Based on Strength

"The best leaders have a good idea who they are as a person.  They know their strengths and find ways to use them in their jobs every day..." from an interview with Josh Allan Dykstra, Organizational Development Specialist The concept of natural talent has always interested fascinated me - the way some people have such an obvious proclivity for music or art or sports or telling jokes or cooking or growing things or teaching... all the multitude of talents that make the world go round.  And sometimes I wonder about the talents people have that go undiscovered, because I've seen talent revealed quite by chance and it causes me to think about the times that opportunity doesn't occur and someone's true talent may never be uncovered.

It seems the Gallup Organization has been extensively studying the concept of strength and strength based leadership.  According to Josh Dykstra -who happens to be my friend C's son-in-law, but is also one heck of a smart young man- a strength is where "talent meets knowledge meets skills."  It's about knowing who you are and what your strengths are, and then finding ways to use them in the things that you do everyday.  Apparently the worlds best leaders don't necessarily share a list of similar characteristics, as you might imagine.   What they do have in common is a heightened sense of self-awareness which they've parlayed into their life and work.

This information comes at an interesting time for me, because over the past several months I've been tested in my job in ways that are uncomfortable.  I've kvetched about it here a few times, but in essence, my job has changed dramatically so that I'm now in a position of  totally managing other people's work, while still being responsible for the final product.  I've been trying to figure out why this is so difficult for me, why my stomach knots up every morning when I'm driving into the office, why I sometimes feel like crying when I sit at my desk and survey the piles of papers littered around me. 

So reading about strength based activity makes me realize that the reasons I feel so unhappy and frustrated is that I'm no longer using my natural strengths to their best advantage.  It makes sense to me that if people are most effective when they're working within the areas of their greatest strength, than the opposite would also be true- that we are not only less productive, but less satisfied when we our work entails utilizing our weaker traits.

Now here's where my inner Puritan pipes up.  "It's work, you ninny," the black-robed figure scolds, "it's not supposed to be fun or satisfying.  It's supposed to be hard!"

But the Gallup people have a different take on the subject.  Don't we owe it to our employers to give them our best selves?  And doesn't it behoove companies to encourage  employees to discover their strengths and help them find ways to use them in their employment positions, to make them more effective and productive?  Shouldn't that be a win-win for everyone?

Hmm.. it should, I think.

So in the days ahead I'll be delving a little deeper into this idea of strength based leadership, trying to determine just what my strengths (in this context) might be.  Perhaps I can find ways to use them in this new world I'm working in.  And perhaps in the process, I'll gain a better understanding of myself as a person.

I'll keep you posted.

To find out more about strength based leadership, and the StrengthFinder assessment, visit the Gallup Strength-Finder website here.

Sprung

Weather has an amazing effect on the personality, doesn't it?  We're enjoying an unbelievably early spring (it was 76 degrees today!) and people are so full of energy and enthusiasm.  Just give folks a little sunshine and they're good to go - if only we could bottle that.  What's that, you say?  they do?  It's called Vitamin D?  Well, you know what I mean. 

You can't pop a pill and get that euphoric -suck -in -a -deep -breath -of -that -fresh -warm -air feeling that comes from the first warm days of spring.

I'm no exception to the giddiness of the first spring day.  Even a day of paper shuffling at work was made bearable by having the window open and hearing the birds twittering away outside. 

Each year when winter rolls around, I wonder if I'll make it to spring, if I'll survive those long months of  ice and cold and gunmetal gray, if I'll live to feel the sun on my face, to sit on my back porch and drink coffee in the morning, to hang my sheets on the line, to fill my flower beds with impatiens. 

Today, I knew I'd made it again, that I'd been released from winter's entrapment, allowed to breath easy once more.

It's spring.

I'm sprung.

