This is From The Balance Beam

[TheBalanceBeam] - Leveraging Your Brilliance

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THE BALANCE BEAM
Ideas and Inspiration for Creating a Life that Works
Vol. 2 No. 22, November 6, 2000
Published by Success Builders, Inc.
http://www.SuccessBuildersInc.com
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"He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened."
Lao-tzu
In this issue: LEVERAGING YOUR BRILLIANCE
====================================================================== Dear Friends:
What are you brilliant at? Not a question we ask ourselves every day, I know. But just think about how important the answer is to knowing how and where to focus your energies in life. In this issue of The Balance Beam, we take a look at ways of identifying and leveraging the things that make you brilliant.

If you want to check out earlier editions of The Balance Beam that you may have missed, you can easily retrieve them by clicking on http://www.successbuildersinc.com/newsletter.html and going to the Archives section. If you are not yet a regular subscriber to The Balance Beam, you can also enter your subscription information at this location.
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Today's Topic: LEVERAGING YOUR BRILLIANCE

I love watching people in airports. Although I always travel armed with books to read and work to get done, I have to admit that more often than not, I pass the time waiting for my next plane by simply noticing the people around me. I wonder what their lives are like, what they care passionately about, and what they're brilliant at.

Webster defines brilliance as, "the quality or state of being striking or distinctive." As I look around the airport that I'm in today, I wonder about the brilliant sides of the people passing by. There's a stunning woman in a very trendy, avant-garde outfit sitting in the gate area. She has a brilliant sense of style, and I imagine her being a gifted decorator or fashion designer. As I walk by the Starbuck's stand, I notice a young woman in the midst of what appears to be a group of friends having coffee. She is laughing and smiling and looking very much at ease with herself and the situation. My hunch is that she's brilliant at relationships, and making others feel comfortable.

If I were to expand on Webster's definition, I might describe brilliance as being those natural gifts or abilities that we are born with; the things that we do effortlessly and well, that enable us to shine. Most of us take our brilliance for granted, because it's simply a part of who we are. Take my client Carol, for instance. If you were to follow her around for a day, you might think she was a professional organizer. Everything in Carol's world is in order, and she has incredible systems in place for getting things done. And yet, if you were to ask Carol what she's brilliant at, she would be unlikely to even mention her organizational skills. She doesn't think about being well organized. It's simply who she is.

Brilliance shows up in many ways in the workplace. Some people are brilliant communicators. They have a knack for knowing what to say and how to say it. Some folks are brilliant problem solvers. Give them a challenge or a sticky situation with no easy answers and they'll come up with an innovative way to get from point A to point B. Still others are good with detail. They're able to examine, edit, crosscheck and verify information to reveal even the tiniest flaws and things that might otherwise fall through the cracks. In my world, these people are worth their weight in gold because detail is not something I'm brilliant at.

So here we are walking around in a sea of brilliant people in the workplace, and yet sometimes we don't feel it. Why? Because it's not what gets emphasized in many business environments. This is what happens instead: Once or twice a year, we go through the dreaded performance appraisal process. You know - the one that has people rolling their eyeballs and saying,"Oh, it's time for THAT again..."

In the typical performance appraisal meeting the boss spends maybe ten minutes talking about your strengths, or what you are brilliant at, in a way that often feels very patronizing and obligatory. When he really gets charged up is when it's time to move the conversation on to your proverbial "areas for improvement," which is where the bulk of the conversation is spent. The message you get is to spend your time and energy focusing on your areas for improvement, (a.k.a. your weaknesses, vulnerabilities and the things you'll probably never be great at). So guess what happens? As you focus on your areas for improvement, they get a little stronger, but not much, because they don't reflect your natural gifts. And your brilliance? Just like a piece of silver that doesn't get shined, it loses its luster. Pretty soon you find yourself walking around looking very mediocre at most of the things you do.

I call this the "swimming upstream" phenomenon, and it gets played out every day in organizations as people are mismatched to jobs that don't play to their brilliance. It seems to me that rather than trying to mold everyone into some sort of well-rounded jack-of-all-trades, we should be focused on helping people identify and leverage what they are brilliant at. Not only does this allow people to add more value; it also keeps them a heck of a lot happier, which is the name of the game in a retention-challenged business arena.

So how do you go about figuring out what it is that you're brilliant at? Here are some questions to explore to help shed light on where you shine:

1. What do you do that is natural, easy and effortless?

2. What activities put you into "the flow", that place where you get energized and lose track of time and space?

3. What do you really enjoy doing and feel passionately about?

4. What do other people tell you that you're great at?

5. How would you complete this sentence: "I love it when I know my day will include______________."

Spend time polishing and leveraging your brilliance. It will enable you, your team and your organization to shine.
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Words to live by:
"Shine on, you crazy diamond."
- Procol Harum