From Strength to Strength
How to Build a Career Around Your Core Strengths
This week finds me preparing to lead an upcoming executive offsite for a corporate client. Part of the event will be dedicated to exploring strengths using Gallup’s CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly known as StrengthFinder), so I went back and did my self-assessment to experience the process myself (it has been about 13 years since I last participated in this assessment). The process got me thinking about how often, in coaching, people want to dive into what they perceive as their weaknesses - impatience, a lack of specific content knowledge, conflict avoidance, you name it - while I want to focus on how they can enhance their existing strengths. If you’ve been in coaching with me—or with any coach worth their salt—you’ve probably been asked this question at some point: “What are your strengths, and how well are you using them in your work?”
It’s a deceptively simple question. Many leaders can rattle off a few strengths. But fewer have a clear strategy for activating those strengths deliberately, daily, and in service of what matters most. This post is about how to do that.
Let’s start with why this matters.
The Performance Power of Knowing Your Strengths
Most professionals spend years trying to fix their weaknesses. That’s the default model in most workplaces: identify your gaps, improve what you lack, round yourself out. It also is a follow-on result from much of our educational process, which also tends to focus on identifying weaker areas of performance and drilling students to meet as many of a wide range of standards as possible.
But what if the best way to grow isn’t to fix what’s broken, but to maximize what’s already strong?
That’s the logic behind strengths-based development models like CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder), which are grounded in this idea: People grow most by building on their natural patterns of talent, rather than trying to remake themselves. By the way, this isn’t an endorsement for any specific assessment tool. There are legitimate critiques of most of the assessments out there. But I do believe that when you know your strengths—and you build a plan to use them intentionally—you can unlock better performance, more energy, and more meaning at work.
My Top 5 CliftonStrengths (and What They Teach Me)
I’ll use myself as an example. Based on my latest assessment, my Top 5 (of 34) CliftonStrengths are:
Learner
Achiever
Intellection
Arranger
Context
Each of these strengths represents a deep pattern in how I operate. Over time, I’ve realized that my best contributions—and my best days—are ones where I use these fully.
Let me show you what that looks like:
1. Learner
I’m energized by gaining new knowledge, tools, and skills. But it’s not just about absorbing information—I’m most alive when I’m actively learning something that stretches me.
How I apply it: I build time into my week for research, reading, or exploring emerging trends. I invest in my curiosity to acquire and use new information. I use this strength to help clients see what’s next, not just what’s now.
2. Achiever
I love to get things done. I have a strong internal drive to make progress, meet goals, and feel productive.
How I apply it: I structure my coaching practice around clear deliverables, timelines, and tangible outcomes—both for myself and my clients. I keep an active to-do list divided by area of interest, and I work on the list daily. I’ve also learned to pace myself to avoid burnout and build in a little time to celebrate the things I achieve.
3. Intellection
I enjoy deep thinking, especially when I can step back and reflect on complexity.
How I apply it: I carve out time for reflective writing, synthesis, and longer aerobic workouts (walking, running, cycling, open-water swimming) to mentally work through ideas. This strength helps me offer strategic insight in coaching conversations.
4. Arranger
I’m naturally wired to coordinate moving parts and bring order to complexity.
How I apply it: I thrive in dynamic environments where I can bring structure to ambiguity. I often help clients design plans, facilitate transitions, or reorganize priorities. This strength also shows up in my craft/art activities, where I keep track of a number of projects at once and take pride in balancing the creative, unstructured process of making art with an fairly orderly studio.
5. Context
I believe in the power of history. I make sense of the present by understanding the past.
How I apply it: I ask questions about backstory, precedent, and patterns. I don’t take things at face value and don’t look at events or perspectives out of their context. This helps me support clients not just with what they want to do, but why their patterns keep repeating.
Step 1: Identify Your Strengths (Accurately and Deeply)
Tools like CliftonStrengths, VIA Character Strengths, MBTI, or even peer feedback exercises can help. But don’t stop at the label—dig into how your strengths show up in real situations:
When are you in flow?
What activities leave you energized (vs. drained)?
When do others turn to you naturally?
If you’re unsure, go back through a few recent weeks and journal: what went well, and what part of that success was most natural to you?
Step 2: Audit Your Role Through the Strengths Lens
Once you know your strengths, ask: How often do I get to use them in my current job?
Make a list:
Your top 5–7 work responsibilities
Your top 5 strengths
Then draw lines. Where do they connect? Where is there a mismatch?
A leader with the strength of Empathy in a metrics-only role may feel stifled. A Strategic thinker trapped in rote execution may feel underutilized. These insights are not reasons to quit—but clues for how to redesign your role or environment.
Step 3: Build a Strengths Activation Plan
Once you know where your strengths are and aren’t being used, start small:
Ask yourself:
What’s one strength I want to lean into more this month?
What would it look like to bring this strength into my Monday team meeting? My next big deliverable? My 1:1 with my boss?
What boundary or structure would allow this strength to shine?
Use your calendar. Name the strength. Make it visible. When strengths become part of your daily choices, they become a powerful source of leverage.
Final Thought: Use Yourself Fully
Participating in coaching is not about becoming someone else. It’s about becoming more fully who you already are—on purpose.
When you bring your strengths to your job with clarity and consistency, you create a kind of power that no job title can confer and no role change can replace. You lead from authenticity, not effort.
Start with this question: What is strong in me, and how can I use it more?
That’s the beginning of not just knowing yourself—but using yourself wisely and well.
Prompt Question: What is one strength that you tend to lean on in your work, and how does it manifest itself?