The Touchwood Project

If you know what you’re naturally good at, and do that every day, you are 300% more likely to be successful in your work and have a better quality of life.

That’s according to research conducted by Gallup of over 10 million people over the past 30 years. Out of these findings, they’ve developed StrengthsFinder, an online survey to assess your top 5 “strengths” out of 34 different possibilities.

What we’re interested in is: can StrengthsFinder help community projects and social enterprises be more successful? We’ll be asking a test group that question this weekend for Touchwood.

My experience with StrengthsFinder

Having done the survey 3 times over the past 6 years, I can definitely say it’s helped me.

I first discovered the book when I worked for Sprint, a telecommunications corporation in Washington, D.C. Back in those days, I struggled to get up in time to go to work. I remember dreading the sound of the alarm clock, the shuffle to put a suit on.

Once I was at the office, my days seemed miles of meetings about nothing. I felt hamstrung by the slow pace of change, the lack of vision. Though initially I was  promoted, eventually my performance started to suffer as I cared less and less about my job. I’m sure if I had stayed much longer, I would have been given the boot or quietly sidelined.

The biggest problem at my old job was that I rarely used my talents. I’m a big ideas person and a voracious learner, and there’s limited scope for either when you’re a corporate website manager.

What happens when you don’t use your strengths?

By all accounts, my experience wasn’t unusual. In a recent poll of 1,000 people, among those who “strongly disagreed” or “disagreed” with the statement “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day”, not one single person felt emotionally engaged on the job.

According to Gallup’s research, if you don’t use your strengths at work, you likely:

• dread going to work
• have more negative than positive interactions with your colleagues
• treat your customers poorly
• tell your friends what an awful company you work for
• achieve less daily
• have fewer positive and creative moments

Have you ever been part of a volunteer project that seemed to sap your will to live? Meetings drag on, people bicker, action moves at a glacial pace. A good idea, something you’re excited about and eager to help work, slowly becomes a chore, something you dread.

This happens all too often, and I think part of it is because we as a group don’t know our own strengths — and we don’t know anyone else’s.

Using your strengths

Now that I’m starting up Touchwood with Malcolm, I get to use my strengths just about every day. This won’t mean much if you haven’t read the book, but mine are:

• Input (collecting information)
• Ideation (love of new ideas)
• Intellection (love of thinking — getting the theme here?)
• Learner (love of learning) and
• Futuristic (envisioning the future).

At this early stage, Touchwood is a lot of big ideas and planning for the future, so I’m enjoying it. I also learn new skills constantly, from knitting to creating a WordPress blog like this one that all, however tangentially, tie into what we’re doing. I’m far happier, more energized, and productive.

Malcolm’s taking his test today, so he can post his take on things later.

Gallup’s research shows people who use their strengths regularly in their jobs are “six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs, and three times as likely to report having a better quality of life in general.”

I have a personal belief in StrengthsFinder and what I think it can do for people. The question is, is it too corporate, too American, to work in such a different setting?

Have you taken the StrengthsFinder test?

If you’ve taken the StrengthsFinder test, post your results here if you feel like sharing them. I’d be particularly interested to hear how you think knowing your strengths has helped you and how you think it could help social enterprises and community projects be more effective. I’ll post once we’ve run the first pilot Sunday as well.

Tags: personal development, Strengthsfinder

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