I got lucky and had what life coach Martha Beck calls a “cataclysmic change” — I came on holiday to Scotland, met and married Malcolm, and my life shifted into a whole new realm. That made it easy for me to break with the past, but I’ve spent the last 7 years figuring out how to go forward, how to deal with the anxiety and self-doubt that plagues you when you make such a change, when your course ahead is almost entirely unknown and you feel like you might be a bit crazy.

It’s like walking in the forest without a path or a map. Some days, it’s exhilirating.

Other days, it’s like this:

Either way, you’re in the trees, no idea where you’re going, where it will lead to, and whether it’ll be worth it in the end. Time’s passing, you’re getting older and you’re never quite certain you’ll reach something amazing.

Since we’ve started hosting Couchsurfers — a non-profit organisation where you host travellers or stay with other hosts for free — I’ve met many people in a similar situation. I’m actually amazed how many of us there are, these people who know they want to do something different with their life, believe that there’s more to life than what they’ve found so far, but aren’t sure how to start or where to go.

So I want to share more of what I’ve learned, some of the best tools that have helped me find my way. StrengthsFinder is one I’ve mentioned most frequently, but you have to buy the book and take the online test for that, so today’s exercise is one that’s free and that you can do without any tools but a pen and piece of paper.

My Favourite Things exercise

This exercise is my take on one from Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham. I call it “My Favourite Things” exercise since Sound of Music was my favourite film for decades.

Maria singing about her favourite things

Here’s how it works:

1. For one week, whenever you realise you’re really enjoying yourself, write down a few sentences to describe it. Capture what you’re doing right then and there, not later or at the end of the day — right then. By the end of the week you should have several scraps or paper or sentences in your notebook.
2. Pick the top 3 activities that you most enjoyed, where you felt you were something that comes to you naturally and easily, and then
3. Convert those activities into a statement of your Favourite Things to Do.

The key is to try to then do those things as much as possible because these things are what you’re naturally good at, what you enjoy doing, and what can make the difference between a forgettable day and a deeply satisfying one. I’ll share how my week went to give you an idea how it works.

My week tracking Favourite Things to Do

One morning during my week, I got into a discussion with Malcolm and realised I was really enjoying myself. I whipped out my piece of paper and jotted down “Listening to Malcolm talk about meeting and chatting with young bushcraft guy in Aviemore and seeing him [Malcolm] being at his best.”

Another one was: “I began putting the new Five Senses website together: finding design templates, searching for plugins, coming up with the initial navigation.”

I did this throughout the week, recording anything where I felt strong doing it, or lost all track of time enjoying it. Whenever something felt effortless or exciting or fun, I wrote it down. Buckingham has pages at the back of the book where you can record these activities, but of course you could easily just use some scrap paper or a notebook.

While it was tricky at first to get into the habit of stopping what I was doing long enough to make a note of it, it was worth it. Trying to record something at the end of the day loses out on the exact emotion at the time and doesn’t work nearly as well.

Sorting through the pile of activities

At the end of the week, I collected my pile of 12 or so activities and saw how a few fit into similar categories. I pulled out the three that provoked the strongest positive emotions and wrote a one-sentence description that starts with “I feel strong when…”

So one of my initial statements was “I feel strong when writing the 4 types of strengths article with a playful feel.” Now in the book Buckingham has you ask yourself some follow-up questions to really hone in on the statements, such as “Does it matter why?” you do your particular activity or “Does it matter who?” you do it with or for. Does it matter when you do that activity, so if you need more help with your statements, I’d recommend checking out the book. But I suggest simply thinking about your activity and seeing if you can make it general enough to apply to several situations but specific enough so that it gives you a rush of happiness thinking about doing it.

My 3 Favourite Things

So my activity: “I feel strong when writing the 4 types of strengths article with a playful feel” turned into:

“Favourite Thing #1: Discussing and developing someone’s strengths, particularly for the benefit of others.”

My activity: “Designing the Punk Spinning logo and combining the unexpected ‘punk’ with something as traditional as spinning” turned into:

Favourite Thing #2: “Creating something beautiful and useful that’s my style.”

For fun, I created another desktop image to keep these strengths in mind as I go about my day.

Having my 3 Favourite Things to Do on my desktop reminds me to deliberately look for opportunities to do them.

This morning I intended to clean out my inbox but decided the day would be better spent writing this article, which uses all three of my top strengths at the same time. I’ve been doing this now for a few months and it’s held true. Hope it helps you as well!

