7

INVENTORY YOUR STRENGTHS AND COMPETENCIES

What if one of your children came home from school with this report card:

Math: A

Geography: A+

Social Science: A

English: C

French: A

What would you think? What would you say?

During a presentation titled “Women at Their Best: Authentically Engaging Strengths for Maximal Contributions,” Laura Morgan Roberts, PhD, the lead author on a Harvard Business Review paper titled “How to Play to Your Strengths,” indicated that we will perfunctorily say “Good job” in math, geography, social science, and French but spend far more time trying to understand what caused the C in English and formulating a plan for improvement. “We will only see the C,” she says.

Is this true for you? It certainly is for me. Of greater concern is that, according to researchers Barbara L. Frederickson and Marcial F. Losada in a 2005 paper titled “Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing,” for every negative thing we say, we need to say three positive things to offset or cancel out the negative; within a marriage (I suspect with our children as well), the ratio increases from 3:1 to 5:1.

PLAYING TO YOUR STRENGTHS

How can we dream, really making a difference for ourselves—in our families, communities, workplace, and the world—if all we acknowledge are our perceived deficits?

Dr. Roberts asserts that if we will play to our strengths, we can dream. Roberts believes we have four types of strengths, which she identifies as:

1. Our innate talents

2. The competencies we’ve developed

3. What we believe (our principles)

4. Our identities (gender, race, ethnicity, religion)

When we know what our strengths are, we have a better sense of self and self-confidence, and we are more likely to validate and encourage others. When we play to our strengths we’ll become the hero of our story, and we’ll encourage others be the hero of theirs.

So, let’s take an inventory of our strengths, starting in this chapter with our innate talents and competencies. We’ll discuss our principles and identities in subsequent chapters.

DISCOVERING YOUR INNATE TALENTS

Innate (adj.) existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth; NATIVE, INBORN

To discover our innate talents, we can ask ourselves some questions:

1. What did you like to do as a little girl and why?

2. What are your intelligences?

3. What makes you feel strong?

REMEMBERING CHILDHOOD

As a young girl, I loved to play the piano and I especially loved to ice skate. My sense of self surged as I glided over the ice. On the drive to the rink we often listened to Helen Reddy belt “I Am Woman” on our eight-track player. (Seems my desire to affirm “us girls” started at the tender age of ten.) I also loved to ski and to play dodgeball. With the latter, I prided myself on being one of the first girls picked and on often being picked before several of the boys. I played to win and I had many a sprained finger to prove it.

Reading was another childhood love. My sister and I frequently spent Saturday afternoons racing through Nancy Drew books while lounging on our bunk beds in our house on Dumbarton Avenue. Books continue to be beloved friends, and my daughter often asks why I scribble in the margins.

I also enjoyed sewing. My mother would take my sister and me to San Jose’s Pruneyard Mall to buy patterns and fabric. I’d rush home from fourth and fifth grade so I could construct a new dress, ice skating outfit, or nightgown. What a sense of satisfaction I felt when I wore something I had made! My very first dress was a sailor dress: blue denim kettle cloth with a white collar and a red ribbon, tied sailor style. I wore it on the first day of fourth grade.

As I reflect on my childhood loves, I can uncover my innate talents, especially when I look behind what I was doing, to the reason why I loved doing it. My sense of self, and my ability to succeed at what I did were important and emerged as I practiced the piano, ice skated, skied, played dodge ball, and read Nancy Drew.

As children, we did what we loved to do. When we examine what we loved to do when we were young, we are likely to discover or rediscover our innate talents. As adults we may no longer do the things we loved as children. For example, I no longer sew or ice skate. Yet the whys behind what I do as an adult are startlingly similar to the whys of my childhood passions. Furthermore, when we find we are really enjoying something, luxuriating in what we are doing, we’re likely drawing from the well of our native talents. This is precisely what happened with Mary Alice Hatch—she knew she loved to create as a child, which led to her dream as an adult to start her own interior design firm.

Mary Alice Hatch: Creating Something Beautiful

Since I was a small child, I have always loved to create. I love to create something magnificent from something ordinary. I love entering a new space and coming up with new possibilities.

As a young girl I constantly created new room layouts; when my parents would go on a trip I would repaint my furniture and add new hardware. In college, I started to build furniture; I also love to arrange flowers.

Because I have always enjoyed design, I went back to school six years ago, taking a correspondence course in interior design from a school in New York City. Though I opened my own design studio in May of 2003, for the last three years, I’ve been my own client as I rebuilt an old boathouse and guesthouse at our home in New Hampshire.

