How Often Do You Use Your Strengths During the Workday?
Management consultants remind us that higher job satisfaction is commonly a function of well-known ingredients: high task diversity, a positive workplace climate, consistent recognition for good work, the flexibility to create a reasonable work-life balance, opportunities for advancement, highly connected relationships with colleagues, and competitive compensation.
One other factor that research has proven to be critically important to job satisfaction is the match between skills and job roles and responsibilities.
When the roles team members play are aligned with their talents and skills, job satisfaction becomes amplified. But is that what is really at work?
We can make better sense of this relationship by turning to the ideas underlying the work on human well-being and what it means to flourish.
As it turns out, one of the most important findings after several decades of research on positive psychology is the criticality of using strengths throughout the day.
The more often leaders and team members get the chance to apply their character and competency strengths to tasks throughout the day, the higher their job satisfaction.
Leaders and team members can take an active role in their own well-being and satisfaction by seeking opportunities to apply their strengths throughout each day.
Good leaders are thoughtful about offering assignments and projects that play to the strengths of team members, while team members can be assertive to raise their hands for assignments that utilize their skills, talents, and core character assets.
In the words of preeminent positive psychologist Martin Seligman, who spent a lifetime studying the influence of core strengths and optimism on personal satisfaction, “The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.”
That’s what it means to “flourish” as a leader, team member, and person. Satisfaction in the job and everywhere else depends on applying our strengths to tasks.
What new opportunities exist today for you to apply your signature talents? The more often you get the chance to do what you do best, the more satisfaction with your work and personal life you will realize.
It’s time to take charge and to flourish.
This is a strong reminder that flourishing starts with how we choose to engage each day. We’ve found that when people align their tasks with energy-rich windows, strengths surface more naturally. Appreciate the clarity in these notes - they cut through the noise.
Matching skills & responsibilities is a real problem in my experience. Msny in positions lack ability and aptitude. Also, what if your leadership is willfully ignorant to these factors of job satisfaction and blame lack of retention on their inability to provide better compensation? How can employees educate leadership if they are in a culture of denial and avoidance? This is of great concern in my community because our largest employer is our County government! This lack of staff retention is unfortunately not the only major negative affecting quality of life or overall dysfunction here. It is our culture that is the source of our dysfunction. Leadership cannot guide us to better outcomes when they aren't even facing facts of the current issues needing to be addressed. How can we find strength in a culture of prevailing weakness? With an identity of weakness? Positive Psychology research calls out power of utilizing strengths as you point out, but what are teams to do when lacking vital strengths and lacking leadership? Another topic to explore is the dynamic of team members who out perform their supervisors or company leadership and work on a dominating culture where they are viewed as a threat instead of an asset. I agree with the points in this article but reality isn't always in-line with logic or prudent behavior. The aim of Admired Leadership is changing behavior, but how can this occur if you don't have others buying in? We need collaboration to achieve goals. Individual strengths can only get us so far. Any advise is appreciated.