StrengthsFinder vs. Go Put Your Strengths to Work

Finally, a note here for StrengthsFinder folks: both books use the term “strengths” to describe something you are naturally good at, love to do, and have at least to some extent, developed. StrengthsFinder is great at helping you understand how you and the people around you work, while this exercise will give you insight as to what you need to do more of to be happy and more successful. I recommend them both but this one has the added advantage of being free, though I’d buy Go Put Your Strengths to Work  if you want more guidance.

Good luck and let me know how you get on.

By the third episode, I was already thinking of work and here’s where it’s led me: we could all be as extraordinary as Sherlock Holmes.

Surely not, you scoff. The fictional detective whose brain is legendary, whose ability to solve a crime is unmatched — how could we mere mortals compete?

We could do it — if, like Sherlock, each of us did what we were uniquely suited for.

I’m thinking a lot about Holmes because Malcolm and I are enthralled by Sherlock. In this version, Holmes sends texts instead of telegrams and Watson writes their story on his blog, but the key elements are the same: genius detective solves seemingly impossible mystery through brilliant deductions.

Sherlock in flow

For me, one of the joys of watching the show is to see someone doing what he does best.

When Sherlock is tracking down a murderer, putting the clues together one by one, you can almost see the sparks of energy coming off of him.

Facts align, the missing pieces slide neatly into place and finally all of it pours out into the solution with a grace and beauty that’s a delight for the viewer to witness. Sherlock loves when he solves a mystery and you can see that joy clearly: he’s in flow.

Here’s what that looks like:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXhiAVMv6fw

“Flow”, named and studied by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, is one of the most delightful of human experiences. Here’s how Wikipedia explains flow:

It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning…the hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.

Each of us can feel that kind of joy at when we put our quite different, specialised strengths to work doing what we’re best at, then improve those strengths day in and day out.

That’s all Sherlock is, after all: someone whose talents are very, very specialised; someone who is smart enough and lucky enough to have found a niche for those talents that lets him improve consistently until they approach perfection.

Sherlock’s strengths in StrengthsFinder

Let me put Sherlock in terms of StrengthsFinder to show how his genius is a mix of 5 regular strengths many people have (if you don’t know what StrengthsFinder is, just pay attention to how the strengths are described and you’ll get the idea).

If I were to guess what his top 5 strengths would be, I’d guess:

Input

Input, Strategic and Analytical: all Strategic Thinking strengths

Sherlock excels at collecting data (Input). He reads the papers and remembers every murder for the past 20 years, knows details like all the brands of stationery or writing ink. His mind is like a sponge, soaking up all kinds of information that the rest of us ignore and which he can pull at as needed.

Strategic

When faced with a murder, he creates a picture of what happened, sorting through the clutter of details such as a hair on the collar, a stain on the window, to find the essential information, make a decision about the best course of action, then act (Strategic).

Analytical

Analytical strength challenges people to prove that their theories are true, looking for the root causes of something, seeing the connections between things and relying on facts and data. Sherlock frequently challenges Lestrade or Watson to give the logic behind their conclusions. He sees the patterns in the clues and the behaviour of the suspects that gradually fits together.

All three are Strategic Thinking strengths, which is no surprise as he’s known for his brain.

But I’d also argue he’s got surprising Influencing strengths, meaning he influences people — just look at how often he orders around people and they follow.

Self-Assurance

Self-Assurance and Command: Influencing strengths

Sherlock is well acquainted with his own genius. His utter self-confidence means he can comfortably forge a path ahead when there are no rules or maps to follow (Self-Assurance), not plagued by the kind of self-doubt and worry most of us are saddled with. This surety appeals strongly to Dr. Watson, causing him to follow Holmes faithfully through even the most dangerous situations.

Command

He feels compelled to present the facts or the truth, no matter how unpleasant (Command) it may be for the wife to hear her husband was a liar and a cheat or politically incorrect for him to insist Scotland Yard has the wrong man. He takes charge, imposes his views on others, and while many may resent it, quite a few are drawn to follow.

So his particular combination of Input, Strategic, Self-Assurance, Analytical and Command (it could be others, but you get the idea) is unique. He channels all 5 strengths into solving difficult mysteries and is hugely successful as a result.

Sherlock would make a rotten therapist

Now try to imagine Sherlock Holmes as a kindergarten teacher. Or nurse. Or social worker.

