6 Leverage the Strengths You Already Have

Let’s say you sit down to think about your development. You do some self-discovery and identify 3 things you are good at and 3 things you’re not so great at. What do you do next? If you’re like many people, you start focusing on the not-so-great items in the hopes of improving them.

Ahhh, no, don’t do that! I mean, yeah, you can do that. But why choose to start on the negative? I want to ask you to consider an alternative.

What if you took the same amount of effort and dedication it would take to improve a skill and instead used it to find ways to apply the skills you are already good at in new ways? In this book, I will encourage you to build new skills, but not before you learn to leverage what you already have. As discussed when talking about imposter syndrome, there’s a very good chance you already have every skill you need to get your people analytics career started or advancing further. So, before you make a “development plan,” consider making a “strengths-based plan” to get you started with the things you are already strong in.

If you don’t already have a lot of data skills, double down on the all ways that you can leverage and apply people analytics even if you are not the one doing the analytics (see more in Step 2). If you’ve got some experience with analytics, put some thought into how you can apply either the breadth or depth of your technical skills (see more in Step 3).