I have been carrying out a number of assessments in recent months.  By the time of the assessment the people I interview, who already hold senior roles, have been short-listed for a new job.  From time to time, I interview someone who, whilst he or she has everything it takes to succeed in the role, lacks a certain clarity about what s/he wants.  S/he can’t answer the question “is this job for me?” because s/he doesn’t know what job is for him or her.

It’s not uncommon.  Many of us develop skills along the way and get good at all sorts of things.  At the same time, we may be unaware that the skills we have developed do not match our natural strengths.  Indeed, some of our natural strengths may lie dormant – barely developed, let alone used.

I was reminded of this recently, when I received an e-mail from a client with whom I have been in correspondence about a potential coaching client in his organisation.  “Do you know of a suitable venue for the two of you to meet?” he asked.  I was taken by surprise:  I didn’t know that we would be meeting away from the client’s offices.  I scanned our correspondence and quickly found this request, which I’d completely overlooked in a previous e-mail:  “And, she’d prefer to meet off-site, can you recommend a suitable location?”

My first response was:  “How did I miss that?  It’s not like me to overlook something like that.”  Perhaps, though, it is like me to overlook the details – except for the fact that, over the years, I have learnt to be meticulous in following things through.  Is it a natural strength for me to pay attention to detail?  I don’t know for sure.  I do know, though, that a moment like this offers an opportunity to step back and ask:  “Is this strength innate or acquired?”

What’s the significance of this?  The bottom line is simple:  the more we are developing and using our innate strengths, the more likely we are to be in the flow, working successfully and with ease.  The more we are using strengths we have developed though they are not innate, the more we may find our work hard and be prone to errors.  In the case of the people I interview who don’t quite know what they want from their next job, well – they may be doing something they’re good at, something even, in which they excel.  But somehow it’s not giving them joy.  And because they lack practice of connecting with their true strengths, they feel somehow at sea – lacking a sense of connection with themselves via their innate strengths.

I want to add that this is one perspective, with which not everyone would agree.  Whilst I have not read Alex Linley’s The Strengths Book:  Be Confident, Be Successful and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You, for example, I am aware that this posting reflects the theory he and his co-authors put forward.  (I am aware of this because I have had the experience of having feedback using Linley’s theory with the help of Gill How at Buonacorsi Consulting).  Equally, I was recently told about Matthew Syed’s book Bounce:  Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham and the Science of Success by someone who had just started reading it and whose understanding was that this book highlights the importance of practice in creating successful outcomes.

Perhaps the place both theories meet is in the area of flow – that place where we are both happy and successful because we are cultivating the gifts that come to us most naturally.

I wonder, what do you think?