Applying Your Strengths on the Job

Several books I've read recommend you turn your work into play by doing whatever you do best.  Learn your strengths and fill your day with tasks that let you apply those strengths.  The work then becomes a "flow" experience.  You focus deeply on each task, feeling energized, challenged, and proud of what you've done.

If you buy one of these books, Now, Discover Your Strengths, you get a code that you can use to take an Internet based survey from the Gallup Organization that identifies your top five "signature strengths".  These are the strengths the authors recommend you apply as often as possible.

Based on this survey, what are some of my "signature strengths"?  When I apply them at work, do I experience "flow"?

1. "Includer".  A person with this strength views everyone as equally important and equally deserving of attention and inclusion in the group.  For me, I think this shows up in how I enjoy finding ways to make life better for the operators who run the production lines.  These are people are sometimes not highly educated, sometimes not very sophisticated, and are easily ignored or dismissed.  That seems to make me that much more determined to take their opinions and needs seriously.
2. "Connectedness".  A person with this strength believes that all people are connected and are part of something larger, and tends to enjoy helping others.  I think I express this through my desire to help operators and my desire to get people in different parts of the business to work together effectively.
3. "Woo".  Woo stands for "Winning Others Over".  A person with "woo" likes to mingle, "schmooze", to approach people he doesn't know well and start to build rapport and trust.  This shows up for me in how I enjoy approaching operators or managers at any production line, striking up a conversation, building rapport, and then working together to meet business goals.  When I walk into a plant site, I'm the guy who seems to know EVERYBODY.
4.  "Maximizer".  A person with this strength likes to take something good and make it excellent.  This shows up for me in how I like to perfect information systems, work processes, training materials, spreadsheets, process settings, and computer screens that operators use to run equipment.  

My work feels like play when I'm applying these strengths--when I'm connecting to people, including people who sometimes get ignored or dismissed, schmoozing, and perfecting systems or processes. The less time I spend on other things, like going to big meetings, the better--for me and for the company I work for.

Flow at Work

To enjoy your job, books such as Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience recommend filling your day with as many "flow" activities as you can--tasks that you find engaging, challenging, and enjoyable.

Do we really have a choice?  In our jobs, don't we just do what the job description calls for?  I suspect that most people do have a choice.  If you keep doing more of what you enjoy, and less of what bores you, will your company stand in your way?  Probably not.  They'll see your increased energy and motivation and will recognize that this is as good for them as it is for you.  Your work is likely to evolve into something that often feels like play.

In my case, in my 25 years as an engineer, I've consciously filled my work with things that I can get totally absorbed in.  Troubleshooting problems.  Writing user friendly spreadsheets that will make my coworkers lives easier for years to come.  Training young engineers.  Developing information systems that enable technicians to run their equipment more reliably. Writing as often and as persuasively as possible.

These aren't the types of tasks I would have pictured when I went into engineering.  I use a lot more common sense and a lot more people skills than I use math.  And I get much more involved than most engineers in cultural and management issues.  But the activities I've managed to fit into my daily work are the ones that allow me to experience "flow".  I've crowded out as many of the boring tasks as possible so that, most of each day, I'm absorbed in something I really like to do.  My work gets me "on a roll", "in the zone", lost in what I'm doing so that my wife has to call and remind me to shut down my computer and come home to dinner.

Flow and Strength

According to several books I've read recently, it's easier to experience "flow"--to get totally absorbed in what you are doing--if you apply your strengths.  You are far more likely to totally get into an activity, to get lost in it, to lose track of time, to forget about everything else around you, if the activity makes you apply your best talents at the highest possible level.

As an example, I'll bring up again my son Mackenzie's You Tube video about the Green Bay Packers.

link to Mackenzie's YouTube video

We know some of Mackenzie's top strengths because he (like everyone else in the family) took a web based survey that was designed to reveal his top strengths.  The survey was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton of the Gallup organization (the same company that does polls for national elections).  Buckingham and Clifton analyzed thousands of successful people to identify the types of strengths that led to their success.  They created a list of 34 basic strengths, and designed a survey which identifies an individual's top 5 strengths.  We were able to access the survey with a user code we found in the book Now, Discover Your Strengths

Mackenzie's top 5 strengths identified by this survey, and how they present themselves in this video, are as follows  (Correction from 4/4/2011; based on further research, these are his "Talents"--his preferences--and they only become "Strengths" when they are combined with "Skills" and "Knowledge", which he has obviously done):

1. Self Assurance--You have to be pretty confident to make all these assertions as a 14 year old.  But this confidence adds power to his argument.
2. Communication--He gets his point across
3. Competitive--He loves analyzing college football talent because he compares himself to others and thinks that his predictions often are more accurate than most professionals.  Further, the subject matter is all about competition:  who's the BEST quaterback?  the second best?  third?  etc.
4. Analytical--Mackenzie loves to analyze the plusses and minuses of hundreds of players and how they might fit in with the offensive or defensive needs of various teams
5. Woo--According to the "Strengths Finder" survey, woo is the ability to easily approach strangers, to mix with others without hesitation.  This strength perhaps isn't challenged much in this video, but it does show in the way he talks to the audience.

In the Zone

According to Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, there are two broad categories of activities that people can do to boost their happiness:

1. Experience sensory pleasures, as I've described in several blog posts recently
2. Get in the zone--do things that totally absorb you and challenge your best strengths and skills.  Seligman's calls these activities "gratifications".  He spends most of his book talking about "gratifications" because he says that filling your work and personal life with absorbing, energizing action leads to "the good life".

My Son's You Tube Video

For a perfect example of a "gratification", look no further than my son's YouTube video.  See the link above.  His "gratification", the thing that gets him in the zone, is to analyze college football talent.  He's a self-proclaimed 14 year old "college football scout".  He had his own NFL draft blog for 2 years and now writes for NFLMocks.com, one of the most popular NFL draft websites available.

Seligman says that a gratification, unlike a pleasure, doesn't depend on pleasant sensations and doesn't necessarily generate pleasant feelings.  You may instead be very serious and intense, with no strong emotions at all.  You're just INTO what you're doing.  You give it everything you have to give.   You can see all this in the video.
    

Music: Always More than Sound

The other night, I was sitting cross legged on a meditation cushion in front of our natural gas fireplace, listening to jazz rock with my headphones for my daily meditation.  I imagined that I was breathing in the music and breathing it out again.  When a musical passage reached a high, I stretched my spine as far as I could, and I relaxed it again when the music quieted.  For one entire piece of music, I experienced a very pleasurable optical illusion.  It seemed as if the flames were flickering in time with the intricate percussion of the song.  I was delighted to have my musical experience expand beyond my ears, my body, and then—through my eyes—out into space.

I thought about this later.  Is music ever something I enjoy with my ears alone?  Can I ever deeply appreciate music without affecting my breathing, my heartbeat, and my emotions?  If I wear my noise cancelling headphones, they might cancel some background noise, but can they cancel me, the listener?  I feel I need to accept that, when I appreciate music, no sound system is so great that I can experience pure sound apart from myself.  I’ll always be part of the experience.  The same is true for appreciating art and nature.  I’m always part of the performance, part of the painting, part of the waterfall or the mountain that I’m appreciating with wonder and awe.