Think what a disaster he’d be!

He has little empathy and few social graces. He gets impatient with what he sees as the stupidity of others and has almost no friends or lasting relationships. So any career that required him to interact compassionately or patiently with people would be a failure.

Nope, he’d be mediocre at most jobs and abysmal at many, just as I’d be crap at being a detective.

So when I say each of us can be Sherlock Holmes, I mean each of us has the potential to be truly great when we do those things that we most love to do and keep practicing them until we’re very skilled.

A happy glimpse of the future during Volunteer Week

Another reason I believe this destiny belongs to any of us? Well I caught a glimpse of this potential in Malcolm and myself during our first ever Volunteer Week.

Last week when we were finishing our pilot projects, we decided to experiment further by inviting three recent college graduates up from Edinburgh and Glasgow for 8 days to help us run the events.

An experiment with StrengthsFinder and volunteers

It was our first official Volunteer Week and one of the things I wanted to test out was whether using StrengthsFinder to profile our volunteers would be a help in making the most of their time here.

I had them take the test online a few days before they were scheduled to arrive and I asked them to email me their results. Then I spent a few hours reviewing their strengths and coming up with tasks for Touchwood that seemed to best correspond to their strengths.

For example, one of our volunteers had “Woo” as her top strength. Woo is about winning others over, getting new people to like you, so I immediately put her down for meeting and greeting all participants coming to the courses.

Another volunteer had “Achiever”, meaning a constant need to achieve things. So I devised a long list of concrete tasks like creating a database of all of our Touchwood books and writing a press release so that she could finish these things and feel that sense of accomplishment.

I had never met any of these people and had had only the most rudimentary idea of their background. No idea of their age or college major or work experience. Just their StrengthsFinder results. I drew up a profile for each:

One volunteer's strengths and activities I planned before meeting

And I loved it. I felt so energised by planning what they could do. The ideas just seemed to flow out of me and I couldn’t wait to see what would happen. Could we give 3 people a wonderful experience with us while also getting a lot done for Touchwood?

By the end of the week, I believed we could. We had accomplished an extraordinary amount of work and from regular feedback from Rachel, Ela and Minhaj I knew they were enjoying themselves.

The best part was the last day when we asked them for their thoughts on how the week had gone. For Rachel and Ela in particular, the week had been transformative. Getting to use their strengths, getting appreciation and success, clearly meant something to them and had had a profound impact.

Surveying the week, I felt exhilarated.

I knew I was onto something special here, this combination of hosting people, showing them Orkney in our own particular way and working with them on their strengths while doing work for Touchwood. Basically, a volunteer holiday combined with personal development.

It’s specialised and needs to get more specialised still if it’s to be truly great. I don’t yet know how to do all that, but at least I’ve had a peek at what it could be like, at what I could be like.

So figuring out the best way to help people discover and develop their strengths in the service of finding and fulfilling their mission in life — that’s one of my mysteries to solve. It’s the thing that keeps me awake at night, furiously thinking, planning, analysing. I get to play detective with my own life.

It sounds grandiose, but then again, shouldn’t your purpose in life be grand? And when you do what you do best, why not enjoy it?

Let’s take some inspiration from Sherlock:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kdmmk5MNfc

The game is afoot.

—————————————————————

Today I’m talking about the “Futuristic” strength in StrengthsFinder and how Futuristic people are going to help save the world. It’s part of an on-going series of articles on identifying and using your strengths with the help of tools like StrengthsFinder.

(I know we still need to post about how the Power Off Weekend went, but we will get to that soon I promise.)

First, here’s your superhero badge, designed just for you:

I’m thinking t-shirt, coffee mug. Why be shy?

What is the “Futuristic” strength?

Futuristic people think of what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

They’re Arthur C. Clarke with a vision of satellites, space stations and moon bases long before we’d ever set foot on the moon.

The space station we were going to have in 2001

They’re Walt Disney who imagines a utopian city where people can live and work with maximum happiness and efficiency.

Walt's utopian vision for EPCOT

This is what EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was meant to be when Disney conceived it in the 1950s, not a theme park.

They are Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” or JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you.” These people can inspire hundreds, then thousands, then millions. It’s a mighty heritage.

The accident that gave me my superpowers

In my case, Futuristic is heavily sci-fi and science-oriented. Not everyone who has this strength likes sci-fi — you just have to enjoy thinking about the future in some way — but I can only speak to my experience.

