How to Use Your Greatest Strengths to be Useful to the People You Work With

I think this is so important we’re doing a free webinar on the subject.

I see a lot of posts about the idea of servant leadership.

Usually, there’s a fancy infographic attached.

(I’ve been guilty of infographic overload myself)

There are always statements like:

“Views leadership as a chance to serve others”

“Understands it’s not about them”

And on and on and on…

That sounds great, but what does it actually mean? (not much).

First of all, what does it mean to “serve” other people?

To me it means: finding ways to be useful.

One of the best ways to be useful is to use your strengths to actually help people.

How do you figure out your strengths?

Ask yourself, and others, these questions:

Think about a significant achievement in your career or personal life that you’re particularly proud of. What strengths or skills helped you make it happen?
Without being humble, what do people value about you as a human being and leader when you are your best, most impactful self?
As you look towards the future, what specific skills or capabilities have you honed that instil a strong sense of confidence in you? In what areas do others recognize your expertise and seek your guidance or leadership?

As you and others answer these questions, some important strengths will become obvious.

Now go find ways to use them to be helpful to the people around you.

Let’s say Resilience emerges as an important strength:

lead by example when it comes to learning from mistakes.
help others uncover the lessons in their mistakes in a non-judgemental way
teach people how to reframe challenge or failure
ask someone who is experiencing a challenge how you could support them
bring your team together to share lessons about resilience with one another
promote and model better work life balance
share stories with people when you haven’t been super resilient so they feel safe doing the same with you
stay positive and motivational when things are hard
willingly ask people for help when you need it.
listen to people when they are struggling so they can process their own thoughts and emotions.

There a million more ways but you get the idea.

The quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of the relationships you build.

You build wonderful, commitment based relationships by finding ways to serve other people.

You serve them best when you lean into your strengths.

And by the way, leading positive change with your team works best when you understand and leverage your individual and collective strengths.

That’s when you go from being a leader to becoming a ChangeMaker.