Understanding and leveraging your strengths can be transformative for your career. Here's why:
Recognising your unique strengths enables you to gain a clearer understanding of what you bring to your workplace.
You can invest in further sharpening your strengths in certain areas to help you achieve your career goals.
Knowing your strengths and value can boost your confidence, making you more assertive in advocating for yourself, whether it's negotiating your salary, seeking promotions, or exploring new job opportunities.
You can make decisions that align with your strengths, whether it's specialising in a certain area, or even taking on a leadership role.
Vets who align their careers with their strengths are more likely to find deeper satisfaction and meaning in their work, and enjoy a more sustainable career.
Here is an exercise you can complete to explore your strengths:
The Strengths Timeline
1) Draw a Timeline:
Horizontally, draw a line across the middle of a large piece of paper. This will represent your timeline, starting from when you began your veterinary studies/practice to the present.
2) Identify Milestones:
Think about key achievements, successful cases, challenges overcome, and positive turning points in your career.
Mark these events along the timeline. Closer to the beginning for earlier events and toward the end for recent ones.
3) Dive Deep into Each Milestone:
For each event or achievement you've marked on the timeline, ask yourself: What made this a significant or positive experience for me? What did I do that contributed to this outcome? How did I feel during this process?
Jot down brief notes next to each milestone, detailing your actions and emotions.
4) Identify Common Themes:
Look for recurring actions, behaviours, or qualities in your notes. These repetitions are likely indicators of your inherent strengths.
For instance, if you notice that you frequently mention collaborating well with others, "teamwork" or "collaboration" might be one of your strengths.
5) Colour-Code Strengths:
If you have coloured pens or sticky notes, assign a colour to each identified strength.
Go back to your timeline and colour-code or label each milestone based on the dominant strengths you used.
6) Reflection and Projection:
Reflect on the identified strengths: Were there any surprises? Any strengths you weren't aware of?
Think about how you can leverage these strengths in future scenarios, challenges, or aspirations in your career.