Productivity
How to find your strengths and be successful at work
We're 'generation selfie' with carefully curated social-media accounts, but when it comes to self-perception and personal development the question should be 'how do I perform?' not 'how do I look?'
Most people agree that our confidence should come from our competence and to grow our competence we need to leverage our strengths and navigate or reduce the impact of our weakness.
Here are 15 steps to better understand your weaknesses and strengths and to make that happen for real by focusing in on the scientifically proven factors that drive career success. These steps have come to us courtesy of work experts Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Adam Yearsley.
There are scientifically-proven factors that drive career success.
© Red Bull
1. Self-awareness is key
The better you understand your own strengths and limitations, the smarter career choices you'll make. You'll end up liking your jobs more, perform better and stay put longer. Self-awareness, in other words, is a sorely undervalued talent enhancer. It helps to identify jobs that actually match your values and skills.
2. Know your strengths and weaknesses
While it sounds attractive to just focus on your strengths, very little if any research has shown that a one-sided approach works. The vast majority of research says that it's important to work on your strengths and your weaknesses especially if they hold back your performance or impact those around you. Free online talent tests and strengths finder such as Wingfinder provide a balanced view of strengths and weaknesses, as well as coaching on how you can manage them.
1 min
Red Bull Wingfinder uncovers what drives your success at work.
Red Bull Wingfinder uncovers what drives your success at work – take the test over at www.wingfinder.com
3. Talk about biases
Studies show that we overrate our performance by an average of 20 to 30 percent, a phenomenon called 'self-enhancement bias'. Then there's the fundamental attribution bias: when something goes right we think it's because of how we did it. That’s why understanding ourselves from another's point of view, or from using psychological assessments is so valuable.
4. Close the gaps
Identity is the sum of our intentions, thoughts and wishes. What shapes the way we behave? Your identity may be positive – 'I'm exciting, I enjoy taking risks' – and at the same time your reputation could be negative, others might regard you as 'unpredictable and unreliable'. People who grow the most are the people who understand their strengths and weaknesses the best and who have a realistic view of themselves.
5. Motivation needs a higher meaning
Normally people don’t think about self-perception until they face a big challenge or have a bad experience. People want to change mainly for two reasons: to avoid the pain they endure from a bad performance or they want to move towards a glowing vision of the future. Either is a strong motivation.
6. Start by sending a SMS
Ask your partner, friends, family or colleagues to send you a SMS or WhatsApp with a list of five words that describe you, one or two of which should be about a weakness you have. While the top answers will tell you something about your reputation, the surprising answers might be especially useful for your personal development.
7. Five questions to understand your strengths
- What comes naturally to you and feels easy to achieve?
- Describe your best day at work in the last few months. What energised you?
- What have others told you that you're good at?
- What's been your biggest success at work in the last two years and why?
- What's the ultimate purpose of your role?
8. Five questions to understand your weaknesses
- Describe your worst day at work. What specifically drained or demotivated you?
- What tasks do you dislike and feel the hardest to work on?
- What do others say you should develop?
- What was your biggest failure at work and why?
- What do you need to develop to perform better in your role?
9. Your personality tends not to change
Your personality is basically a story you have about yourself. This story is consistent over time and is also influenced by the biases we mentioned before. But you can grab the learnings out of it and manage it over time, focusing on those parts that allow you to succeed. Using psychometrics, the Red Bull Wingfinder free online strengths assessment reveals what your story is and gives you an insight into your reputation or how others probably see you.
10. Four things you need to ask yourself
- Connections: How do you work with others and manage yourself?
- Thinking: When faced with challenges how do you go about solving problems?
- Creativity: When solving challenges how will you explore the problem and create solutions?
- Drive: When challenged and facing setbacks will you persist and continue?
11. Prioritise what you want to do
Think about the impact these changes might have. Which ones move you forward the most? Which ones hold you back the most? With this in mind: do what motivates you, otherwise it's not going to happen. Which tasks do you really want to work on? Pick one or two or three, but not five or ten. When you climb Mount Everest you want to have basecamps. Give yourself intermediate targets.
12. Develop an inner alarm bell
Now that you hopefully know more about your weaknesses try to identify future situations when they may occur again. What is it that can give you an alarm bell, so that you can be more aware when you're in such a situation? What can you do to keep control? Be playful, take deep breath, learn how to respond instead of just reacting.
13. The five 'P’s' of success
- Purpose: Have a dream, follow it.
- Practise: Again and again and again.
- Progression: Try to reach higher goals over time.
- Performance: Listen to feedback, learn from your performance.
- Perseverance: A failure is just the next starting point.
14. Do it like your favourite sports star
Professional athletes practice five times a week and perform in competitions, sometimes just once a month. The rest of us perform every day and practice maybe once a year. We spend so little time on ourselves. Changing this will be the hardest thing to do. To stop and look at your life and ask yourself if you achieve in life what you want to.
1 min
Red Bull Wingfinder: How Red Bull athletes leverage strengths.
Find out how Wingfinder helps Red Bull athletes leverage their strengths and learn how they manage potential pitfalls.
15. Talent is largely personality in the right place
People are more likely to be successful if they can focus on personal development and managing themselves on the four topics that matter most for success. It's up to you and how you can become more successful at work has never been clearer, the key question is will you make some time to develop and grow you?
The test
Wingfinder is a free online assessment from Red Bull that's all about giving wings to people and ideas.
Take the Red Bull Wingfinder strengths test now and get your 19-page report instantly.
Red Bull Wingfinder gives you detailled information on your potential.
© Wingfinder
The Coaches
Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a business psychologist and author on talent, leadership and assessment. He's a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL) and Columbia University.
Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic uses science to help predict human performance.
© Wingfinder
Adam Yearsley is Global Head of Talent Management at Red Bull, responsible for how the company selects and develops its staff.
Adam Yearsley co-developed the Red Bull Wingfinder test.
© Sandra Schartel/Die Photographie