Discover and Use Your Strengths
Published Monday, December 14, 2020
Staff Feature: Amanda Bjorn, Executive Vice President, People, Culture, Strategy, introduced the ‘Me to We to All’ philosophy to Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. One of the key approaches to this strategy is coaching. “Coaching focuses on transformation toward a ‘better me’, by helping individuals to determine their strengths and who they are,” explains Amanda. “As a coach, I am most passionate about deep, personal self-discovery work. Taking responsibility for your life, being open to hard truths, and moving forward to help you achieve what you really want. By helping our staff to be their best, we will help our teams, organization and patients to do the same.”
Discover and Use Your Strengths
By Caitlund Davidson, Prevention and Screening Services
Do you know what your personal strengths are?
Personal strengths are the things you are naturally good at. There several ways to identify your strengths including self-reflection, asking the people in your life that know you best, and online assessments. Once you know what your strengths are, you can use them to improve not only yourself, but also the people around you.
Gaining a better understanding of yourself and your strengths helps you recognize your value and takes away potential feelings of uncertainty. This shapes how we present ourselves and how we shape the environment around us. Opening yourself up to self-exploration and identifying your strengths and values will help you to make decisions that bring out the best in you.
Benefits to discovering your personal strengths:
- Gives you a sense of direction: Do what you love and the day flies by! Knowing your strengths can guide you in finding a new job or hobby.
- Improves performance: Learning what strengths you have will give you clarity on what might be holding you back from reaching your full potential.
- Helps you to achieve your goals: To reach your goals, you can develop a course of action that takes advantage of your strengths. When you’re doing what comes naturally to you, you may find it easier to complete tasks and stay motivated.
- Builds self-confidence: Using your strengths, no matter what they are, will give you a boost of confidence and help you to recognize how valuable you are.
- Enhances relationships: Realizing your personal strengths can help you to recognize strengths in others. It can also help you to reduce conflicts and explain ideas and emotions. By using your strengths to help someone, they get to know you better and trust you more.
- Buffers stress: Identifying strengths help you to develop coping mechanisms to handle stress. Knowing that you are good at a specific task because it utilizes your strengths can help you prepare in advance and mitigate stress.
- Encourages growth: Knowing what you excel at can help you to branch out, aim higher than before, and achieve more.
- Generates happiness: When you feel good about yourself, you can accomplish anything. Focus on your strengths, don’t dwell on things that you don’t do well.
*All content from this article can be found in our Hospital’s 2020 Staff Health and Wellness Calendar. To date, the Calendar has featured over 300 staff members from all areas and disciplines of our Hospital, capturing the many ways they choose to stay healthy.