Networking Review: Leveraging Your Natural Talent for Your Business Success

Jul 4, 2018

Leveraging Your Talent for Business Success

 
Are you ready to leverage your natural talents into your greatest success? This was the opening question which started a very interesting and informative presentation given by Dovile Corrigan of Dove Coaching.
High energy and high performance, that we usually see in successful and enjoyable projects, points to our natural talents. Understanding how and when these talents show up, can help us shape our day accordingly.
Talent v Strengths

  • Talent is something we all have
  • Our talent and strength combinations are very unique
  • We must use our talents positively – positive result is very important

Dovile_Presentation_Image
What do we need to exercise our strengths?
We took part in an interactive exercise where Dovile asked us to think of a project we have been excited about. What made us energetic? What made us want to perform? The results from this exercise were that these projects had amplified our strengths, our accomplishments and our successes.
There are four pillars we need to master to translate our talents into our best strengths:

  • Contributions we bring
  • Needs – for example, organising, you need to know your goals for the project to be successful
  • Triggers – take note not to miss any triggers, there will always be triggers, we just need to observe them and understand them to limit their negative impact
  • Overused/Underused strengths – when triggered you will overuse or underuse your talent

What about weakness?
Seeing it as a natural way to allow others to contribute makes it not so scary.

  • Misapplied strength (overuse/underuse) – if you don’t understand how to apply your talent, this could come over as a weakness to others

What can you do when you hit a low energy zone?

  • Observation first (which needs to be met to get to high energy performance
  • Leverage your other strengths (understand how you function, for example, if you have limited budget to outsource you may need to do some other tasks yourself)
  • Collaboration (ask 4 questions of each other)

4 questions to ask and answer before entering any joint project?

  • What do I/you contribute?
  • What do I/you need to be at your best?
  • What do I/you need to know when approaching me/you with the request? (expectations, checking in at least once a day for example)
  • How do I/you know when I/you is getting triggered? (e.g. good communicators get triggered if you talk too much, figure out what triggers us before going in rather than after when it could be too late)

Some resources kindly shared with us by Dovile:
4 Strength Tests – http://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/
Buckingham M. Clinton O.D. – Now, Discover Your Strengths (Book)
VIA Institute on Character – www.viacharacter.org
PeopleAcuity – www.peopleacuity.com
Murphy D., Gregory L., Jeffs S., Shift Up
Thank you to everyone who joined this inspiring event of learning and connecting!

Photo and Review by Michelle Baird

 
You can find a copy of Dovile’s presentation here.