Last week we defined talents and indicated that a good place to start in identifying your talents was to take the Gallup organization's StrengthsFinder online profile. If you went ahead and did this, good for you! If you haven't done this yet, what are you waiting for….this could change your life!

Now that you have your profile results….your top five talents, what does this mean? What do you do now?

Well, as we discussed last week, the key to success is to identify your talents and then build on these talents by developing skills and gaining knowledge in these talent areas. You need to develop these talents into towers of strength! The other thing you need to do is to apply these talents to each role that you have in life. You need to take a detailed look at every role that you have and redefine your approach to this role so that you can maximize the use of your talents. I have shown a few examples of this below;

Achiever –This is one of my talents and this is how I define it and use it: I have to have a system in place to measure my progress against preset goals. I have to make progress against these goals. My goals are balanced between personal, relationships, health, career, fun and financial. I have to measure progress in each of these areas each week, and I review these goals daily. It is not good enough to achieve one thing per month. I have to achieve something daily. This does not have to be a major accomplishment, but it does have to be something that takes me a step closer toward a major accomplishment. Making progress yesterday is not good enough. I need to accomplish something each and every day. When I don’t structure my roles in this fashion I experience some level of frustration which then causes me to be a lot less productive than I should be.

Analytical –I work with a project manager with this talent. He loves to look at different project scenarios and calculate what the gross profit would be in each scenario. This is a fairly complex calculation, including such things as rebates received, commissions paid, employee margins on straight time, employee margins on overtime, employee margins with uplifted salaries and margins on contractors. He also spends time looking at patterns within the portion of the project that has already been executed. He comes up with conclusions based on his research, and uses these conclusions to tweak his project and make it better. His projects are always well executed and profitable.

Intellection –I work with a technical expert that this talent. He likes to get away by himself and think through issues and problems. He does not like to make snap decisions, and he does not like to be interrupted while he is alone thinking. He was the first person in our company to make it known that he was not to be disturbed between 1 and 2 pm each day. This had been unheard of in our company before this time, as we prided ourselves on an open-door policy. Since this individual started his practice, however, others have seen the benefit and built reflection time into their own schedules.

These are just a few examples of talents and how they were applied. This process takes continual reflection and tweaking. This is more of a lifestyle than a one time activity. Take the time and discover your talents and define your roles to take advantage of these talents….you will become more engaged, productive, profitable and fulfilled!