In early 2008, Architectural Digest held an open submission, its first such contest. One of my lifelong goals has been to submit my work to a first-rate interior design publication like Architectural Digest. I knew the chance to be picked for the single published spot was slim, but I nonetheless photographed and submitted my boathouse, went to New York, and stood in line outside the Decoration and Design Building, New York’s premiere design center.

When my time came to meet with one of the editors, I was so excited. As I showed the editor my “before” and “after” portfolio and listened to her expressions of interest, I had such a feeling of accomplishment. And when she asked if she could keep it to show Paige Reese, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, of course I said yes, and then floated out of the meeting. It was so validating to have someone at the top of my field like my project. I didn’t win, but I was competitive—and that felt good, really good.

As we consider what we delighted in doing as children, there will undoubtedly be clues to our innate talents and dreams. If we aren’t quite sure what these gifts are, it may just be time to revisit the playground that was our childhood.

PINPOINTING YOUR UNIQUE INTELLIGENCES

Another way of getting at our innate talents is to revisit the concept of intelligence. Is there only one kind of intelligence or are there multiple intelligences? Nineteenth-century novelist Marcel Proust said that, “The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.”

A few years ago I was in a work-related continuing education course when the instructor commented, “You’re really good at math.” I remember thinking, “Really? Could he be right? Could it be true that I’m good at math?” I can pinpoint the moment I started to believe I was bad at math. This script, so to speak, began in fifth grade, when math involved word problems. In sixth grade, when my teacher told me to stop asking questions and just figure the question out on my own, and I thought I couldn’t, I finalized the script. It read: “I’m bad at math.”

The “I’m bad at math” script wouldn’t be so problematic except that girls and women in the United States have a tendency to believe they are bad at math. Comparatively, boys and men don’t appear to be as intimidated by math. Meanwhile, we live in a society whose systems and social structures value math skills. The script was problematic for me, specifically, because it isn’t true.

Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that it was true that I have always and will forever struggle with math. Would that mean I’m dumb? No, because there isn’t a single intelligence that we either have more or less of. There are instead multiple intelligences, Howard Gardner asserts, which include not only linguistic and logical-mathematical, but also musical, spatial, kinesthetic, naturalist, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and existential.

Linguistic intelligence means being adept in written and spoken language. Mathematical intelligence involves the ability to calculate numbers. These are the two intelligences measured by most schools and standardized tests. If you’ve gone through school and even some of your work life feeling dumb (as I often have) because you weren’t particularly strong linguistically or mathematically, it’s time to look at yourself with new eyes. It’s time you recognize just how smart and capable and competent you are.

Here are some other ways people are smart:

Musical intelligence: Do you play an instrument, sing well, or compose music? Are you adept at organizing a conference or event, producing a play, or giving a speech? All of these have their origin in musical structure.”

Spatial intelligence: Are you comfortable with architecture, interior or landscape design, and organizing physical or cyberspace? Do you design tools, furniture, or toys?

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: Do you create products using your whole body or parts of your body, such as your hands? Do you paint, build furniture, scrapbook, sew, dance, play tennis?

Naturalist intelligence: Can you identify different plants and insects? Anyone involved in the preparation of food, construction of dwellings, or protection of the environment draws on her naturalist capacity.

Interpersonal intelligence: Can you look outward, toward the behavior and feelings of others, figuring out their motivations and working effectively with them? Are you able to understand what children or your colleagues want and broker win-win situations?

Intrapersonal intelligence: Can you identify your personal feelings, goals, fears, strengths, and weaknesses? As you examine your life and make changes, are you happier today than you were five years ago?

Existential intelligence: Can you pose and ponder the biggest questions: Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? What am I meant to do? Can I become the hero of my story? Many of the world’s greatest leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill, have addressed these questions, helping us to make meaning of life’s experiences in uplifting, redemptive ways. Filmmakers tackle these big questions, too. Star Wars is a good example. Existentialism is the intelligence we need in order to dream and figure out who we are so we can understand what we’re meant to do.

Is it really possible to see ourselves, our minds, with new eyes? I believe it is. Here’s just one example. While organizing my home (under the direction of my friend, who possesses spatial intelligence) I found a media-training videotape of myself. When I first saw the tape six years ago I perceived myself as being dumb, tongue-tied, and fat. Everything I saw was negative. With time, I’m seeing with new eyes, and in watching the tape I’m finding aspects of myself to be proud of.

We may not always be intelligent in the traditional, academically testable sense of intelligence, but each of us is intelligent. Our particular brand of intelligence is part of our portfolio of strengths. When you ponder this list of intelligences and have that aha! moment—and you will—you’ll be another step closer to piecing together your dream.

