One of the coaching issues I deal with often is talent envy. Such can be the case when someone takes the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment when they discover their Top 5 talent themes and learn that they are not what they were expecting. Or they long for talents that someone else has. And if they open up their full profile of all 34 talent themes, there seems to be an automatic impulse to look at the bottom to see what they need to work on to fix.
Talent Envy is Comparison
It’s not our fault! Since we were very young, we have been trained to compare ourselves to others and always come up lacking. Well meaning teachers, pastors, parents and bosses have tried to help us become “well-rounded,” unwittingly conditioning us for mediocrity. We can never win in a comparison! We will always come up lacking and feeling badly about ourselves.
One of my earliest clients hated her StrengthsFinder profile when she first took the assessment. She decided she didn’t like her nurturing talents of Empathy, Connectedness and Positivity. Instead, she wanted Focus and Strategic and Maximizer. She spent nearly a year longing to be someone she wasn’t because it fit in with her idea of what a successful businesswoman was. It wasn’t until she finally came to the realization that she could be successful by investing in growing her own talents that she started to see some progress.
Talent Envy: thinking yourself as broken and wanting to be someone else.
You’re Not Broken!
You’re not broken and you don’t need to be fixed! What we really need is for the whole world to step into being who they really are: amazing, gifted and powerful. Honing and developing your top talents is where you’re going to see the most progress. You’ll improve your productivity, increase your energy, and feel better about yourself. Wouldn’t you rather do more of what you’re already good at?
The best way to grow and develop your talents into strengths is to embrace who you are! You are gifted unlike anyone else! There’s never been another you, and there will never be another you to walk this earth again. We need you to be the very best you! And that means being you, and not someone else.
To learn more about StrengthsFinder, visit the Gallup Strengths Center.
And join us on Facebook in The Very Best YOU group, where we talk about talent development.
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