The beginning of the year is a time when many people resolve to improve themselves or their lives in some meaningful way. Frequently, these resolutions spill into our work lives—whether we commit to learn a new skill, to build new relationships, or to achieve better work-life balance. Of course, many of us abandon our goals by February. One reason for this is that many personal development exercises and programs focus on improving our weaknesses, which can be difficult to acknowledge, face, and change. Another line of thinking suggests that focusing on building our strengths offers the best chances of sticking with our goals and realizing our full potential.
Below, I describe what organizational research says about strengths, and what you can do to develop them and thrive at work this year.
What are strengths?
When it comes to strengths, many of us think about our skills and abilities. While knowledge and skills are certainly important for getting things done at work, management and psychology research points to another set of strengths that play an important role in our happiness and success at work: strengths of character. A widely studied framework classifies 24 character strengths under six universal virtues:
• Wisdom is comprised of cognitive strengths that reflect the acquisition of knowledge (for example: creativity, curiosity, love of learning)
• Courage consists of emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition (for example: honesty, bravery, authenticity)
Humanity is made up of interpersonal strengths that involve cultivating relationships (for example: kindness, love, emotional intelligence)
• Justice reflects civic strengths that underlie healthy community life (for example: leadership, teamwork, fairness)
• Temperance entails strengths that guard against excess (for example: modesty, forgiveness, self- regulation)
• Transcendence involves strengths that provide meaning and a sense of connection to the larger world (for example: hope, gratitude)
Several studies demonstrate the benefits of developing these strengths. Doing so can improve your mood, enhance your health and well-being, and increase your satisfaction with work and life. People who build their strengths also perform their jobs at higher levels and engage in fewer counterproductive behaviors at work.
The key to these effects is that cultivating our strengths provides us with a greater sense of meaning at work. This creates a virtuous cycle: When we understand how our work contributes to our life’s meaning, we’re more likely to use and benefit from our strengths, which deepens our engagement and performance at work. And when we’re engaged, we’re more energized, absorbed in, and dedicated to our work. As a result, we’re more likely to stick with our goals and persist when we face setbacks.
How to build and leverage strengths
Fortunately, character strengths like gratitude and hope can be increased through simple exercises. Some of my research, for instance, shows that keeping a gratitude journal can improve our self-control and make us less of a jerk at work. But perhaps the most versatile exercise people can use to leverage their strengths is job crafting. Job crafting involves changing the nature and boundaries of your work so that it better matches your interests, makes better use of your strengths, and provides developmental opportunities. The idea is to think of your job in a new way—as a flexible set of tasks and interactions that can be tailored to your values, passions, and strengths.
A review of research found that job crafting exercises and workshops make employees more engaged and helpful at work. What’s more, these activities have been shown to result in higher productivity among healthcare professionals. Specifically, job crafting increased output by 14.1% and reduced labor costs by 12.4%. For a healthcare worker who earns $50,000 per year, job crafting increased their output on average by $9,400. This research also shows that the benefits of job crafting are even greater when people form plans that include their personal and organizational objectives.
So, if you want to start the new year at work on the right foot, don’t hone your weaknesses to match your job. Craft your job to match your strengths.
Shannon G. Taylor, Ph.D. is Director of Research and Learning for the Mental Hygiene Project and a professor of Management at the University of Central Florida, where he teaches and researches leadership and workplace culture. Follow him on LinkedIn or learn more at www.mentalhygieneproject.com.
