"Know the enemy and know yourself" - Sun Tzu
Along the way you’ve probably collected a folder full of assessment results that you've taken over the years. I have. In some cases, you found them helpful and reaffirming while in other instances, maybe the results were not what you wanted to hear. Yet, within these tools lie endless opportunities for growth and achievement.
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Are you ready to put these assessments to work toward becoming irresistible and ultimately, financially invincible? Start by answering the following questions about your completed assessments:
What did you learn from them?
How are you using what you discovered?
Have they helped you relate better to others?
In what areas have they helped others understand you better?
How have they helped you become a better version of yourself?
In what ways might they help you improve your performance?
Assessments Enhance Communication Assessments are great tools to help develop a common language for understanding your natural tendencies and talents, and those of others around you. They help you work better with others as you discover individual work styles, strengths and weaknesses. And of great signficance, they help us and others with whom we interact find the unknown aspects of each other that can be positively illuminating. Together, such insights serve to enhance strategic planning at both the personal and organizational levels. Quite often leadership assessments and 360s enhance annual reviews since managers and associates not only understand one another better, but now share terminology and agreement for performance improvement. Assessments can also help increase team cohesiveness and engagement and are ideal launching points for crucial conversations and ongoing communication. Assessments Enhance Reflection. Let’s be clear. I’m a huge fan of assessments and use them with my clients and in consultations and coaching, but I also caution those who partake in them not to use them as labels or excuses. Instead, they lay a beautiful framework for your preferences and help you identify areas in which you naturally thrive. But low preferences are not “no” preferences. Rather, these invite deeper reflection. You may discover that non-preferentially indicated strengths rise up in more challenging situations. It's not an either or, it's more of an if and when. As you further self-reflect on your results, you may find that there are areas that do need improvement. Remember, it's not an exercise in turning your weaknesses into strengths but rather, searching for ways to shore up your strengths and use them to your and others' advantage.
Assessments Enhance Learning. Assessment results should never be used to stigmatize, to place people in "boxes", or as excuses for not taking on challenges. While assessments will help you cultivate an understanding of your most powerful abilities, they are not labels of who you are or what you can or cannot be. Even the designers and developers of various strengths, interests and personality preference tools emphasize that they are not labels but rather, opportunities for learning and growth. For example, with the Clifton StrengthsFinder, if you have the theme of “Achiever”, does that mean that you are pressed to prove that you can continually achieve while others’ who don’t have this theme cannot? What about “Steadiness” ranking high for you in your DISC profile? Does that indicate you're too soft for effective leadership? Or does your MBTI high “Extrovert” preference excuse the fact that you may tend to interrupt others? Not at all. These results enhance your learning of your natural preferences, including your strengths. The learning journey has just begun. Utilizing well designed assessments, and being helped to decode them by competent interpreters, is one of the most intelligent steps you can take to make yourself aware of where you stand, and the path forward to greater effectiveness. Assessments Enhance Irresistibility. Assessments can unearth an endless array of opportunities and shine a spotlight on attributes that lend to your becoming irresistible to employers, clients and colleagues. If you explore them sufficiently, they will even help you be more attractive in personal relationships. While they are excellent tools for understanding your natural styles and preferences, they also open your mind to greater possibilities. Just look at where you shine. They don’t preclude you from tapping into your “lesser” strengths, but rather help you understand the "leading" ones that you may choose to build on in your professional and personal lives. Of course you don't need an assessment to help you become irresistible, but they are powerful tools to help you get the creative genius flowing and accelerate the pace to getting there. Think of them as an opportunity to learn how you naturally interact with the world, and how you can find a common language of expression. But never look at these results as tags. Look at your results as a launching point for learning and personal growth. As my dear colleague and expert in assessments, Dr. Al Raffetto suggests, "We look for how and where you are very, very good and, if you choose, how you can be even better."
What incredible you remains hidden, waiting to be revealed through the lens of assessments? How might such insights help make your life more of an adventure, help you become irresistible, and enrich your life? Where will you go from here?
You and I are a far place from where we can be.
Are you interested in increasing your self-awareness? Let me know and we can help you use assessments to explore the opportunities that are in front of you. My mission is to help you become irresistible and financially invincible. Together, through intentional and achievable steps, we can make your future brighter than your today, build your wealth and give you the freedom you deserve, in your business and life. Today is your day. Let’s get started. Contact me here.