Knowing your strengths – for self-belief, confidence and careers

News

Welcome to our latest newsletter where we share ideas, articles and more, all about coaching and our specialism of working with women.

We’ve been delivering programmes, workshops and one to one coaching for women for almost 12 years and we’ve seen many consistent themes over that time and today we’re highlighting characteristics, strengths and skills….

Read on for more and please do share with your colleagues, friends, and women in your networks or organisation.

 

Who are we at our best?

 

What do we have to offer?

 

How can knowing this help us with our confidence, self-belief and careers?

 

You may have heard this quote before from PepsiCo but we think it’s an important one to revisit…

 

“What came to light was that while many men put themselves forward for senior roles in the belief they can fill any skills gap “on-the-job”, better qualified women often feel unable to apply unless they can tick as many as 90% of the job-spec boxes.”
Ref: The Times Top 50 Employers for Women 2014

 

This quote continues to resonate with the women we work with.So what can we do to help?

One way is to help women to identify the characteristics, strengths and skills that make them who they are.

It’s not always easy to articulate our ‘strengths’ and in fact we suspect from our experience that if we asked a group of women to tell us their top five strengths they might come up with one or two, and then quickly move on to tell us all the things they are not so good at.

We can be incredibly dismissive of our strengths…as shared in this article from Psychology Today.

“Our strengths feel natural and obvious to us. We assume what’s easy for us is easy for others.”

 

If something feels easy to us, it must be easy for others, right? Well no, not necessarily.

As shared here:

“Leveraging the science of positive psychology, we now can identify the strengths that define who we are at our best –the qualities that, when nurtured, can improve all areas of our lives. As decades of research and hundreds of studies have now shown, people who express their character strengths tend to be less stressed, more engaged, energized, and happier.”
 
And here:
“While we can’t choose our ‘signature strengths,’ we can decide when to use them and how to develop them. They are vital because they make us feel ‘like the real us.’ We feel more engaged, excited, and authentic, and they leave us feeling like the very best version of ourselves.”

 

So take a look at ‘A coaching question’ below for a technique that can help…

Use and review this technique regularly to build self belief and confidence.

Give it a try and share with other women, your colleagues, friends, and women in your networks or organisation.

If you’re interested in exploring this area further or taking an online test visit https://www.viacharacter.org/research/findings/signature-strengths.

For more reading on this subject we’d recommend taking a look at the work of Professor Martin Seligman.

One to one coaching can also help women to connect with their characteristics, strengths and skills, and provide a personalised space for their own reflections and development.

Areas we work with women on include:

  • A focus on personal and professional aspirations and options to achieve them
  • Strategic, project based, personal or developmental challenges
  • Personal change, either enforced or chosen, the impact, options and next steps
  • Organisational change to navigate a pathway to support yourself, your team and the wider organisation to create successful change
  • Your way of being – as a leader, as a professional or in life in general
  • A mindset shift – to challenge negative thinking patterns and unhelpful self-talk
  • Building resilience and resilience practices that are sustainable and impactful
  • Identifying practical actionable strategies that will have a positive impact on your situation or issue
  • Managing work and life demands, priorities and dealing with overwhelm
  • Developing self-awareness to enable personal impact and the confidence to achieve
  • How to create and sustain positive and mutually beneficial professional relationships
  • Time to pause, reflect, review and focus on what is important now and for the future
  • Personal growth and personal development to achieve what is important to you
  • Big picture, big questions, multiple options, intended and unintended consequences of decisions and how to have the impact you want to have

For more take a look at our articles:

https://www.womentowork.co.uk/coaching-is-it-or-me/
https://www.womentowork.co.uk/coaching-through-change/

Thank you for your continuing support and do get in touch if you need support with your own personal development or for the women in your organisation or network this year.

Best wishes
Emma and Jenny