More than likely, you will talk about your strengths throughout your career in various ways, such as during an interview. Knowing your strengths helps you stand out from the crowd and leaves a memorable impression with an interviewer.
During a performance review, your area of strengths are discussed and highlighted for contributions made. When networking, it’s important to know your strengths in a way where you can talk about them without feeling arrogant. The last place where you think your strengths would matter the most is often overlooked and taken for granted – how well your strengths match the company culture.
Not long ago, a general manager was talking about his plans for the future, expressing a desire to move toward a senior position, however felt as though his strengths in building a team and managing people were being ignored. When he met with his boss to discuss his interests, he received a shocking reply, “your strengths are not the company’s priority.”
The response took him by surprise and at the same time confirmed why he was having difficulty in moving his career forward. His strengths were not aligned with the company values.
His experience is more common than you might realize when pondering how a motivated employee with a good grasp of people skills can feel stifled with career goals. Recognizing how your strengths mingle with the company culture is as important as talking about them during an interview.
One of the top indicators of how well you will succeed in growing your career is emotional intelligence. A simplistic definition of emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor your emotions and others by discriminating different emotions and using the information as a way to guide your thinking and actions.
These three areas give you a good overview of emotional intelligence: emotional awareness, the ability to identify your own emotions and those around you; connecting with your emotions and applying them to thinking or problem solving skills; and your ability to manage or regulate your own emotions as well as being sensitive to emotions in others.
Some have spent years trying to figure out what is causing so much angst with their job, hoping that things will sort out over time. While it’s good to reflect on reasons why you are dissatisfied at work, don’t overlook your strengths and how well they match the company culture.
It could be that you possess a higher degree of emotional intelligence and are looking for a work culture that values people. If you find yourself constantly looking for like-minded people and feeling misunderstood, perhaps you are in the wrong company.
It’s never too late to discover what you are missing from your job, and if you are not aligned with the right company that supports your strengths rather than viewing them as insignificant, it’s not too late to make a change. Recognizing and appreciating your strengths makes you unique and helps lead to a more fulfilling career.
What event caused you to question if you were in the right company?
