What Are Our Strengths? What Are Our Areas of Potential Improvement?

Striving for continuous improvement is a path to success. It is not difficult, arduous or especially time-consuming. We just need to appreciate that we always need to learn and grow. We all do.

With our development comes personal satisfaction. It really is stimulating to learn and improve, to be better than before, and it absolutely increases our effectiveness as a leader and enhances achievements in our career.

We need humility, to know we can improve, and to be open-minded and self-aware.

Knowing and admitting our areas of potential improvement is a sign of our modesty and in itself is a strength.

What are our strengths? What are the areas in which we are less effective? Using our strengths is key in the value we contribute to our company and to our team members and other colleagues. Yet, even with our strengths, we can be mindful of how we may improve even these gifts.

As is true with so many things, our commitment is key. There are a great many resources readily available for our continued professional development, both our technical knowledge as well as our emotional intelligence, e.g., our soft skills, which are so important……attentive listening, our patience, our gratitude, and how we relate to others, how we are perceived and received by others, how we show up.

Business leaders I especially admire embody this desire to continually improve. The CEO of a company which is the leader in its field is repeatedly described by their people as a lifelong learner, that she is always asking purposeful open-ended questions. This is true as well for the two top leaders of a wonderful and growing college, and numerous established and respected leaders in business continue to request 360 assessments of their leadership as they are committed to be the best version of themselves in their current responsibilities, which range from CFO, HR and talent development, marketing, IT and EVP of operations.

In addition, numerous priests we know are committed to further develop their leadership of their ministries and accessing helpful resources and seeking valuable feedback. It is exciting to see the enthusiasm of their parishioners and others in their communities.

We can all learn from one another and seeking feedback from our manager, our teammates and other colleagues is always helpful, and bear in mind not to dismiss what someone has to offer because we do not especially admire that person. She may not be 100% accurate, but what if she is partially accurate? Big and even small improvements help our effectiveness.

Available resources include countless insightful short articles, TED Talks and leadership books.

Fortunately, there are a great many who have achieved success in the business world and who feel a responsibility to help their team members learn and develop – that their success comes from the success of others.

If we seek a mentor and or coach, we can accelerate our development. A mentor is usually an experienced and knowledgeable executive who shares her advice and maybe her story to help us.

A coach usually does not advise, rather believes that we are all resourceful, creative and whole and asks purposeful questions to help us draw out from within what we should do to achieve our desired results.

Keeping a journal of our development journey can be helpful. What gets measured, gets improved!

While our development does require time and work, it is a wise investment to help with our leadership effectiveness and career goals. It really is not all that much work – and it is truly personally satisfying as well as professionally rewarding.

Let’s all commit to continue our learning and development.

What is one step you could take this week to become a better version of yourself in helping those with whom you work?