I Am Talent
Sample Exerpt
CHAPTER 2: THE WORLD OF ME
1. Introduction
When planning and shaping your future and how you define yourself through what you do, it is important to know as much as possible about yourself. Do you know who you are, what you really want, what you value, what motivates you, what you definition of success is, what you have to offer and ultimately what gives meaning to your life? Do you know how to maximise your personal effectiveness through understanding and practicing a whole person approach to life ie. working with the aspects your mind, emotions, physical and spiritual. Knowing and working with these things helps you to find the right role at the right time for greatest job satisfaction.
2. Challenges and Opportunities
In our experience we have found two major types of responses to career satisfaction questions: Those that are feeling stressed out, bored or unmotivated and those that are continually striving to do more, learn more, achieve more. Many senior managers share with us that they often feel overwhelmed, lonely and afraid of making mistakes or being exposed. Others share with us, that although they have a history of achievement and high performance, they still feel that it is not enough. They strive for greatness. In the small business world, many entrepreneurs thrive during the start up phase, but become their own worst enemies when the business grows and their role changes.
It can also happen that we stay too long in a role or a company after we achieved success or we have out-grown the role, or we move too soon before we have integrated the lessons of the role and before we are really ready. Often the choices we make about what to study for are made when we are too young to understand ourselves or what we want fully, so we are influenced by our parents, friends or society in general, about what is a good career.
The more your job is aligned to your purpose, goals and personal aspirations, the more satisfaction, motivation and success you are likely to achieve. When you are internally motivated you will you have more energy, more choice and are less dependent on external rewards and recognition, which is often in short supply in organisations. The feedback we get from all the work we do with individuals and organisations in self-insight and assessment, is that most of them wished they had this information many years ago. Lack of awareness and insight into yourself is a lost opportunity to turn personal insights into actions.
3. Tools
To help you understand more about yourself, we have included a number of reflection questions and assessments in the following key areas:
3.1 Who am I?
Our identity enables us to understand and feel confident with “who I am” and “who I am becoming” and brings satisfaction with the roles we play in life. A strong sense of self also helps you feel connected and that you belong and enables you to make your own choices without being negatively influenced by other people’s stereotypes and perceptions of who you “should” be through their own filters. We often tend to define ourselves through other’s expectations and opinions. Ask yourself the question: Who am I listening to? Is it my parents, my peers, role models, the media, significant others, etc ... or am I listening to me?
We sometimes lose our sense of self when we change who we really are to belong or to be accepted. We develop a false identity (persona) which takes enormous energy to maintain and we can lose our sense of direction, purpose and motivation.
Getting to know yourself can be fun and scary at the same time. There are a wide variety of assessment instruments which can assist you in obtaining self-awareness of your personality, aptitudes, thinking style, career matches and emotional intelligence to name a few. The greater awareness you have around your strengths, weaknesses and personal preferences, the more effective your actions can be to address the gaps and reinforce the positive attributes of your personal brand.
However you do not always need assessment instruments to provide deeper meaning regarding your profile. Simple questions can be worked through.
Questions to explore include the following:
- How would I describe myself to someone I have not met before?
Notice in what order you list your aspects of identity ie. gender, race, country, career, talents, personality traits, etc - How would my colleagues describe me to their family or friends?
Ie. Am I outgoing, friendly, helpful, a thinker, strong, bossy, creative, a good organiser, etc - What are my natural and instinctive personality traits?
Ie. what makes me the same or different to everyone else?. How do I generate energy, how do I interact with others, how do I process information, how do I plan and organise my life, how do I make decisions and what kind of actions do I take.
3.2 What do I want?
It is important to clarify what you want in life so that you recognise opportunities when they come your way. Ie. If you know you want to study a leadership programme, you will notice the programs advertised in the media or find out more from a friend that has been on one. A vital part of achieving your goals and dreams is to know what you want, how you will feel once you have it, to have the expectation that it is possible and to believe you can achieve it. If these are in place, it is much easier to take the necessary action when the time comes. Dissatisfaction arises when our experience or results in life are not aligned with our true desires.
Questions to explore include the following:
Which area’s in your life are you satisfied or dissatisfied with?
What is holding you back from living a satisfied, balanced life (a 100% life)?
- What are the external aspects holding you back?
e.g. time, money, skills/knowledge, my spouse/kids/friends, my boss/colleagues, my clients, my culture, society (add your own) - What are the internal aspects holding you back?
e.g. fear, security, my past, fear of the future, lack of confidence, lack of courage, own beliefs, limited thinking (add your own)
Notice how long each of the lists are.