CLUEING IN TO WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL STRONG

Marcus Buckingham, a former researcher for the Gallup Organization who has studied what drives performance and coauthor of Now, Discover Your Strengths, wrote:

Our strengths can be so easy to overlook, because they clamor for attention in the most basic way: Using them makes you feel strong. All you have to do is teach yourself to pay attention. Most of the time, we’re so focused on getting our work done that we don’t really have time to notice how we feel about it. But when you make the conscious effort to notice yourself at work (or at play, for that matter), you will find that you experience what I call “strong-moments” throughout your day—times when you feel invigorated, inquisitive, successful. Those moments are the best clues as to what your strengths are.

The simple acronym SIGN, developed by Buckingham, can help you recognize your signs of strength:

S Success: Do you feel a sense of accomplishment about finishing this task?

I Instinct: Do you instinctively look forward to this task?

G Growth: Are your synapses firing? Are you mentally focused?

N Needs: Does this task fulfill one of your needs?

Acknowledging our “strong-moments” and identifying the talents that are evidenced when we feel invigorated, inquisitive, and successful will help us not only find our dreams but have the confidence to pursue them.

RECOGNIZING YOUR SKILLS

Another place we can look to identify our strengths and gain clues to our dreams is in our competencies.

In contrast to our innate talents, our competencies are skills that we’ve developed because we do something frequently, perhaps purposefully, perhaps not. This may be in the course of our daily lives. We are good at getting up at 6:00 a.m. because we do this every day and have for twenty years. Perhaps we set out to be early risers, perhaps our work (as mothers and/or in the paid workforce) has required that we wake before dawn. Another wellspring of competencies can be found in the challenges and daunting tasks we didn’t choose. We become competent because we faced the challenge, walked through the fear, and developed strengths we had no idea we could or would.

Let’s start with things we do habitually, such as parenting. When the first child is born, most of us have no idea what we’re doing. We eventually learn to parent well because we jump in and sink or swim. Though we may feel like we’re sinking at times, most of us are able to keep our children safe, serving as models for how to be good people and contributing members of society. Parenting is a competency we develop over time and it encompasses many skills that we can apply to pursuing our dreams.

MINING FOR COMPETENCIES

A competency I’ve developed is speaking Spanish. I studied Spanish in school and lived in Uruguay for more than a year as a missionary. I’ve had further opportunities to practice because much of my professional life has centered on Latin America. Because I’ve learned Spanish, I am better able to walk in the figurative shoes of another culture, and I have fondness and respect for people I meet from both Spain and Latin America. I know what it’s like to have to translate ideas from one language to another. Translating (both figuratively and literally from one language to another) is a skill I use often in business and in the interfaith work I have done. Perhaps most importantly, learning to find my voice in Spanish has helped me find my voice in English. In Spanish, I speak more plainly, more boldly, and without apology, far more than I do in English.

Another ability I have is to analyze a company and build a financial model to determine whether a company is creating or destroying value. I’m also very skilled at crafting an investment thesis. Initially, I wasn’t good at either—just ask my first boss in equity research. Trying and not succeeding was painful, but I stayed with it and I became good at the work. Having built many a financial model and written hundreds of research reports, I now know what I’m doing when I analyze an investment.

Sometimes we set out to become competent. At other times our competence is simply an unintended consequence of doing what needs to be done, as was the case for Amy Jo Schenewark. In the summer of 2009 she packed up her children and temporarily relocated from Ohio to New Hampshire to care for her younger sister Becky and Becky’s family, while she was bedridden due to a difficult pregnancy and subsequent surgery.

Amy Jo Schenewark: On Giving Care

I remember listening to NPR one evening in 2007 while Lee Woodruff, the wife of TV journalist Bob Woodruff, talked about caring for her husband after he sustained a traumatic brain injury while reporting for ABC News in Iraq. I thought, “Wow. I’m glad I’m not there. I don’t know how people do it.” I remember my mother taking care of her father. It began with weekly checks on him at his house, then involved moving him into her house and finally to a care facility. I know she gave him all her spare time, thoughts, and energy.

When Lee Woodruff took questions from caregivers who called in to the broadcast, I could sense the immediate connection between her and the callers. These strangers became instant friends because they understood the burden they all carry: the unrelenting, never-ending, sometimes frustrating, often draining, and physically exhausting service to a family member.

