOAR Instead of SWOT
Soaring is so much more positive than swatting. Picture an eagle instead of a buzzing mosquito. Let go of the traditional Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, & Threats (SWOT) strategic analysis and instead use Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, & Results (SOAR) to navigate through your strategic planning for more success. Focus on what works, analyze what your competitors are doing well, and investigate possible resources.
4. Focus on Positives to Enable Higher Level Thinking
Recent brain research shows that traditional methods of focusing on problems, gaps, or needs will keep us in the limbic area of the brain that is responsible for our emotions and fight or flight reactions. If we focus on all of the things going wrong then our limbic area is in full swing and we cannot get to the neocortex area of the brain where we do all of our higher level thinking.
Think about a time when you were so focused on the problem or issue that you were completely stuck. Once you gave up thinking about it and did something else, like exercise or reading a good book, then the solution came to you seemingly from nowhere. Your brain had a chance to relax and be in a positive mode and your higher level thinking kicked in.
Strength-based processes are structured to facilitate a focus on positive solutions and strengths so that our brain’s higher level thinking will kick in and produce more creative ideas and solutions for success.
Open Space Technology is a Strength-based facilitation process for encouraging creative conversations that result in better and more successful solutions. I learned how to use this process at a workshop by Cassandra O’Neill and Sarah Griffiths of Wholonomy consulting. It has been used for simple meetings of five people or large workshops of 2,000+ people working through very complex issues. See the list of resources below to read more about this process. Here are a couple excerpts from www.openspaceworld.org:
“In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance, such as: What is the strategy, group, organization or community that all stakeholders can support and work together to create?”
“Open Space works best when the work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution (and potential for conflict) are high, and the time to get it done was yesterday.”
“Death by meeting” was only a slight exaggeration in my prior corporate world. Attempt to accomplish your goals and collaboration with out lengthy meetings but when you need to have meetings use this facilitation process to make them as productive as possible.
5. Take Action & Track Results
See number 4 & 5 in last week’s post, “Five Strategies to Drive Past Fear & Navigate to Success.” I listed them again here because they are so important. Use your strengths and the strength-based tools and track your success!
Highly Successful people repeat this cycle on an ongoing basis:
1. Create Vision/Purpose
2. Set Goals, Read & Learn
3. Take Action & Track Results
4. Revise/Improve for more Positive & Productive Results
5. Loop back to #2 and Repeat.
How have you utilized your strengths for more success? What do you think about these strength-based processes? Please share by clicking on “post a comment” below.
Resources for more Reading:
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald Clifton, Ph.D.
Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
Open Space Technology A Users Manual by Harrison Owen
www.authentichappiness.com – Questionnaire measures 24 Character Strengths
photo credits: crafty dame, Ernst Vickne, Picture Taker2
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