An article by Noelle McCall, CIC, CRM, CCIP, ACRA, CISR

Happy New Year!

Do you have a goal to become a better version of yourself in the new year?

Are you looking to enhance your career by choosing a role that allows you to use your strengths and do your best work?

Would you like to turn work time into fun time?

The start of a new year is a wonderful time to decide to become the best version of yourself! 

Not sure where to start?

Here are the steps I used to find what I wanted to do in my career, discover my strengths, reduce the impact of my weaknesses, pursue a role that uses my strengths to fuel my success, and turn my work time into fun time. 

⭐ Step One - Get Ready

• Find a quiet place to focus.
• Get something to write with.
• Note - it may take a few hours in one day or some time here and there over a few days to walk through this process.
• I found it helpful to start with as much as I could think of the first day and then come back to it the next day after my brain had time to mull things over.

⭐ Step Two - Identify Your Strengths

• Write down answers for these questions:
  • When do you feel at your best?
  • What causes are you passionate about?
  • What skills do others praise you for?
  • What sort of work gives you energy as opposed to draining you?
  • What sort of tasks are fun to you?
• Consider your past successes.
  • What skills helped you to reach your goals?
  • What sort of tasks do you tend to lose track of time while doing?
• Answering these questions will help you to identify your strengths.
• Be honest with yourself. It does not help to write down strengths you wish you had.
• Learn more about your strengths.

📖 My Story - What I Did to Identify My Strengths

I used the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham to help me quickly identify some of my top five strengths, which are: Achiever, Ideation, Deliberative, Intellection, and Learner.
The book is available on Amazon at Now, Discover Your Strengths: The revolutionary... by Gallup (amazon.com).

If you buy the book new, you will get a code to take the Strengths Finder test which will help you identify your top five strengths within minutes. The test was helpful, but just by reading each page (one page for each strength) I could easily tell which ones resonated with me, because it sounded like they were describing me.

Near the end of the book there is also a section on how to manage a person with each strength. I have shared this information with my managers over the years to help them understand my strengths and my preferred management style.

⭐ Step Three - Identify Your Weaknesses.

• Consider the following.
  • No one is good at everything.
    • Introverts tend to struggle with public speaking skills and networking.
    • Detail-oriented people (like me) may find it more difficult to summarize information in simple and concise ways.
  • Do some soul-searching and be honest with yourself.
    • What are some tasks that you:
      • dread
      • put off for another day
      • or try to avoid altogether
      • because they drain your energy?
  • Look back at your failures and consider what went wrong.
  • Being honest with yourself makes it easier to identify your weaknesses.
  • Write down your weaknesses.
  • Understand how your weaknesses impact you now.

⭐ Step Four - Mitigate Your Weaknesses

• Find ways to mitigate your weaknesses.
• If you are weak in a certain area, you can:
  • partner with someone else who excels in that area or delegate some tasks to someone who does it better
    • Tip - do not forget to thank them for their help.
    • Tip - this not only allows you to focus your energy where you are strong, but it also gives other people opportunities to shine.
  • learn more about the area to get better at it so that it is no longer a hindrance to your work
    • Tip - don't focus too much energy on it, as studies have shown people never get from poor to great when it comes to their weaknesses.

⭐ Step Five - Consider How You Can Use Your Strengths

• Consider these things:
  • Spend some time thinking about what you would like to do.
  • Consider what you need to do to change your current role or get a new job.
  • Consider who can help you get where you want to be.
  • What new career roles or changes to your current role may allow you to leverage your strengths?
    • For this part, it was helpful to me to brainstorm and write down all positions and types of work that I thought may be ideal or that I may be interested in.
  • Research each option to find out what the requirements for the role are and if it may be a good fit for you.

📖 My Story - How I Discovered My Preferred Role

When I went through the brainstorming process, one recurring thought for me was the word “Consultant.” I wanted to be the one my clients could turn to for help and advice on the insurance and risk-related provisions in their contracts. (Obligatory disclaimer - I do not provide legal advice as I am not a lawyer.) If I do not know the answer, then I will find the answer and get back to them. I also love reviewing contracts, so the preferred role that I wrote down was Contract Review Consultant.

When I was job searching, I found that my preferred position had never been created before. I decided to move to a larger insurance broker and specialize in casualty insurance, which allowed me to spend more time providing contract reviews to my clients and brought me one step closer to my career goal.

Fast forward a few years when preparation met opportunity. My company needed a full-time contract review consultant when the one lady who had been assisting with the reviews at my company retired. She knew me and referred me for the job. I was excited about the opportunity. I pitched the idea to upper management to create a national contract review practice group, as no other broker had one and we could use it to win new business and keep current clients happy. They agreed. I then created and led my new practice group for several years with remarkable success before doing the same for another large broker.

Today I have a new role that plays to my strengths. I share what I have learned over the years with insurance, risk management, and legal professionals to help them to simplify and streamline their review process and reduce their client’s contractual risk. I do this by providing carefully crafted contract review tools, insurance requirement templates, training, and coaching sessions. I also provide contract review consulting for mid-sized and larger companies who need help with reviews of insurance and risk-related provisions in their contracts. Check out Contract Risk Academy for more information at https://www.contractriskacademy.com.

⭐ Step Six - Pursue Your Goals

• Be brave. Have the courage to pursue your career goals.
• Use your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses to achieve success and have fun while you work.
• Don't give in to imposter syndrome. Be confident in your abilities.
• Important Tip! - Do not pass up on a job opportunity if you do not meet 100% of the job requirements. Studies have shown women are more likely to do this than men.

Summary

By following these steps, you can use your strengths to become the best version of yourself, achieve success, and turn your work time into fun time.