Knowing your strong points and leveraging them is a winning strategy for a great career. Here’s my SMART matrix to help you identify your strengths profile and use it well.
Substance: These are your strengths that can be multiplied or maximised. What ‘substantial’ strengths do you have? What do you do better than anyone else? What do others say you are good at? Which of these strengths are you aware of, and which haven’t you considered strengths because they come naturally to you?
Write up your identified strengths and put them into themes, (for example, people skills, financial skills) and use this profile to guide future actions, choices and to push up your confidence during tough times.
Motivations: Knowing what motivates and engages you helps you manage the peaks and troughs of your career. Know what drives you so that you can keep yourself going in difficult times. How do you pick yourself up when you fall, how to accelerate your success to ready yourself for that next promotion? Knowing what motivates you helps you to be self-directed, to assess and focus what’s important to you, to try new pathways and opportunities. Positive motivations enable you to do the hard work necessary to shine, so take the time to pin them down.
Assets: Assets are usually not resources that are natural or intrinsic. What external resources can you access? These can be membership of a high profile network, connections with influential people; references of highly respected people or strategic mentors that give you advice and wisdom. What good habits do you have?
Assets are valuable because they allow you to take some calculated risks knowing that should you fail, they will cushion you. Examples of these are a good education, expertise and other qualifications.
Resonance: Resonance is the extent to which your work benefits others beyond yourself. For example, what barriers in your job are you breaking through in order to increase your output? Good performance doesn’t always stand on its own; so think beyond your own success as the ultimate goal.
Connect the dots of your performance to the big picture goals. What tasks that are critical to your resonance do you need to pay more attention to? What additional roles could you play that will move the organisation forward?
Talents: What are your ‘stand-out’ or personal characteristics; where do you consistently outperform others? What transferable skills do you have that make it easy for you to participate in more than one strategic areas of your organisation or industry? What separates you from your peers? How are you expanding your talents? Where can you differentiate yourself from what is common? What unexpected extra do your talents allow you to offer?
Now take action: Put together your unique profile using the SMART matrix.
