Revealing strengths

How do we know what we are good at?  It could be based on results.  The problem is that you need multiple data points to isolate your performance and even then, most work is still teamwork.  You may meet clients or suppliers on your own, but as discussed last week, the foundations and support that you rely on is still provided by your organization.  Using a soccer analogy, you may be the best striker on the planet, but you will score significantly more goals playing for Manchester City than you will playing for Wrexham A.F.C.  We can also learn what we are good at from feedback from peers and managers.  This information can also have limitations.  Manager feedback is from their vantage point and can often dovetail with the needs of the organization rather than solely reflecting your strengths.  A similar limitation exists with feedback from peers as this feedback is relative.  If you are much better at something than your peer or the rest of the team, you will be told it is one of your strengths.  However, it may not be something you feel particularly passionate about and you may be relatively worse at it compared to a team with a different blend of skills.  This is one of the risks when you move to a new company.  If you have been relatively good at an activity but then compare yourself to new colleagues who are as good if not better, then this can be demoralizing.  This week’s post offers another way to reveal your strengths and comes from advice I was given by a former manager.

Firstly, some context.  For the first twenty years, my career followed a well-worn path in finance.  I instinctively knew my strengths and weaknesses at this time, and I will return to this fact later.  Once I moved out of finance into general management, I had the opportunity to apply my transferable skills but also needed to build and develop new skills.  At this point in my career the comfort of the well-worn path was gone, and the opportunities and risks were greater.  I diagnosed myself with something I made-up called “career vertigo”. Aside from having no support in medical science for this condition, it is also linguistically incorrect as I have just discovered that basiphobia is the fear of falling and not vertigo which is a disease that makes you dizzy. However for my purposes it was the fear that I wouldn’t make a success of my new career and would need to return to Finance and try to pick up again from where I left off.  The worst compliment/comment anyone could pay me in this period was to call me the “finance guy” or the “numbers guy”, as it played on my insecurities of not being successful in my new role.  Over time this fear receded, and I was able to own the strengths that a career in finance had given me and use them as a point of differentiation, but for a while it felt like I was having an internal battle with myself.

My work since leaving finance has not been a linear path.  Some may consider this a negative, I don’t because in place of carefully crafted career plan I have built and fashioned (with help) a portfolio career filled with interesting experiences.  I would not change the last six years.  It was during this time I had a discussion with a former manager and explained a new project that had been assigned to me, how I was excited to get started and my thoughts on how I intended to approach it.  At this point, my former manager passed on their wisdom.  They pointed out that the task, which was an internal negotiation with a team that I had not previously worked with, was one that most colleagues would probably distance themselves from rather than run towards as I seemed to be doing.  In moments like this they said it was worth spending some time thinking about what parts of the task I was most attracted to.  Those areas usually line up with some skills or abilities that are strengths from which you derive your confidence.  When you locate those abilities, you will reveal to yourself some strengths that you may not have acknowledged or considered before.  Those strengths can be used to direct you in your career if you choose to lean into them.  They also help inform your approach to different tasks and to get the best performance out of yourself.

I feel I can’t get this far without revealing what abilities and strengths I was engaging that made me keen to get started on this project.  After this conversation, I reflected on the task and realized that I what really enjoy are specific parts of the negotiation process.  Firstly, I like to clearly establish the transfer of goods or services and reduce the negotiation down to its simplest form.  What is the minimum that both sides need to achieve, what has changed and why are we negotiating now, and what time pressures exist on both sides to get a deal done?  Secondly, I like to bring together cross-functional teams and leverage the collective strength of these teams to deliver against the goals.  Ultimately, I want to be successful, and I much prefer to share and celebrate those successes with a team rather than on my own.  Thirdly, I love the creativity to solve for problems that arise and put something new on the table that may unlock an agreement that had previously been in deadlock.  Finally, I like what I call the squeeze, where a solution is in reach, and I structure the final negotiation to limit unhelpful discussion and box in partners to choose from options that fall within my expected landed zone.

If we pulled these out as strengths, they could loosely be described as deal strategy, team building, deal creativity and deal closing.  Without getting too hung up on the names I have given these strengths, it is easy to see how some of these can be used in other areas of work.

To return quickly to my earlier career in finance.  The interesting part of this for me is that I was fully aware of which areas of work I enjoyed and what my strengths were whilst I worked in Finance.  This validates the advice that my former manager gave me.  In many respects, particularly if we have worked long enough in a particular field or for a particular company, it will be very easy to answer my initial question “what are we good at?”.  But when things are shaken-up and you make a career change, these clues can help you identify some hidden strengths. Potentially these could be all you need to overcome career vertigo (or career basiphobia) and any unhelpful insecurities that are preventing you from performing at your best.

Let me know your thoughts.  Next weeks post is titled “cock-up or conspiracy”, and it is an obvious method of framing issues to remove emotions and help solve them.