I Don’t Like My Strengths. Now What?

You’ve discovered your strengths and you don’t feel like they do much for you. “Wow. I’ve got inclusiveness. I’ll just put that on monster.com and watch the offers roll in. Right!?!” So you think, “Great. Now what do I do?” We all have similar and yet different combinations of strengths to build on. Granted some strengths may not seem as readily marketable in today’s workplace as others. However, this doesn’t mean that they are not of tremendous value in the right context. Finding that place is the key to your long term success.

Marcus Buckingham author of, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, responds to the question this way:

In many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, society tells us what’s valuable and what’s not—for example, that being strategic and future focused are tickets to the executive suite, whereas being a good wooer and craving significance for yourself get you not much of anything.

To make your greatest possible contribution, however, you’re going to have to look beyond society’s judgments.

All any of us can do is know ourselves well enough to identify where our greatest possible contributions lie, and then do our utmost to make those contributions real.