strengths improve relationships
Understanding yourself is where it begins. It wasn’t until I understood that everything starts and ends with me that I was able to truly improve my relationships with others. In doing so, I had to understand my strengths and my weaknesses as a person. Understanding my strengths helps me know what makes me “tick” whether this is within a team in the workplace, in relationships, in family settings, or with friends. Additionally, having a sense of others’ strengths helps me play to the best of who they are by tapping into what gives them the most enthusiasm about life.
This is called “strength spotting” and is a valuable tool in strengthening all types of relationships. I first began to understand strengths when I began working with a coach myself. During this time in my life, I was feeling high levels of stress and my relationships were suffering. One of the first activities we completed together in our coaching sessions was taking the VIA Character Strengths Survey. As we reviewed the results together, I learned more about who I am as a person and found that the character strengths I hold apply to how I interact with the world and have done so since I was a child.
These strengths helped me identify my cultural fit working in a team in the office and that I need to use my top strengths of Humor, Perspective, and Gratitude to support my team and feel engaged in my work. I also use these strengths in my relationship. I love when my husband and I watch comedy movies together on a Friday night or go on a date to a comedy show because of my top strength of Humor. It helps me in my family, and I often find I am able to resolve conflict more effectively with my parents easing tension with levity and perspective. Lastly in my friendships, expressing gratitude unexpectedly and genuinely has helped me strengthen our bonds making others in my life feel appreciated and valued.
What has helped even further is strength spotting in others. My husband took his strengths survey to learn that Judgement and Creativity are his top strengths. Knowing this, I understand I must use my strength of Gratitude to appreciate and play to his top strengths. We went to a Paint Night together on a date years ago, and I teased him about his painting as he was in flow and feeling so much joy in the moment. He is often expressing his creativity in ways I wasn’t even noticing before like creating new recipes to cook for dinner or finding alternate solutions to problems that often involve creating an invention. Every time I look at him after one of these projects, he is beaming with a smile so proud of what he created. I realize I need to celebrate with him in his creativity in these moments because this is what makes life a little sweeter.
In my graduate program, a professor assigned our class to take a strengths survey and when we began working in teams, I was able to improve my interpersonal skills by identifying the strengths I saw in others. We can also identify these strengths in the companies we work with by identifying key character strengths the company embodies in their culture, values, and mission. In doing so, we may better align ourselves to choose work environments that we can truly thrive and shine in.
When we truly know our innate strengths in ourselves and in others, we can capitalize on them together as a shared collective, which only makes us stronger together.
