Burnt-out, frustrated or bored with what you're doing at work?
Not going anywhere with your career?
Struggling to achieve your targets?
Ambitions a long way off?
Confidence taking a pummelling?
Knowing and applying your strengths may hold the key to sustained high performance, confidence and engagement.
Are You Using Your Strengths And Does It Matter?
If you understand and apply your strengths then you'll significantly outperform those who focus on fixing weaknesses.
This isn’t a new idea. When David fought Goliath, he didn’t do it hand-to-hand. He’d have lost. Instead, he stood a distance away, and threw stones at him – a strength and skill he’d been mastering for years.
Strengths are personal sources of energy that you can draw upon when the going's good to help you excel. In challenging times or when under pressure, your strengths boost your confidence, resilience and resourcefulness. Your strengths can also help you be more authentic, building your unique value in the eyes of your co-workers and clients.
For many years conventional wisdom has held that your weaknesses represent your greatest opportunities for development, and that you should focus on fixing weaknesses (your own and your teams’) in order to increase your chances of success.
Think about your last Performance Appraisal...did your Personal Development Plan focus on building your strengths or addressing your deficiencies? For most people it's the latter. But if you're only focused on fixing weaknesses then all you are doing is preventing failure.
Research demonstrates that:
- Employee performance is, on average, 36% higher when line managers focus their appraisals on staffs’ strengths and talents (Corporate Leadership Council, 2005).
- Customer retention is 44% higher in companies where people are allowed to "do what they do best" every day (Harter et al, 2002).
- Teams with line managers who take a "strengths-based" approach are 86% more effective than teams which don’t (Gallup, 2002).
Given that we exist in an uncertain and ever changing world, then knowledge and understanding of your strengths (including your emotional intelligence) and how to apply them effectively is critical to personal and organisational success.
So yes, being able to understand and apply your strengths does matter. A lot.
What Are Strengths?
Strengths are underlying qualities that energise you, contribute to your personal growth and lead to peak performance. There are THREE elements:
- Strengths are not necessarily what you are good at doing. Instead they relate to what energises, enthuses and excites you.
- Your strengths can also provide the greatest opportunities for development and personal growth - research suggests that stretching strengths is more beneficial than developing weaknesses in helping you perform at your best.
- Your ability to use your strengths at work leads to sustained high performance, confidence and engagement.
How Can You Discover Your Strengths?
The most effective way to explore your strengths is to use a proven and reliable assessment tool.
Real Business Edge recommends Strengthscope® - a revolutionary assessment tool that provides comprehensive measurement of an individual’s strengths and the extent to which these are productively applied at work.
Strengthscope® is a psychometrically robust tool developed by The Strengths Partnership, an organisation dedicated to helping individuals, teams and organisations unleash the power of their strengths at work.
It provides a model and measure of strengths that is directly relevant to 21st Century organisations.
Mark Russell, Founder & CEO of Real Business Edge, is Strengthscope® Accredited and authorised to deliver Strengthscope®Assessment and Coaching to individuals, teams and leaders.
The Strengthscope® Product Range...
Strengthscope360™ is for anyone who wants to get feedback from their colleagues on their performance as well as gaining insights into how the individual can improve their contribution at work.
Click here for Strengthscope360™
StrengthscopeTeam™ is for those who are looking to improve the performance of a team.
Click here for StrengthscopeTeam™
StrengthscopeLeader™ is for people who want to stretch and develop their leadership effectiveness and to get feedback from colleagues on their leadership approach.
Click here for StrengthscopeLeader™
Strengths Engagement Index™ is for those who want to measure engagement levels or shifts in engagement over a period of time.
Click here for Strengths Engagement Index™
I have been in business was over 25 years running my own business for much of that time. I’ve never really had any kind of performance appraisal so I saw the Strengthscope© assessment as a way of getting off the treadmill for a bit to focus on me! The assessment confirmed some things I already knew about myself but was also incredibly revealing, especially the 360 element. It has allowed me to identify the sources of my greatest energy at work, as well as my potential performance derailers. Through coaching, I now know how to use this knowledge to develop my leadership skills, influence stakeholders more effectively and build a personal brand based on my unique profile.
- Simon Osborne of Oasis Graphics in Cookham, West Berkshire
How Will Knowledge of Your Strengths Help You?
