How to Reveal Your Special Strengths Without Sounding like You're Bragging
I can still remember the exact moment when I discovered that I’m a good public speaker.
It was my turn to present my findings in our senior honors thesis seminar. I was nervous. Was my topic – “Strategic Groups in the Cosmetics Industry” – too boring? Why would the guys care to listen to me talk about cosmetics? Why did I even care since I didn’t even wear makeup (at least not back then)? Disaster was looming.
But when I got up to speak, my classmates listened intently. They asked lots of questions and I loved having to think on my feet and answer them, even if it meant improvising. Best of all, we were laughing and having fun despite my “boring” topic. My thesis advisor and classmates all complimented me on my presentation skills.
That’s when I realized that speaking is one of my special strengths.
But fast forward to my career and it was a different story
No one asked me to present at our client conferences. At first, I figured I was too junior to be put on stage. But when I was a managing director, I still didn’t get the call.
Unfortunately, I was too shy and modest to volunteer. And since no one asked about my special strengths, all people had to go on was what they observed and experienced about me day-to-day.
And that was seeing me at my desk working hard late into the night, sitting quietly in the corner of our team meetings taking notes, and diligently calling on our clients. Hardly the signs of someone who’d be great on stage in front of an audience!
When no one knows your special strengths, everyone misses out
Through all those years, I missed the chance to shine at doing one of the things I did best. And work is a lot less fun when you don’t get to apply your special strengths – the things you’re great at and love to do.
Not only do you miss out, your organization misses out too. They don’t get the benefit of having you deliver the greatest value. And they won’t get the best performance or productivity from the entire team.
In my case, they chose a colleague to speak at our big investor conference. While the content was important, his delivery was dry. I sat through it knowing that I could have had the audience engaged and enjoying the experience. It made me feel less valued as well because I never had the opportunity.
So how do you let people know what your best strengths are?
The simplest way is to put yourself forward. That could be volunteering to do the talk, lead the project, or create the prototype. That way, people will get to experience you in action and word will get out from there.
And soon, you’ll have ample opportunities to use your best strengths for the benefit of your organization and your own satisfaction.
But just as I was uncomfortable blurting out, “I’m a great speaker – you should have me speak at the client conference,” you might be hesitant to let people know about your strengths too.
That’s where the following exercise comes in handy.
It’s about getting your teammates involved
A colleague and I are facilitating the introductory session of a leadership development program. Our 15 participants will go through this nine-month experience as a cohort where they’ll be supporting and learning from each other. Just like a team.
And like a team, they need to get to know each other beyond simply attending the sessions. For them to get the most out of the program, they need to understand the strengths each member of the group brings to the table.
That’s why we asked each person to share their two best leadership strengths with the group. And we reminded them that, “This is not the time to be modest. The group needs to know each person’s best strengths so we can know who to turn to and how to leverage each other.”
The talent this revealed was inspiring.
It turns out we have people in this group who are good at: developing teams, defusing situations, reading the room, being courageous, envisioning things from multiple perspectives, finding creative solutions, taking complex ideas and sharing them in a way that people “get”, and navigating difficult conversations, just to name a few.
What would you discover if you took them through the same exercise?
You don’t need to be the team leader and it doesn’t need to be in a formal setting. All that’s required is to pose the question, “What are your two best leadership strengths?”
And frame it as a way to make sure the group is leveraging the best strengths of the whole team and knowing who to call on when specific issues come up.
The benefit is that each person will have a greater opportunity to shine, and the group will perform better by bringing out the best of each team member.
So, share your strengths
Don’t do what I did, which was to wait 20+ years for colleagues to discover my special strength as a speaker when I was finally asked to host town hall meetings as COO. If I had found a way to share this information sooner, my speaking would have raised my profile and visibility earlier and I would have enjoyed work more.
It’s important for your career success and satisfaction that you get to lean into your best strengths as often as you can. So speak up and volunteer yourself if you can.
And find out about the strengths your teammates and colleagues bring to the table as well. That way, you can support each other and rise higher together.
When you know each other’s “superpowers” and start harnessing those strengths, something magical happens. That’s when 2+2 can truly equal 5.
So what are your two best leadership strengths?
Leave a comment. I’d love to know!
