There is something about my upbringing in public education that made me feel like I needed to be well-rounded. Some skills came easy. Others took more concerted effort. Rather than spend time developing my strengths, I often felt like I need to spend all of my spare energy shoring up my weaknesses. A well-leveled report card was always the goal. If something was falling, that’s where my focus went. This, of course, was the explicit intention of public education. The goal was to create liberally educated, versatile adults, ready to plug into the economy wherever.

Early in my career, I attended a corporate training workshop based on the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths (2001). In the workshop, I took the StrengthsFinder assessment that helped me identify my top five strength themes. While this was more than 15 years ago, I distinctly remember thinking that this approach was drastically different from what I had experienced thus far.

Rather than put my energy toward fixing my weaknesses, I can devote my time to develop areas that are already strong. The idea is that there are diminishing returns for investing in weaknesses. It’s fine to get to a place where your weakness won’t derail your career, but it’s unlikely to develop into a strength or competitive advantage. Conversely, developing strengths can have a significant impact. Pouring more into what is already strong, can make it into something world-class, and that’s pretty exciting. After all, these are already skills that I enjoy, so why wouldn’t I want to spend more time working on them?

I’m a bit of a leadership assessment junkie. StrengthsFinder is only one of dozens of assessments I’ve taken over the years to help me understand myself. Self-knowledge doesn’t always come easy. I’ve written a blog article specifically about some of the self-awareness lessons I’ve heard and how they affect my leadership. Every tool out there is unique. StrenthsFinder is one of my favorites. I found the insight freeing and directionally encouraging. I took my initial StrengthsFinder assessment more than 15 years ago, then I took StrengthsFinder 2.0 about three years ago. The results were very similar, even though I had grown significantly in my career over that time period.

I’ll share my Top Five Strength Themes with you. My purpose in sharing them is not just so you can get to know me, but so I can model for you how I’ve used this insight to focus my professional development.

1. Strategic: People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Strategic is my number one strength. Therefore, I should be awesome at it. The funny thing is, “strategy” is a really loaded term in organizational leadership. It generally conjures something very broad, grandiose, formulaic, and formal, and I often don’t go there. It’s like you need to come down from the mountain top, and proclaim to your team in Charlton Heston’s voice, “I have a strategy…” I personally prefer to actually “be strategic” vs. crafting formal strategies. The definition above fits me. I use my experience, insight, and knowledge to navigate challenging and complex situations. It’s all about finding the best pathway through the mess to get to the other side. I develop my strength by throwing myself into ever-increasingly challenging and complex situations. It’s fun, and it makes me better.

2. Competition: People strong in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.

I like to win. I find that winning is a strong motivator for me, and conversely, losing is a demotivator. Being a technology leader, it’s important to me to connect the dots between technology decisions and what puts my company in a position to win. I truly believe that technology is a competitive advantage for business, and that drives me to innovate and execute. The way I develop that strength is to position myself and my team as a strong partner to the business. It’s our collective striving that makes us win in the marketplace. Simply being an internal service provider and cost center doesn’t satisfy that drive.

3. Futuristic: People strong in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

More than just a technology leader, I consider myself to be a technologist. It comes natural to me to stay current on technology trends and research what’s new in emerging and disruptive technologies. I develop this strength by reading and listening to others that have clear visions of the future. I challenge myself to decipher the difference between hype and reality. I also develop by working on my own communication abilities to share my insights with my co-workers.

4. Achiever: People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

I like to get things done. If perfect is standing in the way of done, I squarely prefer good enough. One of the ways I support my team is to remove roadblocks preventing goal completion. Whether that is distractions, priority calls, or anything else, I’ll do whatever I can to help my teams succeed. The feeling of accomplishment drives me and gives me energy to tackle the next thing. I also am always willing to do the development work necessary to prepare myself for the next level of my career. You can read all about that in my Rules for Advancement series.

5. Maximizer: People strong in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.

Even though this is fifth on the list, it may be the strength that I get the most satisfaction from exercising. My leadership career has been a series of taking distressed teams through a transformation from dysfunction to health and maturity. I’m not one to be discouraged by a failing team. I only see potential, and lots of it. I like raising up leaders from within a group and challenging the team to do the work necessary to realize a new identity.

Those are my top five strengths. One closing observation is that these strengths don’t work independently, but together. I see myself as Maximizing my team to work the Strategy that’s been developed to Achieve the Futuristic vision that results in a Competitive advantage. The best part is that it’s fun. By doing this, I’m leveraging what comes natural to me, and not grinding away, compensating for my numerous weaknesses. I hope you found this exercise helpful. Please, take my cue and figure out what your own development plan looks like, leveraging your unique mix of strengths.