”Sue,” a dear friend asked me recently, “how do you do that?”
“Do what?” I asked, puzzled.
“Think so strategically. Connect ideas. See the patterns. See the systems at work behind the observable behaviour,” she said.
”Huh? How do I do it?” I pondered a bit. Then coming up blank, “I just do it,” I said. “I don't know how I do it. It’s just the way my mind works.”
Then I thought a little bit more about what she had just asked me.
This friend is a world class artist. As in commissioned to create a stunning exhibition for The Bodleian Library at Oxford University on the UK’s vaccine trail kind of world class artist. Indeed, I would argue she’s far more masterful at her craft than I am at mine. I mean, I’ve not (yet? Hah!) been commissioned to do the equivalent in coaching of memorializing in art a national health care system’s vaccine trial!
“Tell me,” I asked her, “how do you draw and design the way you do? How do you come up with your approach? How do you know to shade it this way or that way? Use this technique or that technique? How do you do it?”
“Huh,” she said. And then there was silence for a few seconds. I could hear her brain thinking, thinking. And then, wait for it, here it comes…
“I just do it. I don’t know how. I just do it.”
Bingo.
And that, right there, dear readers, is the catch-22 of your strengths. They are something you just so naturally, effortlessly do, you’re not even aware that you do them. They’re just YOU.
The other problem with our strengths
There’s another problem with our strengths. Not only can we not see them, precisely because they do come so naturally and easily to us, but if we do see them, then the messaging is all about “Pride comes before a fall. Don’t be arrogant. Don’t puff yourself up.” And so we become really ambivalent about actually owning our strengths. Wouldn’t that tip us into hubris and arrogance?
Maybe.
But my experience is that the people who even have that thought or concern are not the ones who are going to tip that way! It’s the ones who don’t, who come across as brash bombasts.
It’s more like quiet pride dances with grace; loud pride trips over its own megaphone. Gentle pride lifts; brash pride trips.
That quiet, humble, gentle pride in our strengths? It truly does lift us. Because not seeing or owning our strengths is not benign. We can become so focused on our “weaknesses”, on our “opportunities for development”, that we’re exhausted and demoralized. And then we become much more susceptible to toxic messaging (a.k.a shaming) that we’re not good enough in some way.
Truly owning our strengths is a protective factor against the people and systems who seek to belittle and diminish us. Indeed, to me it is an act of social justice to, with quiet dignity and pride, truly own our strengths. Because that is exactly what exploitative systems do not want us to do. People who are well connected into their strengths (and values) are less easily manipulable. And that is not something power wants.
Ground in strengths to grow into "opportunities for development"
Also, it turns out that when I am coaching people into their “opportunities for development”, they get further, faster when they are both dialed into their strengths and using their strengths as their starting point.
Grounding in our strengths provides us a strong foundation into which to grow into those “opportunities for development”. Our strengths give us something solid to stand on - even as we reach into uncomfortable places.
So let me explain that cryptic subject line
Imagine you’re a nice fine wine. You’ve sat in a cask and aged to perfection. And now you’ve been poured into a bottle. You’re nice and comfy knowing you’re a good wine, ready to be drunk by someone.
But what kind of wine are you? You see there's a label on the bottle, but you’re on the inside of the bottle. You can’t read the label on the outside to know what kind of wine you are.
You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.
But you can hear it when someone else reads it.
“Oh honey, look at this lovely Cabernet Franc from France. Let’s get it shall we?”
Aaah. That’s the kind of wine you are. That feels right. You’re a Cabernet Franc from France. Yeah. That fits.
You can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle.
It’s remarkably hard to see your own strengths. You’re inside your own bottle. You are just you. Your mind, your body: they just know how to do certain things, or have learned how to do certain things. And can do them really well.
You just have perfect pitch. You can just enter a room and read it. You can just know this element of a graphic design is needed here. It doesn’t matter if this is a talent you were born with, or one you developed over time by doing something so often that it has become second nature to you. The point is that it is second nature to you. So second nature that you’re not even aware that you do it and — more importantly — that you do it well. Maybe even better than most.
Precisely because it is so effortless, it is “just what you do”, it’s hard for you to see it as the strength it is.
But other people can tell you. In fact they will tell you! “You write so well.” “You are so analytical.” “You’re so thorough and detail oriented.” “You’re so thoughtful.”
How many times do you brush those compliments off? “Oh, it’s nothing.” “Oh it was easy.”
Yes, it was easy - for you. But no, it wasn’t nothing. Precisely because it was easy is a clue that this might be a real strength of yours.
Step one: listen
So that’s part one of this: listen to what people say. They are reading the label on the outside of your bottle. This is one way to really come to see your own strengths.
(Aside: and yes, there are absolutely people who will read the label and you don’t recognize yourself in what they are saying at all. Something else is going on here — and that is not the focus of this post. The focus of the post is when people have positive things to say about you, and you do recognize yourself in them, even if you squirm a bit with discomfort and think they’re “just saying it to be nice.”)
Step two: tell
The second part of this: do this for other people! Read their label for them! Reflect back to them what you see them doing well, where they have a particular strength. And if they deflect your praise, lovingly make them squirm a little bit. Say that while it might indeed be easy, or nothing, for them — it wouldn’t be easy for you, and is certainly not nothing for you either.
What are you hearing?
So, I invite you to gently contemplate, what are things you’ve heard from others — maybe even for years — that you do really well, but which you’ve typically reflexively dismissed as “Easy”, or “It’s just what I like doing” or “Doesn’t everyone?” (Answer: No, they don’t.)
Now I invite you to really own that. With quiet pride and confidence, just say to yourself, “Yes, I do that well. It may be easy for me. But that doesn’t make it less of a strength. In fact it makes it more of a strength.”
What’s it like to really own your strengths this way?
What are you saying?
And lastly, who is someone you admire for their <fill in the blank>? When was the last time you told them that? Can I invite you, the next time you see them doing it, to express your admiration and respect for this thing that they do so well and so effortlessly? Can I invite you to read the label for them — so that they can start to own more of their own strengths too?