If you have more external reasons ie. you believe there are many things beyond your control that are preventing you. You hope that others or the situation will change, but you have no control over these factors. They are responsible for you not achieving your goals. This is called external locus of control, also known as VICTIM mentality.
If you have more internal reasons ie. you know you are the only one who can do something about this, you are responsible for these and to an extent can control these. This is called internal locus of control, also known as VICTOR mentality.
The more you can identify what YOU can do something about, the more in control you feel, the more empowered you are and the more you become a VICTOR of your life. If you know that your response and choices are up to you, then you can make decisions, take actions to achieve greater self satisfaction and practical results, instead of complaining or blaming others or the situation.
So now looking at the wheel of life and what’s holding you back, answer the following:
What are my short-term goals to increase satisfaction now?
Take each aspect in your wheel of life or in what’s holding you back and write down a SMART goal for now:
- S - specific
- M - measurable
- A - achievable
- R - realistic
- T – time bound
What are my long-term goals to increase satisfaction later?
Take each aspect in your wheel of life or in what’s holding you back and write down a SMART goal for the longer term?
Eg. Start an investment plan for my child’s education, Find the right course to build my skills in strategic thinking and leadership
These longer term goals can be broken down in to short-term goals when the time is right
3.3 What do I value?
Values are beliefs, standards and norms of behaviour (rules of the game) that guide you in the right direction and help you determine appropriate behaviour and decisions. Values also help you evaluate and become aware of what’s missing, so that you can set intentions to fulfil your dreams. When what we do are aligned with our values, we are more inspired, have more drive and creativity. When we are not aligned we procrastinate, we are uncertain and we need external motivation. When we are feeling uncertain, we don’t trust ourselves, are less creative and tend to follow others instead of leading others. We end up not achieving what we really want.
Questions to explore include the following:
Activity
Have a look at the following list of possible values:
Choose your top 10 most important values
Next out of your top 10, choose your top 5 values
A tip for when you are making choices is to think about a scenario that requires a decision from you, and which involves a values choice, and then see how you feel after making the decision from the one value or from the other
Eg. If you are offered a promotion and a salary increase, but the job requires you to travel and spend a lot more time away from home, would you accept the promotion or would you wait for a more suitable job that allows you family time?
The possible values in this scenario are: money, family, recognition, stability
Take each of these values in turn and make the decision and see how you feel – short-term and long-term.
The most important value will usually have a better feeling that the others in the short and long term
but they see what we do...
and seeing is believing.
Anonymous
Often when we are feeling down, frustrated, unmotivated, or confused, there is a values conflict. See the box for an example
Value alignment affects our ability to lead. Where our values are not aligned to what we are doing we feel uncertainty, tend to procrastinate and need external motivation. We also tend to follow others because we don’t trust ourselves. When our highest values are aligned to what we do, we feel creative, inspired and driven to succeed. We tend to lead others because of our commitment and passion and we are able to achieve more.
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Living our values = the difference between leaders & followers Living our values = the difference between ordinary & extraordinary lives |
3.4 What is success?
......
3.5 What do I have?
We are all born with natural strengths and talents which are often noticed early in life eg. Some people are naturally confident negotiators; some are good with numbers, art, music, technology, animals, etc. Psychologist Howard Gardner has identified the following distinct types of intelligence in his Multiple Intelligences Theory ("MI Theory") in the book "Frames of Mind."
- Linguistic People with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles.
- Logical-Mathematical People with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments.
- Bodily-Kinesthetic These people process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking.
- Spatial These people think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building activities or daydreaming.
- Musical Musical people are always singing or drumming to themselves. They are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss. These people are often discriminating listeners.
- Interpersonal People who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence.
- Intrapersonal These people may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.
Questions to explore include the following:
Inherent Talents
What was I naturally good at when I was young?
Learnt Skills
What knowledge have I attained that is relevant to the workplace?
Eg. Knowledge of supply chain, beer industry, packaging, call centres, etc
What functional skills have I learnt and can demonstrate?
Eg. Financial reporting, engineering design, legal contracts writing, change management
What cross-functional behaviours or mindsets have I practiced and mastered?
Eg. Listening, relationship building, problem solving, resilience, optimism
What relevant experience have I gained?
Eg. Going through a merger, a transition, a cost-cutting exercise, a new system implementation, managing a project etc
Leadership Skills
What leadership skills have I learnt over the years that I am good at?.
Which leadership skills do I still need to develop further?
but by honouring our empowerment”
John Demartini