The inspiration to write this article about finding your strengths and putting them to work so you are more fulfilled professionally and personally comes from one of my best friends.  She has a good job with good benefits.  She excels at her job.  Her son is grown giving her new freedom.   She has all this and still feels like something is missing. Like my friend, many people I talk to wonder how to find their strengths and a profession or job to match.

This topic has always fascinated me because I realize now how internally driven I have always been to find a profession I love and excel in.  I grew up with the social notion that you can’t expect to love what you do.  After all, it’s called work for a reason.  I even labeled and happily proclaimed my beliefs as idealistic.  But a while back I discovered Marcus Buckingham’s research and work. His work substantiates my own belief in loving what you do.  He has written and co-authored books such as First, Break All The Rules, Go Put Your Strengths To Work, and many other fantastic books to help people to find and capitalize on their strengths.  Buckingham calls his work the “strengths movement” and advocates that we should not focus on improving our weaknesses; instead we should focus on discovering and developing our strengths.

Buckingham defines strengths as, “actions that make us feel energized and optimistic, eager for the chance to do them again. It isn’t enough to be good at these tasks; we must also enjoy doing them in order to call them strengths.”

One of Buckingham’s fundamental beliefs is that all of us, even at our most confused and unhappy times, have very good instincts about what we should be doing. Even the person who, when asked what they like, says “I don’t know” really does.  Buckingham believes that in your gut you do know. He tells us that we just aren’t noticing.  In between the numerous moments when we are deeply uninterested or unhappy with what we are doing, there are moments when we feel good.  There are moments when we are so absorbed in what we are doing that time flies.

Have you had a job that you loved so much that you thought about it outside of work?  You woke up in the morning and looked forward to going?  The key to this happiness as shown in The Gallup Organization’s research is your answer to this question.  “At work do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?”  Gallup has asked this question of more than 1.7 million employees in 101 companies from 63 countries.  Only 20 percent globally feel they are putting their strengths to work every day.  

Finding strengths isn’t just nice to do; it’s necessary if you want to increase your organizational productivity.  “Employees who answered, "strongly agree" to this question, were 50 percent more likely to work in business units with lower employee turnover, 38 percent more likely to work in more productive business units, and 44 percent more likely to work in business units with higher customer satisfaction scores. And over time those business units that increased the number of employees who ‘strongly agreed,’ saw comparable increases in productivity, customer loyalty, and employee retention. Whichever way you care to slice the data, the organization whose employees feel that their strengths are used every day is more powerful and more robust.” (Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton’s overview of Now, Discover Your Strengths)

Advice from Marcus Buckingham: For one week, write a list of things you loved and things you loathed about your job. Be as detailed as possible and pay very close attention to your own frame of mind in the course of a typical week: When did you feel energized, satisfied? When were you miserable?  

Browse www.tmbc.com (The Marcus Buckingham Company) so you can learn how to get specific enough about your strengths that you can actually find your ideal profession and job.  And for managers, you can learn how to increase productivity by hiring, developing, and placing people by strengths and not just their resume.

My most recent experience witnessing the difference in production between someone with strengths and someone who is simply skilled was last week.  Nancy came to my house to help with some overdo deep cleaning. Not only did my house sparkle like no other person have gotten it to do before, but also she reveled in her expertise and passion.  Organizations need to make sure they have as many Nancy’s as possible.