How to Learn About Your Strengths and Weaknesses

The key to professional development and leadership capability begins with the Greek maxim: know thyself. It's lack of self knowledge - either grossly overestimating our abilities (one piece of research surveying 11,000 people found 33% of leaders overestimated their leadership ability) or profoundly underestimating what we are capable of (how many people do you know with chronically low self-esteem?) - that leads to failure.

Here are five techniques for KNOWING YOURSELF even better. They are an excellent smorgasbord to be used in a coaching situation or to be drawn out in an appraisal discussion as the manager helps the employee get to grips with self-development.

1) Get 360° feedback -

From family, friends, peers, subordinates, bosses, customers, suppliers - anyone who gives quality feedback. Getting quality feedback is arguably the single most important thing you can do to improve yourself. In America they have the expression, 'Feedback is the breakfast of champions'. So the question becomes: where will you get good feedback?

A good idea is for you to list the people you know, like and trust - who can help? When and how will you ask them?

2) Test yourself using psychological profiles and other valid and objective insights:

For example, Learning style profile (Kolb), Team style profiles (Belbin), Personality style profiles (Myers-Briggs), Motivational style profiles (Motivational Maps) etc. The named tools in brackets are just examples - there are others. By identifying your strengths and weaknesses here, you can then go to work on them by creating a plan.

What profiles will you complete? What will you do with them when they are done? A key task is to compare the type of person you are with the type of work you do - is there a fit?

3) Review your own life in detail:

What you have done speaks volumes about the real you, not the imaginary you - the false you that you have inadvertently constructed over time. What patterns emerge? Keep a diary or journal.

When will you start your journal? A key issue in building self-esteem is to log 3 achievements per day and then review your week and month regularly. This builds a portfolio of evidence that becomes believable to the subconscious mind - yours!

4) Stretch yourself by going out of the comfort zone:

Do things that that drive you to your limits. Children do this all the time - they sing in public for the first time, they undertake complex work, they go on some adventure trek - and as a result they grow at a tremendous rate.

What activity or learning will you undertake? Going out of the comfort zone is not to be confused with doing bizarre and dangerous things just because they are there, or because others do them. Find something - and often it is something you wanted to do as a child but never had the time - that really you'd feel proud of if you did it.

5) Use your imagination -

Daydream - ask 'what if?' - visualise yourself with knowledge, skills, talents that appeal to you. By focusing your mind on what you want or even on finding what you want, a powerful force is unleashed.

When will you visualise your possibilities? How? Under what conditions? The power of the imagination is virtually unlimited - everything that is came into existence via the imagination - it was seen in the mind's eye before it was 'created' literally or physically. Thus the more time is spent imaging ideal realities, the more likely it is that that reality will come to pass. It is important that when using visualisation and imaging techniques that we stay in a relaxed state of mind. A key extra point here is that if you have never experienced relaxation techniques before, the most well known being meditation, then I strongly recommend you find a teacher first to get you on your way.

So, we have it then: five techniques that will certainly boost your self-awareness, your understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and which if appropriated - your choice - could make a major difference to the outcomes of your life. The added bonus is: they are all fun because learning is fun!

Have a go.

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3 Very Small Ways To Become A Better Speaker

I don't mind telling you that I'd like to become a better speaker. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that because of the importance of public speaking you pretty much feel the same way. However, we always face the big challenge - what do we need to do in order to become better? Should we run away for a week in the woods with a speaking guru? Perhaps, but it turns out that there are a number of small things that we can do that will have a big impact on how good of a speaker we become.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

All too often I run into speakers who are not happy. When I talk with them and try to find out what's up, more often than not what I discover is that somebody has done something that this person feels has wronged them. What they have forgotten is that ultimately, they are the ones who are in control of how they feel and if they are going to feel happy, then it's going to be all up to them.

Being a speaker is tough work - it truly takes a lot of energy out of all of us. If you choose to be unhappy, then you are going to discover that being unhappy also takes a lot of work. You'll have less energy to give to your speeches. It's not worth it so don't be unhappy. Develop a positive attitude and you'll be ready to all of the opportunities and challenges that come along with being a speaker.

Did You Remember To Smile Today?

I don't know about you, but I sure wish that I had the ability to control other people. It just seems like everything would go that much easier because everyone would be doing exactly what I wanted them to do. I don't have that ability, but I do have the ability to change other people's moods. All I have to do is to smile at them.

When you smile at someone they really have no choice about what they are going to do next. They are almost forced to smile back at you. When they do this, something happens and all of a sudden they just feel better. What this means is that they now associate you with feeling better. From that association great things can happen. And it all started with just a smile.

