Gratitude as a Strength

How well do you know and understand your strengths?  As a high-performance coach, I often ask clients to enumerate those strengths that form a backdrop to their life successes.  These are the things that show up again and again for you, and sometimes, you can only see them in retrospect.

There’s a reason it’s helpful and important to think about this.  Once you have listed the three to five strengths that define who you are, you can use this information when facing an unfamiliar challenge.  Thinking back about the strengths that have gotten you through tough, uncertain times in the past may help you to attack the current situation with renewed resolve.  “I can do this.”

There are also different tools that measure strengths.  One of my favorites is the Strengths Profile, which assesses 60 different strengths. It reveals up to 7 realized strengths, up to 7 unrealized strengths, up to 4 learned behavior and up to 3 weaknesses.

Realized strengths are those you use and enjoy.  These are traits that you perform well and find energizing.  You can develop them further and dial them up and down as needed.

My top realized strength is gratitude.  This means I am constantly aware of how fortunate I am and the positive things I have in my life.  So true. I also naturally notice and appreciate good things that happen to me, and most importantly to me, I try to take nothing and nobody for granted.  Like everything else, it’s a work in progress.

This is probably the trait that led me to write a book on 101 Reasons to Be Grateful. The list came fairly easily to me; however, I realize that we sometimes lose track of all the things in our lives that we can be grateful for, and the list can prompt others to create their own. 

We know that gratitude goes a long way to helping you feel better about your life. When you express gratitude to others, it lights up their lives as well and has a ripple effect.  It can be contagious.

The Strengths Profile also measures unrealized strengths.  These are the ones you perform well, and find energizing, but don’t use as often.  With awareness, you could easily use these more to support your potential and growth. For example, since I learned that my top unrealized strength was humor, I’ve been trying to incorporate it more into my daily life.  I do appreciate humor very much – it’s always been a core value of mine.

Your learned behaviors are those things that you’ve learned to do but may not enjoy as much.  You tend to find these de-energizing. For me, this is strategic awareness.  I admit, as a big picture thinker, I have had to learn to fill in the gaps of the details I often miss. Planning does not come naturally to me. And I have learned how so I can help my clients plan more effectively.

And finally, your weaknesses are things you find hard or perform poorly and don’t enjoy.  My top weakness is being competitive; I’m not motivated by competing with others and have always preferred finding ways to create a win/win.

Understanding your strengths and weaknesses contributes to your overall level of self-awareness.  And self-awareness is one of the key critical skills of effective leaders.  What are you doing to better understand yourself and the other leaders on your team?  Let me know if you could use some help with this.