So my journey starts with 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was about 6 when I first saw it (I had a cool mom), and the dreamy scenes of floating spaceships and air hostesses walking upside down hooked me into a lifelong love affair with the future.

2001: A Space Odyssey and those fab gravity boots

The film opened some dimension in my mind and the world never looked the same again.

Then regular episodes of Star Trek at my dad’s side taught me you can have a moral message, broadcast controversial messages under cover of entertainment.

The first TV interracial kiss

Then Blade Runner. After I was done being shocked and a bit traumatised (remember the scene where Pris, the Replicant, dies? Yikes), I learned about the power of dystopian visions, of showing the worst of what can happen when you ignore the present problems. Reading 1984 helped that along nicely as well.

The dystopian city of the future

Dorks. And proud of it.

We get a bad press, us sci-fi futuristic people. We’re the geeks buried with our nose in the latest Iain Banks, supposedly without any real life friends. We’re the dreamers who never notice what’s going on right before our eyes. We go to geeky conferences, debate Star Wars vs Star Trek, or wait for the latest release from Apple with baited breath.

Don't mess with Star Trek fans

I’m all for the label “dork”. I once thought of designing a t-shirt that said “ProudDork.com” because I think it’s worth reclaiming that word for the proud and the free.

We must use our powers for Good

Now here’s the thing. We have a responsibility, in case any of you didn’t already know it.

Our job is to show people what could be, how things could be better if we try. There are already a lot of people who show how bad things could be — death, destruction and doomsday we’re all well acquainted with.

So let’s focus on the positive, shall we?

Let’s use our writing, drawing, computer, music, architecture, filmmaking and any other skills to communicate our inspiring, hopeful visions that sparkle so clearly in our imaginations. Let’s bring those ideas to others so they can help us make them a reality.

Like this guy:

Kick-Ass: Be Your Own Superhero

How am I putting Futuristic into practice?

If I’m gonna preach, I gotta do.

One of the things I’m doing is writing these series of posts about how to find and use your superpowers — or “strengths,” as they’re known more conventionally.

I see a future where kids are encouraged to develop what they love to do, where they’re praised for building a model airplane, or drawing a bizarre picture, or helping their friends get along at recess.

Flying the dork flag with pride

I imagine adults having learned to tune into their inner voice that says “I love this” and doing more of that rather than another load of laundry, or Botox injection, or an extra hour at work in a job they can’t stand.

The big, big dream

The other thing I’m doing with Futuristic is helping keep Malcolm and myself inspired and driven to keep doing the work we do, day after day, to get us to our ultimate dream: our eco lodge where we will teach some of the skills we need to thrive in the 21st century and make it a better place. I think of it as a Hogwarts for the real world.

This is my biggest, most thrilling dream, one we working towards day after day as I write to you, as Malcolm already thinks about the next Power Off Weekend and I blow my way through craft after craft. We’re still putting the details together, finding inspiration from multiple sources, drawing up lists of skills we need to learn, people we’ll need to locate.

It will take years, so my job is to make sure we never lose sight of The Dream. To stay hopeful, optimistic and certain that it can and will happen.

If you’re Futuristic, that’s your gift too.

So be proud of your dreams, your hopes, your belief that a better tomorrow exists. Then remember that you help make that tomorrow happen and get out there.

That’s why today I want to have a little creative fun while looking at the 4 categories of strengths in StrengthsFinder and how to use your type of strength to help you be an effective leader and be part of a successful team.

StrengthsFinder for volunteer groups and families

Understanding your strengths is relevant not just for your working life whatever its shape, but for volunteer activities, organisations and even relationships.

My family did Strengthsfinder and it’s helped me understand and appreciate them and how we function together. It’s one of the core ways Malcolm and I run Touchwood, so I’ll continue to write about it for others out there looking to take more of a strengths-based approach to life.

I’m assuming you’re already familiar with the basics of StrengthsFinder, which is a tool that helps you identify your top 5 strengths from a list of 34. Now it’s about developing your strengths further and learning how to play your totally unique role as well as look for others to complement you.

How to be a great leader or part of a great team

To be an effective leader or part of a team, you need to 1) focus on your area of greatest ability then 2) build a team with complementary, very different strengths to yours.

Let’s start with you first.

The 4 types of strengths

Chances are, your strengths will fall into one of these categories: (These are my colourful intrepretations of the 4 types, complete with little icons and colour coding. I love designing this kind of stuff.)

