Such is the promising beginning of an article in the Gallup Management Journal (GMJ) "Building a Career on Your Strengths" (click on this link, but you need to have a subscription to the journal). I definitely am one of the persons asking these questions. And one year after my "strengths Epiphany" and lots of studying, I still feel somewhat in search of the deeper career-related implications of my talents.
The problem I find with many of the strengths books as well as that GMJ article is that they usually give you only very generic advise, such as "move from strength", "consider the possibilities", "define the expectations", "candidly consider your "fit"", "define an action plan", "build a constituency", "measure your performance".
All right, very nice and well. But somehow quite theoretical. The best help I have found so far to discover and define my business related strengths is the book that I recommended in one of my previous posts: "Discovering Your Career in Business" by Anthony Butler and James Waldroop.
But what I have discovered only these days is their website, where you can do one "business career interest" assessment for free, which will basically tell you how well you score on their "Entrepreneurial Attributes Scale Score (EAS)", or in other words, how similar your self-description is to that of entrepreneurs.
If you are willing to invest 95 USD, go directly to their main website and purchase their CareerLeader. I am not associated with these guys and have no financial interest in doing so, but I highly recommend doing this assessment, which will take you about 45-60 minutes (if you are fast). This assessment will inform you about your two or three top business interests (which I find an interesting proxy for business-related talents) out of the following selection:
- Application of Technology
- Quantitative Analysis
- Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking
- Creative Production
- Counseling and Mentoring
- Managing People
- Enterprise Control
- Influence through Language and Ideas
The final report will explain to you what these interests mean, it will inform you about your business related strengths (!) and weaknesses, what jobs and career paths you should consider, what kind of organizational culture would be a better fit for you and your strengths, and last but not least what motivates you in your career.
For example in my case, it turns out that I am "extremely interested in Influence through Language and Ideas" (has anyone seen my Blog lately?) and that I "also have a notable interest in Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking". That is quite accurate! And for your comparison: my strongest talent themes are Maximizer, Significance, Strategic, Intellection, Ideation, Input, Command, Activator. The only thing that one might expect here would be Communication, which is not in my Top 10.
Admittedly, I could have guessed these two interests without taking the test for 95 USD and could have read the general comments about them in the book for 18 USD. But I find the online test and report still worth the money for the highly individualized report you get, the cautions about dangers to your career, the many interesting "how to" links it includes, and finally it is kind of cool to get a written confirmation of your own"strengths-based career musings".
Like all these tests, you have to enjoy them with certain caution and the authors of the report repeatedly emphasize that they can of course not guarantee you career success even if you follow their advise, as success depends on so many different factors. Yet, I find that this online tool has provided me the most "crispy", specific and actionable insights into my business related strengths so far. And if you don't like reading books, this report is quite comprehensive!
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1 comments:
Thank you for this wonderful information looking forward for more
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