Write On Wednesday: Nervous Wreck

When I can't sleep, I worry.  About work done and undone,  roads not taken, futures unknown.  When I can't sleep, thoughts churn in my mind, roiling and boiling in my brain until I jump out of bed, a complete nervous wreck. Thankfully, sleep doesn't elude me that often anymore. I fall asleep fairly easily, and mostly sleep through the night unless a hot flash or lonely puppy disturbs me.   But the past two nights, troubled by respiratory congestion and fever, I've been thrashing around amongst the covers, unable to rest in body or spirit.

Nervousness runs in our family, I'm told.  My mother has memories of her grandfather suddenly rising from the table in the midst of Sunday dinner and bolting out the door, probably driven away from his meal by the cacophony of seven adult children, their spouses, and innumerable amounts of grandchildren.  "He was an awfully nervous man," she says, and remembers him pacing outside the house, up and down the dirt road running along beside it.

That urge to bolt comes naturally then, the one I feel when all the worries and anxieties overwhelm me, when I have to sit on my hands to keep from throwing wide the door and running for dear life.  Whenever I see movies of a runaway horse, I know exactly the feeling - that wild-eyed look which comes with the desperate need to escape.

There's usually no escaping real life, no matter how nervous one gets.   So I  get in my car if the weather is fine and roll down all the windows, drive as fast as I (safely) can, until the rushing wind sweeps the anxiety out of my mind.  On cold and dreary days, I might put on music (Jason Robert Brown, Bon Jovi) and turn it up loud, close my eyes and spin in crazy circles around the room. 

These are only diversions, they solve nothing, yet somehow they soothe a troubled soul and put the wrecked endings of my nerves back together.

How about you?  What makes you nervous?  How do you handle those time when you feel a nervous wreck?

for Write On Wednesday

Home Alone

I had an unexpected day at home, brought to me by a wretched infection that invaded my upper respiratory system late Sunday night.  Thankfully, this unwelcome guest waited until all our other company had left, and the flurry of activity was over.  Then, it moved right in and set up shop in my throat and nasal passages.  But enough of those gory details. Because of this nasty bug, I got to stay home from work today, too miserable to even worry about all the tasks that I'd left undone at the end of my rather unproductive day yesterday.  I spent the morning curled up in a chair with hot drinks, a heating pad, and a book.  By afternoon, I was feeling a little better -well enough at any rate to notice that I was home all alone.

That's right - no husband (at a seminar), no dogs (at Grandma's) - just me, in my house, like it used to be oh so long ago.

Wow, was that wonderful. 

So I got up, gingerly so as not to set my poor stuffed up head spinning too badly, and walked from room to room.  It was so quiet, and serene, the sun just starting to break through the clouds and illuminate the March sky.  I made some lunch and sat at the kitchen table, listening to the birds preparing for nest building in the elm tree outside.

I realized today, after the busy hectic weekend, and yesterday's bombardment of tasks at work, just how much I needed some time just to be.  I felt content for the first time in a long while - relaxed, and happy.   I started thinking again about how convoluted my life has become in the last several months, how my work life has changed so much and is so unsatisfying, how I feel this tiny nudge in my soul telling me to move on, to honor the part of my heart that's yearning to express itself in music or words, to escape from the humdrum everyday and do something that feels right.

For a long time now I've been trying to decide which direction to take this life of mine.  Although my day home alone didn't bring me any definite answers, it made me aware that some move forward is needed.  

How about you?  Do you like being home alone?  And how do you know when it's time to make a change in your life?

Nervous Wreck

Kombolói, Greek Worry Beads

I used to be the quintessential nervous nellie, always worried about something or other.  When I was small, I developed a nervous habit of twirling my long wavy hair round and round my fingers, getting it all twisted and knotted up in the process.   My dad threatened to get me a string of worry beads ~ perhaps he should have done so! 

As I've grown older, my nervous nature has calmed somewhat.  I can still work myself up into a fair lather about some things...like work, and family troubles, and the state of the economy.  How about you?  What makes you nervous?  How do you handle your nerves?  What do you do when you're a

Nervous Wreck