A few days ago, one of my Strengths coachees shared a great news – she landed her dream job!!! What’s amazing is this was only after some months of strengths coaching, her own personal discoveries and overall development. Indeed, a lot you can do, achieve and accomplish when you start to understand your strengths and hone them. What was the dream job? Hint: Charlie and Willy Wonka would be envious.
This is the Company she has been eyeing and the position she was educationally prepared for, where she sees her purpose and where she can best utilize her strengths. A dream job indeed! Oh, there’s a bonus, the boss is also great and a good personality match!
I’m just super happy with this news that I am sharing this with all of you. So thankful to be given the chance to help wearing my strengths coach hat. In the process, I learned from her as well. Note, though, that I have her go signal to write this article about her.
How did Strengths Coaching help her land her Dream Job?
Understanding her Gallup strengths allowed her to understand why she is thinking the way she does and how this influences her behavior and subsequent expectations of the people around her. Further, this allowed her to have an insight on why people around her behave in they way that they do in response. And I mean, everyone, including personal relationships.
That’s a great thing about knowing your strengths, because you are one holistic being, it helps pave the way for you to understand yourself and improve all aspects of your life – career, relationships, socials and every other part of who you are.
Individual’s Part
Knowing your strengths is one crucial part, but it is not the only important component.
My coachee, who recently landed her dream job, for example, has done her part in the coaching process. She read her results, took notes, thought about answers to coaching questions conscientiously and most importantly, bravely, looked her blind spots straight in the eye and did something about them. She also listened to other people’s thoughts and considered these inputs as she improved herself.
Of course, it is also noteworthy to share that she is a very fast learner. And by this, I mean learning from and doing something about it. Moving from understanding to action at great speed. Truly action oriented and the actions and changes she made, she made sure were sustainable. Although, as you all know, change is sometimes painful or at the very least difficult, she kept on going. This is among the many things that I admire in her. Learn fast, take action, produce results. Now, more than ever, this is something that she does almost automatically, as second nature to her. That’s using God given talents to action for her own benefit and those around her.
What have I learned from her?
Her faith in God is unwavering. And this is not only her personal relationship with God. She also ensures to evangelize His words. Not so much by preaching (at least in our conversations) but by living His word and sharing what God has been doing for her – the graces, the blessings, even the challenges which were there to teach her life lessons.
I, too, have strong faith in God. And it is great to be able to speak with someone about Him. It adds, as I tell her, glitter, to everything I know already and she adds more to it each time. While she says that I am a blessing to her, in reality, each time we speak, I feel blessed as well.
Now, with faith in God is true humility. And true humility is easier said than done. But seeing how she moved with humility as part of her learnings and self development and how humility was part of the process of her getting into her dream job, is something that I would always keep in mind, heart and something that I would remind myself to exercise on a day-to-day basis.