Simply put, understanding and applying your strengths will help you to improve your performance, confidence and engagement. It also enhances your understanding of:
- Your work-related strengths as a source of energy, personal growth and peak performance
- The consequences of not using your strengths in the right way, to the right degree and with the right people
- How your strengths are perceived by co-workers and clients
- Where there are opportunities to use your strengths more often and more effectively
- How you can harness your strengths to reduce performance risks
Strengthscope® is the world’s most extensive strengths profiling and development system that measures work-related strengths -characteristics that energise people, helping them to perform at their best.
Book Your Strengthscope® Assessment & Coaching Programme Today...
You can also call 020 8798 3343 NOW to book your Programme and discover how knowing your Strengths could make a difference to your life...
If you don’t know what your strengths are, what energises, enthuses and excites you then maybe you’re missing a trick. Using the Strengthscope system, Mark helped me and one of my colleagues understand what makes us tick and importantly, what our strengths at work are and how we might use them to improve our confidence and performance as leaders and get more out of our teams. The Strengthscope process digs deep and can be uncomfortable, forcing you to own up to some home truths about how you behave and are perceived at work, but the outcome has brought about a quite remarkable difference in the organisation, making for a far more positive, productive and enjoyable place to work.
- Tim Ostle of Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey
Benefits To Individuals:
- You get clarity on your natural strengths so you can realise your full potential.
- Playing to strengths improves your effort, energy and confidence . . . the Strengthscope® tool is crucial for performance improvement.
- Your Strengthscope® profile helps you to understand and minimise the impact of your weaknesses.
Benefits To Teams:
- Strengthscope® team reports facilitate complementary partnering and collaborative working based on team members’ strength.
- Your team report spots weaker areas where the team may need external support.
- Knowledge of your strengths encourages a positive, energised team environment.
- Using Strengthscope® builds appreciation of diversity and contributes to relationships of trust, openness and mutual respect.
Benefits To Organisations:
- The Strengthscope® model builds a culture of engagement and excellence.
- Using Strengthscope® promotes resilience and optimism, enabling faster, more effective change.
- Strengthscope® maximises talent attraction, retention and development.
- The bottom line...Strengthscope® improves performance, sustainable growth and competitive advantage.
Where Can You Use Strengthscope®?
Examples of where organisations are using strengths assessment tools include:
- Leadership Development/Coaching – to bring a keen understanding of natural strengths and talents, help leaders to build their "leadership brand" and help them avoid strengths going into "overdrive".
- Performance Management/Improvement/Induction – to ensure that line managers understand what energises and motivates direct reports, rather than solely focusing on problems/deficits and fixing them.
- Teambuilding – to give teams clarity on who has which strengths, help understand the team’s natural talents and gaps and use this information in resourcing and project delivery, and increase trust, openness and respect.
- Talent Development/Career Development/Transition – to help individuals to understand the best fit for their strengths as regards future roles and formulate career decisions according to those strengths.
- Organisation Development – to build a resilient, appreciative, constructive culture which understands its strengths, talents and weaknesses and plans accordingly.
- Selection – to select individuals who fully understand the strengths and talents that they can bring to a role and who can demonstrate where they have used their strengths to contribute value in the past.
Who uses Strengthscope®?
A range of world-class organisations across the spectrum use Strengthscope®, including businesses in Banking, Retail, Technology , Social Media, UK Government, Insurance and Telecoms.
If it's good enough for them then you seriously consider it too!
To read some of the Success Stories, Case Studies and recent projects completed, please click here.
Book Your Strengthscope® Assessment & Coaching Programme Today...
You can also call 020 8798 3343 NOW to book your Programme and discover how knowing your Strengths could make a difference to your life...
Not ready for the Assessment yet but want to find out more about Strengths? Then let's talk...
Arrange a FREE 30 Minute Consultation to explore how understanding and applying your Strengths can help you achieve breakthrough thinking and overcome challenges...
During your telephone call you will get insights into:
- The #1 Ingredient Every Successful Personal Development Programme Should Have
- The Strongest Argument for Creating Your Own Personal Development Programme
- Case Studies of How Strengths are being used by Organisations to Improve Performance, Confidence and Engagement
- How to Discover Your Strengths and What you Might do With That Knowledge
- Multiple Strategies to Leverage on Your Strengths in Ways That Benefit Everyone Involved (These secrets alone can Improve Performance, Confidence and Engagement Exponentially)