When I became a necessary caregiver in the summer of 2009, I remembered those thoughts, but I tucked them away in a safe place because I knew they could overwhelm me. I labored for my sister, for her children, for my children, for her handicapped child—and, via long distance, for my husband. I cooked and cleaned as usual, it was just for more people. I gardened. I gathered medicines and supplies, learned about machines and equipment, signed for and unpacked medical supply deliveries, made mistakes, learned how to stay ahead of the curve. I suctioned, hooked up G-tubes, put in a catheter, mixed feeding bags, administered medication.

One day I was in the grocery store, waiting for my items to be scanned, when an item set off a beep that sounded just like a medical alarm back at the house. It scared me because I thought Ben was having oxygen issues or that Becky’s IV bag was empty. I relaxed once I remembered where I was.

My two months as a caregiver seemed liked a lifetime. I forgot what my house looked like, who my friends were, what my husband smelled like. And it made me wonder:

• How do caregivers keep going?

• Who supports them when they want or need a break?

• How do they deal with emotional drains?

• How do they fulfill their own dreams?

• How long should they put their dreams on the back burner?

• Are they too tired to have dreams?

Caring for Becky and her family was fulfilling because I care deeply about her and I was succeeding at something I never dreamed I was capable of doing. But the work was never ending, and even though I didn’t have to do the nights, I had no down time. I also knew that, for me, the situation was temporary; it was two months of my time. It helped me understand the life of a caregiver and gave me a fresh perspective on my own life.

Full-time caregiving was not Amy’s first choice (and she already had six boys of her own to care for), but she got good at what needed to be done and in the process developed a great compassion and appreciation for those who are full-time caregivers.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

The opportunity to develop competencies may be handed to us in the form of a crisis, as was the case with Brooksley Born, the first female president of the Law Review at Stanford, the first female to finish at the top of the class and an expert in commodities and futures. Charged with the oversight of the U.S. government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by the Clinton Administration, Born could foresee what would happen if there wasn’t more regulatory oversight in the multitrillion dollar derivatives markets. Yet no one in government or in the financial markets would listen; in 2008 alone, the U.S. market lost about $8 trillion in value. She has since been dubbed the “Credit Crisis Cassandra.” In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given both the gift of seeing the future and the curse of having no one believe her predictions.

In the case of Brooksley Born, the attacks by very powerful people were harsh and unrelenting. She was right, while those around her were gravely wrong. Yet, when I listen to Born and read her interviews, there is no anger, no recrimination in her voice, only grace. Brooksley Born never would have chosen this situation. She recounts waking in a cold sweat many a night. She has learned from her trial by fire and we can learn from her.

Sometimes we set out to develop competencies, sometimes we don’t. Either way, if we do something enough, we are likely to get good at it. As poet Emily Dickinson wrote,

Luck is not chance—

It’s toil—

Fortune’s expensive smile

Is earned.

PUTTING IN THE WORK

In his 2008 book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell outlines “the 10,000-hour rule.” He writes, “For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every child that plays the piano grows up to be a concert pianist.”

Gladwell does, however, put a dent in the innate talent theory, citing a study indicating that elite performers have totaled ten thousand hours of practice by age twenty, the good students about eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers about four thousand hours. Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, what distinguishes one performer from another is determined by how hard he or she works. That’s it. What’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work harder or even much harder than everyone else, they work much, much harder. Gladwell further supports his view, quoting Daniel Levitin, a musician-turned-neurologist and author of This Is Your Brain on Music. “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” says Levitin. While talent does matter, the opportunity to consistently practice matters more.

These findings are heartening to those of us who dream. You and I will ultimately dream of doing something that builds on our innate talents and strengths because it invigorates us—it is our gift. By cataloguing what we loved to do as children, by examining personal intelligences, what we enjoy doing today, and what makes us feel strong, we will be well on our way to identifying our strengths. We develop competencies, expertise that comes quite often as we face our most vexing challenges. These competencies are strengths and are important tools in shaping and achieving our dreams. Finally, we need to have opportunities, namely resources, available in order to pursue our dreams. We can get good at what we care about. We simply need the opportunity to practice.

IDENTIFYING YOUR INNATE TALENTS AND COMPETENCIES . . .

• How will recognizing your strengths help you dream?

• Are there clues as to your innate talents either in what you loved to do as a child or why you loved to do it?

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

—Malcolm Forbes, publisher

• After reading about multiple intelligences, what intelligence do you have that you didn’t previously recognize?

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise just under his feet.

—James Oppenheim, American poet

• If you were to write down for a week what you enjoyed doing each day, not what you think you should enjoy, what would be on your list?

• What kinds of projects or undertakings do you find yourself salivating over?

What if everything you think is wrong with you is really a superpower?

—Liz Strauss, social media strategist

• What things have you become good at because of challenges you faced?

• Are dreams emerging from these competencies?

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