Building a Daily Success Worksheet: Strengths – StrengthsFinder 2.0
Richard Shell teaches us that there are many schools of thought on how people achieve success – character, luck, tactics, strengths. I intend to build a comprehensive success worksheet combining these schools for his and my benefit.
I began with the Character school – and here present the Strengths school represented by Tom Rath (here are the top 5 of 34 possible strengths identified by StrengthsFinder 2.0):
Competition
- Daily: Where do you stand on some “balanced metric” score today?
- Preparation: Turn ordinary tasks into competitive games.
- People: Let people know you’re not putting them down, you just do better if you can compete with someone.
Includer
- Preparation: Let others know you can help deal with problematic individuals.
- Daily: Help people get to know each other, find common ground, and find value in their contributions.
- People: Partner with someone who has Command talents.
Activator
- Preparation: Look for start-up or turnaround situations, or where you can break stalemates. Make sure your manager judges you on measurable outcomes than process. Your process is not always pretty.
- Daily: Learn from real experience more than theoretical discussions, and expose yourself to challenging experiences. You may intimidate some – make sure to earn others’ trust and loyalty. Give reasons why your requests for action must be granted.
- People: Identify influential decision makers in your organization and present your ideas to them over lunch at least once a quarter. Influence the right people at the right time and place. Partner with focused, futuristic, strategic, or analytical people.
Adaptability
- Preparation: Fine-tune your responsiveness – make your speed of response practiced. Use smart guidelines to help you decide when to flex and when to stand firm.
- People: Look to others for planning – Focus, Strategic, Belief – to shape long-term goals. Help friends to take control of situations – explain adaptability is about intelligently responding to circumstances.
- Daily: Make a game of lists of tasks – you need variety.
Analytical
- Preparation: Identify credible sources on which you can rely. Study people whose logic you admire.
- Daily: Put value to your thoughts by communicating them in some way.
- People: Help others realize your skepticism is primarily about data, not people. Make sure your analysis leads to implementation – find a partner who can help.
An exercise only as good as the effort you put in
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