As a celebration to the amazing group of coaches in our practice, I am dedicating this month’s blog posts & newsletter to coaching. I’ve learned the value of coaching from personal experience – and am intentional about having coaches support me in my business and personal growth. I’ve seen the difference great coaching can make – in both personal and organizational performance.
I encourage you to subscribe to our blog & newsletter – and also to consider if one of our coaches might be just the thing you need to take your performance to the next level.
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We all have things we do really well and enjoy doing and derive great energy and satisfaction from doing, and get stellar results. Some call this our “strengths” – others our “talents” – others our “unique ability”. Whatever you call it – it is transformational to first of all know what “it” is – and then to spend increasing amounts of time using that unique ability.
One of my primary goals in coaching is to help others find their “unique ability”. This is harder than it seems – as typically clients can recite a very long list of their flaws, weaknesses and things they are working on. When I ask about strengths, typical responses include bewilderment, confusion, embarrassment and downplaying.
The hard truth is that we’ve been taught to work on shoring up our weaknesses. The even harder truth is that, usually, this is energy misspent. Suppose you had a choice of spending equal amounts of energy – and you could pick: work on a challenge area or a strength? If you pick working on a strength – amazing things happen. You make more progress, faster. You are energized. You get better results. You have a true sense of accomplishment. You’ve taken your unique ability and made it even better. If you ask me where to spend effort and energy – the answer is clear!
What is your unique ability? How often do you use it? “Not knowing” or “Not using” should be avoided at all costs.
