Discover Your Strengths

I am a small business owner entering my 10th year of business on June 1, 2009, and I often find myself getting invited to speak about the topic of entrepreneurial success. I was recently honored to be the featured speaker at Woodland Park High School’s Baccalaureate Service. One of the points I talked about centered around the idea of achieving success by using your strengths. In order to do this, you must first know what your strengths are.  I found a book that helps you identify and nuture your greatest gifts.

There are many great tools and assessments out there – and my absolute favorite (hands down) is the one made popular by Marcus Buckingham’s book Now, Discover Your Strengths. When I found this book in 2001, I was one year into my business (720MEDIA - a web design and marketing firm I co-founded). I recommend this book any chance I get, because it has made such a positive difference in my perspective. And I think it’s a great gift for graduating seniors too!

I learned that my five top strengths are:

1. Command: People strong in the Command theme have presence. They can take control of a situation and make decisions.
2. Strategic: People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
3. Maximizer: People strong in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.
4. Futuristic: People strong in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.
5. Achiever: People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

To this day, I still keep a copy of this summary taped to the wall in my office – as a daily reminder of where and how I need to spend the majority of my time in ways that utilize my core strengths. This sort of focus has enabled me to achieve the levels of success I knew were possible!

Have you discovered your strengths? Share your story!