OK, go find your strengths report and look up your strengths again if you’ve forgotten them. Ready? Now, let’s start with the first set: Strategic Thinking.

Strategic Thinking strengths

So far, I think everyone I’ve ever had take StrengthsFinder — which is about 35 people — has had at least one strength in Strategic Thinking. I love thinkers because you know, like attracts like and all that.

I mean, if you’re not into pontificating, analysing, discussing, then chances are you haven’t bothered to read this post. Because you find something as abstract as personal development boring and pointless.

Strategic Thinker: Does this sound like you?

A strategic thinker tends to love to read or discuss things, to learn.

They observe the past to learn its lessons, or live in the future. They assess something and find what’s wrong with it and then can come up with 50 ways to fix it.

They can also be accused of not getting things done, living with their head in the clouds, being procrastinators. Malcolm and I were both Class A procrastinators growing up — schoolwork wasn’t worth doing until the last minute.

Strategic Thinkers help the team make better decisions by analyzing information and thinking about what could be.

All five of my strengths are Strategic Thinking, which worried me at first, but I’ll get to why being so one-sided can also be a very good thing later.

On to the Persuaders, the Talkers: Influencers.

Influencing strengths

Obama is the guy I think of when I think of Influencers. Someone who likes people, working with them, speaking to them.

President Obama - a master Influencer

Influencers: Does this sound like you?

President Obama knows how to persuade people, to woo them and inspire them. The strength “Woo” cracks me up just for the name, but I knew someone with this strength and she was a master at getting people to do things. She just charmed them into it. She was very self-deprecating, so you don’t have to be flashy, you just have to enjoy being around people.

Influencers help you and your team reach a broader audience.

Since Malcolm and I are both Strategic Thinkers, we’re starting to look for an Influencer or two to help us better communicate what Touchwood is about. Someone who can help us distill our million ideas that make perfect sense to us and likely no one else, and tell a story that’s compelling and easy to understand. That’s what many Influencers can do, easily.

Relationship Building strengths

My Nana is a Relationship Builder. Her strengths are: Adaptability, Connectedness, Relator — all Relationship building strengths — plus Intellection (loves to discuss) and Responsibility (takes responsibility for what they say and do, as well as for other people).

Relationship Builders are the “glue that binds the team together,” as Strengths-based Leadership puts it.

Boy is that true! Nana is the matriarch of the DuBois clan, holding us all together through to 2nd and 3rd cousins all over the place.

Nana holding us all together in L.A.

She checks in with us all, keeping us up to date with what everyone else is doing. Because of her efforts, we DuBoises have a strong sense of family identity, despite the fact we all live very far away from each other and can only visit maybe once a year. Hard for me to say how much that sense of connection means to me and I know I have her in part to thank.

Executing strengths

Executers get things done.

For some mysterious reason, Executing types (Executioners?) rarely like taking StrengthsFinder. Or maybe I just don’t meet them. These strengths have only come up a handful of times so I know them the least. I also respect them enormously.

Executers: Does this sound like you?

One of our former Directors, Jenni, had Discipline as a strength. She loved To Do lists. Made them all the time, and then faithfully crossed items off the list as she completed them. We ribbed her about it but we also let her know how in awe we were of such organisational ability.

Executers are a definite essential to a project’s completion.

Executing strengths are like the complementary opposite to Strategic Thinkers. We ponder, they do. Incidentally, you might think doing is better, but I’ve seen plenty of botched jobs done by the Executer person who was so impatient to finish something they didn’t take enough time to think through the process. So we need each other.

Next time

More on developing your leadership style within your category of greatest strength.

A key point: the best leaders don’t try to be anybody else but exactly who they are. So stop thinking you need to be like Gandhi or Obama or Churchill to be a leader — you are one, you may just not know it. Yet.

What are your strengths?

Please post your strengths if you’ve taken the test and want to discuss them further. I find this stuff utterly fascinating and like nothing better than to hear about what people find easy to do and love doing.

For more info, check out Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow, which is what this article is based on, as well as the other articles about strengths and StrengthsFinder. Also check out Sam Radford’s Awaken blog where he’s been profiling different strengths.

Till next time.

Today I’m writing about something pretty specific: how to develop Ideation as a strength. If you don’t know about Strengthsfinder, it’s a fantastic personal development tool I’ve written about before.