Don't Forget Your Sense Of Humor

There are a lot of serious things that we deal with in this life. However, if we don't have a sense of humor then when the unexpected happens we are going to be poorly equipped to handle it. If when something happens, you are just going to stand there and look upset, then that is exactly how your audience is going to be feeling.

Instead, what you need to do is to develop the ability to roll with events as they occur. Look at everything that happens to you and find the lighter side of it. I'm not talking about trying to memorize jokes here, rather I'm talking about having the ability to see events as they unfold and to make your audience laugh about being part of it. If you can get good at this, then you'll be able to keep your audience focused on you even as the unexpected happens.

What All Of This Means For You

When we think about becoming a better speaker, I'm pretty sure that we all picture going off to some military style boot camp where drill sergeants run us through speaking exercises day and night until we can do them in our sleep. Such a place may exist, but it turns out that becoming a better speaker and maximizing the benefits of public speaking is actually much easier to accomplish.

The first thing that we need to understand is that we control our mood - nobody else does. What this means for you is that if you want to be happy, it's going to be up to you to make it happen, not someone else. Next, we have the ability to influence how other people feel. All we have to do is to smile at them and they'll smile back at us. This makes everyone feel better. Finally, when you head off to speak, make sure that you take your sense of humor along. We don't control the world so as things happen, make sure that you and your audience can laugh at them.

When you realize that becoming a better speaker is not only fairly easy to do, but is also in your hands to accomplish, all of sudden this starts to seem like it might be something that you could accomplish. The three things that we've discussed are easy to do. Give it a try and see what comes of it!

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42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself - Part 2

This is Part 2 of 42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself

11. Write a letter to your future self. What do you see yourself as 5 years from now? Will you be the same? Different?  What kind of person will you be? Write a letter to your future self – 1 year from now will be a good start – and seal it. Make a date in your calendar to open it 1 year from now. Then start working to become the person you want to open that letter.

12. Get out of your comfort zone. Real growth comes with hard work and sweat. Being too comfortable doesn’t help us grow – it makes us stagnate. What is your comfort zone? Do you stay in most of the time? Do you keep to your own space when out with other people? Shake your routine up. Do something different. By exposing yourself to a new context, you’re literally growing as you learn to act in new circumstances.

13. Put someone up to a challenge. Competition is one of the best ways to grow. Set a challenge (weight loss, exercise, financial challenge, etc) and compete with an interested friend to see who achieves the target first. Through the process, both of you will gain more than if you were to set off on the target alone.

14. Identify your blind spots. Scientifically, blind spots refer to areas our eyes are not capable of seeing. In personal development terms, blind spots are things about ourselves we are unaware of. Discovering our blind spots help us discover our areas of improvement. One exercise I use to discover my blind spots is to identify all the things/events/people that trigger me in a day – trigger meaning making me feel annoyed/weird/affected. These represent my blind spots. It’s always fun to do the exercise because I discover new things about myself, even if I may already think I know my own blind spots (but then they wouldn’t be blind spots would they?). After that, I work on steps to address them.

15. Ask for feedback. As much as we try to improve, we will always have blind spots. Asking for feedback gives us an additional perspective. Some people to approach will be friends, family, colleagues, boss, or even acquaintances, since they will have no preset bias and can give their feedback objectively.

16. Stay focused with to-do lists. I start my day with a list of tasks I want to complete and this helps make me stay focused. In comparison, the days when I don’t do this end up being extremely unproductive. For example, part of my to-do list for today is to write a guest post at LifeHack.Org, and this is why I’m writing this now! Since my work requires me to use my computer all the time, I use Free Sticky Notes to manage my to-do lists. It’s really simple to use and it’s a freeware, so I recommend you check it out.

17. Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). I’m a big fan of setting BHAGs. BHAGs stretch you beyond your normal capacity since they are big and audacious – you wouldn’t think of attempting them normally. What are BHAGs you can embark on, which you’ll feel absolutely on top of the world once you complete them? Set them and start working on them.

18. Acknowledge your flaws. Everyone has flaws. What’s most important is to understand them, acknowledge them, and address them. What do you think are your flaws? What are the flaws you can work on now? How do you want to address them?

19. Get into action. The best way to learn and improve is to take action. What is something you have been meaning to do? How can you take action on it immediately? Waiting doesn’t get anything done. Taking action gives you immediate results to learn from.

20. Learn from people who inspire you. Think about people you admire. People who inspire you. These people reflect certain qualities you want to have for yourself too. What are the qualities in them you want to have for yourself? How can you acquire these qualities?

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