Questions that determine your Strengths & Weaknesses

Most people agree that our confidence should come from our competence and to grow our competence we need to leverage our strengths and navigate or reduce the impact of our weakness.

Five questions to understand your strengths

1) What comes naturally to you and feels easy to achieve?

2) What tasks do you dislike and feel the hardest to work on?

3) What do others say you should develop?

4) What was your biggest failure at work and why?

5) What's the ultimate purpose of your role?

Five questions to understand your weaknesses

1) Describe your worst day at work. What specifically drained or demotivated you?

2) What tasks do you dislike and feel the hardest to work on?

3) What do others say you should develop?

4) What was your biggest failure at work and why?

5) What do you need to develop to perform better in your role?

Four things you need to ask yourself

Connections: How do you work with others and manage yourself?

Thinking: When faced with challenges how do you go about solving problems?

Creativity: When solving challenges how will you explore the problem and create solutions?

Drive: When challenged and facing setbacks will you persist and continue?

The five 'P’s' of success

• Purpose: Have a dream, follow it.
• Practise: Again and again and again.
• Progression: Try to reach higher goals over time.
• Performance: Listen to feedback, learn from your performance.
• Perseverance: A failure is just the next starting point.

Think about the impact these changes might have. Which ones move you forward the most? Which ones hold you back the most? With this in mind: do what motivates you, otherwise it's not going to happen. Which tasks do you really want to work on? Pick one or two or three, but not five or ten. When you climb Mount Everest you want to have basecamps. Give yourself intermediate targets

Ask your partner, friends, family or colleagues to send you a SMS or WhatsApp with a list of five words that describe you, one or two of which should be about a weakness you have. While the top answers will tell you something about your reputation, the surprising answers might be especially useful for your personal development.