Strengthsfinder has fundamentally changed how I live and work, helping me see what’s unique and wonderful about what I can do. In the past, I dismissed the very things the test identifies as my biggest gifts, and I see a lot of other people do that too, which means we work with a fraction of the enjoyment we could have if we do what we love doing — and are best at — every day.

My top 5 strengths

But just taking the test isn’t enough. It’s about figuring out how to continue develop your abilities day after day, and understanding how to work with other people’s talents.

So, today I’m talking about Ideation and how to develop it.

Strengthsfinder strength: Ideation

Ideation is about loving ideas and making connections between often very different ones.

For me, that’s expressed in loving to read, and in discussing philosophical or social issues. I love to look at what other people are doing and then see how I can apply that idea to my own life to make it better.

For example, with the eco lodge idea for Touchwood, I’m taking inspiration from sources ranging from Tribe Wanted, which is the island in Fiji where if you pay £200, you can volunteer for a week to help build the eco resort there, to Frontier House, where modern families go back in time to 1850s Montana to live as frontierspeople did.

Frontier House: modern day families go back in time

I’m pulling key concepts from those sources and reshaping them for Touchwood.

I grab many other ideas and, thanks to Ideation, it all sits in my head, comfortably connected and making perfect sense.

Now to the downside of Ideation.

Ideation: The drawbacks

The problem with easily being able to link disparate ideas is that most people don’t see your connections. They don’t understand what you’re talking about, and can be very skeptical when you present your ideas. Instead of the enthusiasm and praise you were expecting, you can get blank stares or even withering criticism.

I’ve had all of those experiences, and it was partly the skepticism from one or two people I faced early on with Touchwood that caused me to retreat from my bolder plans last year. I thought maybe the ideas were the problem. They weren’t; it was how I was expressing my ideas that was the problem.

How to make your ideas work

Strengthsfinder warns you of this gap between you and other people and what you need to do about it.

In Strengths-based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow, the sequel to Strengthsfinder 2.0, Tom Rath talks about how to lead with Ideation, saying:

Make things simple. All your ideas, possibilities, and tangents can be confusing to some people. You see the simplicity of the underlying principles; articulate that to others so that they can see it too.

The clearer things seem to people, the more certain they can be that you are doing what is right and makes sense. Help people make connections between what is and what can be.

You need to connect the dots of your ideas

Tip: Pick just one idea

One way to keep things easy to understand is to pick the one idea you want to focus on and exclude everything else.

This blog post is just such an example. I started out wanting to talk about other strengths, what’s going on with Touchwood, but realised that, while all those ideas are interconnected and clear in my head, it would be just too overwhelming to talk about them all here. So I tried to pick one idea: how to develop Ideation as a strength.

Tip 2: Use pictures

There’s a reason I have a photo in almost every single blog post I do. It helps you understand what I’m talking about right away. It’s faster and more enjoyable than reading a whole bunch of words, so if possible, spend the time to find a picture to illustrate what you’re talking about.

Bonus tool: Made to Stick

Finally, it’s what I think of as the Bible for ideas people: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Fail and Others Win. It’s a book designed to help ideas people get their message across.

Made to Stick -- an ideas person's Bible

I have it as an audio book and months on, I’m still listening to it and trying to learn everything it recommends and incorporate it into how I write about my ideas (thanks to Darcy Prince for telling me about it).

Made to Stick comes from two experts who spent a lot of time investigating why some ideas persist and become popular, like urban legends, while others disappear. It’s not as simple as only the good ideas survive and the bad ones go — urban legends prove that point. I mean, where’s the good idea in the man found in the bathroom on ice with his kidney missing? Or that Kentucky Friend Chicken accidentally used rats in its chicken buckets?

Instead, they identify that there are actually principles at work that tend to make one idea fail and another thrive.

Six principles of a good idea

I won’t go into too much detail, but in essence, the principles that you need to follow if you want your idea to have a maximum chance of being understood and embraced are:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Full chart available on Made to Stick website

One example they give of this is JFK’s one-sentence mission of “To send a man to the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.”

It’s simple, it was unexpected at the time in that it was considered highly ambitious, it was concrete in that you get it and it’s time-defined (end of the decade). It’s also emotional in appealing at that time to national pride over the space race with the Soviet Union, and to some extent it tells a story of a man going to the moon and back.

So I highly recommend investing in this book to help you with your ideas.