Thanks for this post, May. It really highlights how this type of conversation is so underutilized in a team or between employers-employees. I like that you included the line “this is not the time to be modest” because so many people refrain from showing their strengths in fear that they would be showing off or bragging about their skills. It’s important for leaders/facilitators to take the step of creating a space for their employees to feel comfortable talking about their strengths. This has never happened to me in the workplace, but I wish it had! After years of dipping my toes into different areas, I discovered that my strengths are extracting patterns out of a mess of data and effectively presenting my findings to help others see what I see. It’s a gift! Thank you for reminding me of it. 🙂
Wow, Ada – the ability to extract patterns and present them in a way others see is a wonderful strength! I hope you are finding ways to use it often.
May, I greatly appreciate you sharing this with us! Sometimes we get lost in the whirlwind of work, and don’t take the time to reveal our special strength!
So true, John! It’s so important to focus on strengths. I’m sure you have some wonderful ones to share.
Hello May,
I liked your article, and the stories you mentioned.
I am 100% agree with your words.
But I still couldn’t get the the way to find out WHAT IS MY SPECIAL STRENGHT?
Hi Hesham – if you don’t know your special strength yet, you could find out by asking others, and it may show up in the feedback you get from managers and colleagues. You could also think back to times when you had great success and enjoyed what you were doing – look for the patterns…that can give you clues.
Hope this helps!
Best,
May
Hi May,
Excellent piece! I feel that my strengths are getting people to work together, and helping out even when I am not asked to. Thanks for sharing this!!!
Thanks, Ann! These are marvelous strengths to bring to the world.
Thanks May for sharing this wonderful piece of realization !
When you say –
When you know each other’s “superpowers” and start harnessing those strengths, something magical happens. That’s when 2+2 can truly equal 5.
This is like music to my ears as I firmly believes in that.
My two biggest strengths are –
1. I like to plan things out and like to take that planning until execution stage to get results. Improvising the plan in between as per the circumstances is also my forte and like to consider all scenarios and situation in hand, required for making those plans.
2. I like to do things with 100% passion and purpose whether in personal life or professional. Doing a task or job and even playing with my kids, I simply cannot do if I have no passion force behind it which really makes me go for it wholly and me being completely part of it.
Passion and planning are great standout strengths. I’m sure you will be able to apply those to add value to your unit…and to advance in your career as a result!
It is so true, in the rush of completing tasks and meeting deadlines we often forget to notice the strengths of our team and people around us.
Rightly said working with collective strengths will not only enhance productivity but will also build a culture of collaboration, which is so important in the corporate world.
Engaging people on their job through their strengths also help them feel more connected and fulfilling, which means employee satisfaction and organization becomes the best place to work.
The corporate leadership team must consciously create a culture where such practices become part of thework life of their employees.
Finally, Finding and Capitalizing on the strengths of the employees is also a strength of the leadership which many leaders not have.
Since there’s no upside to pretending in this thread, I’ll readily admit to being a great speaker and storyteller. I find it easy to make connections with an audience whether they’re in a meeting room, a conference hall, or a Zoom screen.
True confession, I have years of stage and vocal performance + producing for various media so it’s a little reflexive at this point. Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t get nervous nor does it mean I don’t prepare. In fact, I’ve also been guilty of over-rehearsing and losing my mojo. Nobody ever hits every ball out of the park. We all have bad days or something that psychs us out, but on balance, I’m pretty reliable.
If I’m allowed to have two superpowers, I’ll admit to being a strong people and idea connector. I love when all the synapses are firing and I land on exactly the right people to connect to a project or idea. It’s one of the reasons I loved producing.
Thanks May for yet another great hindsight.
I’m happy that you people found your strenghts but, in my opinion, there’s something to be said about women’ education.
We’re raised to support, approuve, confort, care…. men until we find our own voice.
May, I guess we’re about the same age, our education didn’t prepare us for this! We have to learn it all over for ourselves , even if you have great parents and I do have too a feminist father/mother and grand mother figure. Yet, from my experience, it’s something that however implied in your education, you need time to figure out for yourself (men and women) and even more time to express.
I tend to think that it’s the same about origins and beliefs, yet I don’t pretend to know how it is as I didn’t experience it!
But I do believe in finding your own voice and hope that future generations will be more straightforward than us. All we can hope for, I think, is that there’s a future where emotional intelligence will be less of a skill and more of the “normal” way of being if there’s one!