If you have already done the Past Jobs Exercise you might have a tendency to say “isn’t this one kind of similar?”
Outside looking in, I could see how you may think that, but what I have found is that with subtle differences come drastically different results.
You are not the equivalent of your past jobs combined. This exercise allows you to account for everything else that you like, have grown knowledgable of, and have grown awesome at! Regardless of whether it’s from a job or not.
Getting Started
Alright! All you have to do here is just dump out all of your skills, knowledge and passions onto a page. That’s it for the first step.
So that you don’t get stuck, I want to give you a couple tips:
Don’t qualify! Really! If you think it just get it onto the page without filtering. This part is just a brain dump.
Don’t worry about perfect grammar, penmanship, sentences or anything else! Just get it onto the page!
Also Skills, Knowledge and Passions sometimes can mislead people too. Instead just think about the average person rule…
Skills: Stuff You’ve Gotten Good At
What have I become better than the average person at? (notice I didn’t say great or amazing or the best in the world. I just said a little better than the average person) It’s more important to go for quantity over quality at this point in the process.
Knowledge: Stuff You Know About
What are the things you know about. You might have a thing for classic cars, maybe you show people how to use excel at work all the time OR maybe know how to train dogs. Whatever it is put it down
Passions: Stuff You Like A Lot
What do you like to do? How do you spend your time? What are the things you love to participate in or lead! Like the others get them on the sheet!
The Strengths Grid
On this grid you are going to take all the ideas you generated in the first half of the exercise and place them in one of four spaces.
After you complete this exercise review the grid. Pay special attention to the top right category as these are likely your strengths OR they give you clues to your strengths. See if they can be distilled down any further. Try defining specifically the things you have in that category. What do you mean when you say it? Also use the root cause exercise (5 Whys) that you learned in Past Jobs Exercise to get down to the core.
Summary of Actions to Take:
- List out all your skills, knowledge and passions.
- Place these on the grid in each category they fit in (if in doubt simply go with your gut feeling).
- Review those in the upper right category.
- Drill down into those using the “5 Whys” to get to the root of your strengths.