Strengths + Values + Style = Your Leadership DNA.
If you are a leader looking to improve how you relate to your team and others, the first place you can start is to understand yourself. We call this your leadership DNA. A simple begin to build your self-awareness is to Identify Your Strengths:
Why might this be useful?
We often find it difficult to acknowledge our strengths but focusing on your strengths is a critical way of increasing confidence and generating optimism. It can also help us be more effective in our roles as leaders if we can play to our strengths.
How can you identify your strengths?
We suggest answering the following questions, some of which you may find difficult to answer at first, but have a go and come back to them (try not to be too modest!)
- What is the best thing about you?
- What do you like most about yourself?
- What are you like when you are at your best?
- What or who brings out the best in you?
- What is your most significant achievement?
- How have your strengths helped you in the past?
- How can your strengths help you in the future?
The next step is to then practise applying your strengths even more, finding new ways to use one of each strength each week.
I have also found it helpful to ask a few people that I trust what they see as my strengths. Sometimes we have blind spots and don’t recognise what we are good at.