Putting my own advice into action

That’s enough from me for now. Earlier I waved Malcolm goodbye as he goes for 4 days to teach firemaking down in Aviemore, and I’ll be spending the time working on my own Ideation project: a presentation about the Touchwood eco lodge project.

I realised that even Malcolm needs me to explain my ideas more clearly, so this is a good opportunity to put the advice I’ve just given into action and really work hard at getting my ideas in top shape.

I’ll share that with you as soon as it’s ready, but now, breaktime for more Olympics!

An all-women StrengthsFinder session

This second group was women-only, and after the results from this evening, I’m definitely keen to develop more sessions.

I went to an all-women’s university, Bryn Mawr College, and and I learned there to value enormously what can happen when you get a group of curious, motivated women together. Somehow the barriers fall away, laughing begins, and ties get established even between people who have never met before, as was the case today.

We started at 2pm, a small cosy group of 5, gathered around the fire crackling and the display of munchies to keep us going for several hours. We each read aloud our top strength, then asked the person to say to what extent they felt that accurately described them. Then for those of us who knew each other at least somewhat, we could offer our own view on how they saw a particular strength being shown in a person.

So for example, one woman who I’ve only met a few times had Developer as her top strength. The ‘Developer’ strength is about seeing unique qualities in every single person, valuing them, and then to some extent ‘developing’ that strength in the person. I could completely see that in her, even with my limited contact, because throughout the discussion itself, she was drawn to asking each of us about our strengths, taking note and offering encouragement that made each of us somehow feel incredibly special, that we each had such gifts that she recognized and treasured.

Another woman had Discipline as her top talent. Her strength meant she is very organised, tidy, and great at meeting deadlines. She talked about making a To Do list for the week and then crossing each task out as it was completed. The rest of us were in awe. We half-seriously asked if she could help us all get organised. Of the 5 of us, she was the only one actually on time for the start of the discussion.

A third woman had Activator as her top strength, which again was no surprise to me. She has been staying with us for a few days and regularly looks around for things she can do, projects to tackle. An almost restless energy radiates from her and already she’s looking at how we could plant a garden, fix my bike, and draw some sketches for Touchwood.

We each provided some food and drink and I made sure to have plenty of cushions, good music (ranging from Thievery Corporation to South African Legends) on the iPod, and the fire always topped up. You could see the sea from the two windows on either side of the fire, and a few candles burning on the mantlepiece. A good ambiance makes all the difference.

The value of discussing your strengths with others

I think the biggest value in discussing strengths with other people is that they point out to you ways in which you show that particular strength. So often, we take for granted what comes easily, so my top theme of Ideation, which is about loving new ideas and their connections, would never seem like a ‘strength’ until it was pointed out to me that I never would have started Touchwood with Malcolm without it.

Same strengths, very different interpretation

Oddly, all five of us had Input in our top 5, but they each were described very differently. For two of us, Input was about collecting information in many ways for the benefit of others — one woman was reading a book about Asperger’s because she knew someone whose child had it.

For another, it was about methodically and thoroughly processing data and facts in order to make sound, objective decisions, whereas I definitely skim and skip around to find nuggets of useful information.

At one point the question of ‘What do we do with this?’ was raised, and I mentioned the action items they give you after each strength. So I consciously post websites I think other will find useful or interesting on Facebook as part of developing my Input theme and helping others.

But I don’t have the time/it’s a luxury

What about feeling that spending £12/$15 on some personal assessment tool is self-indulgent or something that you’ll do someday but not anytime soon because you’ve already got so much on your plate?

As one member put it, it’s about improving your self so you can help others (this was the Developer one, and her second theme was Individualization, which is also about recognising abilities in every person and helping them develop their unique gifts — her staff are lucky).

We spend so much time criticizing ourselves for not doing more or better — why not spend that time looking at what we do well and making the most of it?

Overcoming the challenges to doing more sessions

So all in all, I definitely want to do more of these. The energy, laughter and sense of connectedness were just too good to not do more.

The main challenge is getting people to try it. I think a lot of people, dare I say especially British folks, are often pretty wary of things that smack of American self-help. They fear it’ll be a lot of navel-gazing and smarmy self-congratulation.

Others are nervous about talking about something that feels highly personal, leery of revealing things to people they don’t know — or perhaps worse, do know.

So I’ll need some help figuring out how it could work. I’d really like this to be a part of what we offer at Touchwood, particularly combining it with outdoor or craft activities so it’s all kept fun and easy-going.

The cover of the book, StrengthsFinder 2.0

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.