Know your strengths
- Louise Newton
- Sep 25
- 4 min read
Do you know your strengths?
Underpinning my work - and my philosophy for building a happy, sustainable career - is the idea of focusing on what you’re good at. Strengths are the fuel that makes work feel energising rather than draining. Of course, it’s important to be aware of your weaker spots and plan around them, but true momentum comes from leaning into the things you do naturally well. When you take your strengths from good to great, and then from great to extraordinary, you not only stand out in your career, you also feel more confident, motivated and fulfilled.
Strengths self-awareness makes you more productive. It helps you decrease risk. Increase positive outcomes. I’m fantastic at ideas, bouncing concepts about with other people, working out the best way to get things done. I’m not great at detail. I can make myself focus when I have to, but I’ll always get someone with ‘detail’ or ‘logic’ strengths to read a contract because I know they’ll see things I don’t. It's about using the best tools for the job - and having the self-awareness to keep space for innovation and cross-pollination of strengths.
But how do you know what your strengths are?
Ask some or all of these questions:
What makes you successful at what you do? This question directs us to look at what you are good at, when you’ve been successful and what took and held you there. And you can ask yourself what you enjoy, what gives you a buzz. Usually, the things we enjoy, that we thrive on, that lead to good outcomes, are in some form or another our strengths.
What do people come to you for?
This question is another way to identify your strengths. People come to you because they know you are good at things, whether those things are what you find naturally easy or have learned how to do. Are you highly organised, a clear thinker, a strong problem solver? And don't think everyone else is - or can easily do what you do. They aren't and they can't.
What are you known for?
Knowing how you are seen and thought of gives very clear indicators of not just your strengths but your values. A simple but highly effective way to uncover this data is to ask 5+ people, ideally who know you in different contexts (friends, family, work, social), to give you 5 words to describe you. Put the answers in a grid to compare them and you'll see clear themes. I've done this exercise with almost every client I've worked with - it's that powerful!
Your strengths include the things you do naturally well. Don't overlook or downplay the things you've always been able to do or that come easily to you. These are your super-strengths.
Online tools You can get some outside help to identify and build on your strengths. The Gallup StrengthsFinder assessment tool is a $20 investment to identify your top five strengths and it's a very insightful tool. As my ideas were forming about being a career coach, it revolutionised how I thought about myself - reversing the (American-driven) quest to work on (and eradicate) your weaknesses and instead, know and build on your innate strengths. Here was a tool that said not only was I OK as I was, but I was amazing at being me and there were things I was brilliant at.
Rather than continuing to tell myself I wasn't great at contracts, workflows and operating in a unilinear way, I could celebrate being curious, a maximiser, a strategist, empathetically perceptive and a keen problem solver. And knowing I was good at these things helped me exploit and amplify them, going from good to great and - in some cases - from great to amazing.
Critically for my sense of self and confidence, it told me it was natural not to be good at some things. I wasn't rubbish or defective. My strengths are in other areas.
From my time at school, I'd known my brain doesn't work like others'. Mine works in multiple bursts, not straight lines and is a mix of both right and left brain attributes. It doesn't make me odd, it makes me, me. And I leaned into that. It was revelatory and incredibly empowering.
Over the last 12 years, I've used the Gallup StrengthsFinder with clients for work on personal brand, confidence building, CVs and career development. It’s not definitive - you can pay more for a fuller list - but I’ve found seeing the top five strengths to be uncannily accurate and insightful. And there are free tools like Strengths Profile that give you a starter overview.
Talk to a professional Finally, there’s talking to a career coach (like me). Someone who can listen to you talk about your work, your passions and your hopes and pull out your strengths for you. And then show you how you can use them to your advantage to be happier, braver and more effective at work. I have a lot of experience helping my clients remove their limiting beliefs and reverse their thinking that they have no super-strengths.
Know your strengths. Own them. Cherish and use them and you’ll shine. Maximise and exploit them and you will soar.
Why not book a free introductory chat to see how a session of Career Therapy can help you identify your strengths and learn how to maximise them?
Click ‘Book a call’ on the website for a free intro call or email me at
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What’s stopping you?
Check out my other articles on careers and confidence: You can grow your confidence, Pick your shine time, 5 steps to building confidence and Want more confidence? Take control.
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash