Leadership challenge: Knowing our USPs

Identifying our own “unique zone of genius”

Do you see your own value?

That special something that you add to your working environment comprises:

🔸 the talents that come naturally to you

🔸 who you are as a person

🔸 your background and context

🔸 your skills

🔸 your experience

I’ve had the privilege of working in coaching partnership with some exceptionally talented individuals during the last few years.

And I notice a commonly occurring theme amongst them: low awareness of their own value, or ‘unique selling points’ (USPs).

Whether the client is a Senior Leader in an organization, a skilled professional or a small business owner, this issue can become apparent.

 

Why is knowing our USPs important?

Well, clients come to me when they want to make more impact in their working lives.

Perhaps their HR / Learning & Development team has introduced them to me, to help them develop and progress.

Or they have come directly to me themselves. It doesn’t matter which.

People ask for my help to change roles (either after redundancy of because they want to pivot their career), when feeling ‘not good enough’ or undeserving of their role, or when they’re feeling stressed, or underconfident or depleted in energy.

In any of these situations, focusing on unique strengths and abilities can really help.

💡 To make more impact in working life, an individual needs to know how they can add greater value.

For this, they need insights into themselves, what they have to offer, their values and what might hold them back from contributing at their best.

How do their natural talents contribute in the workplace?

💡 Thinking about a new career direction needs careful exploration.

What’s important to the individual?

Figuring out their transferable skills, their natural skills and what motivates them is part of this.

Also, they can benefit from knowing what activities take them a lot more effort, leading to stress and drained energy.

When we identify what they have to offer, and what they don’t want, they can use that information to consider alternative paths and decide on a direction.

💡 Planning a job move means creating an impactful CV.

The CV’s job is to showcase the applicant’s special talents, to get shortlisted for interview.

Thinking about the examples where the person has made a difference is important preparation for interview.

Then to be successful, it’s about communicating those USPs and experience at interview.

💡 Stress and low self-esteem are linked – one can cause the other.

In exploring the thinking patterns behind stress, an eroded sense of self-worth can often be revealed.

So working with individuals on their USPs can help them to build resilience.

Identify your own value

Some people like to do a SWOT analysis on themselves. Thinking about our own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges can bring valuable new self-awareness.

We can ask others for feedback about our unique talents. We can do this informally by just chatting to people, or we can take part in a 360 degree feedback programme, to gather information and thoughts from those we work with: Direct Reports, Peers, Managers, even customers.

Taking psychometric assessments like Successfinder, Insights, Strengthfinder, Myers Briggs or Belbin can help us identify our own natural abilities.

You definitely can work on identifying your own value yourself – but it’s not always easy.

How can Coaching help?

Often we are blind to our own standout strengths – we’re so used to them that we can take them for granted.

In coaching, we can discuss and explore our thoughts and impressions of ourselves, our experiences and our preferences – with someone who has no vested interest in what we say (unlike our partner, friend, or manager).

We can be completely free to talk through and discover more about what we believe, stand for, like and dislike.

Coaching starts by identifying what outcomes you want from a programme.

Through discussion, we explore the topics that we’ve identified and my coaching methods help you explore any blind spots, discover how to unlock any blocks and take action towards the working life you want.

To have that, you need to be aware of the potential, competencies, mindsets, strengths, valuable qualities and new approaches that you have inside you, but which you might not be fully using just now.

We may use psychometrics, worksheets or other questionnaires to help you gain awareness of these.

And most importantly, we take what you learn and support you in putting it into action.

How could your USPs help you more in your working life? Let’s chat.