Self Interest is Power…

 

I’m not talking about the self interest that manipulates power so you win and everyone else loses – we’ll leave that to some of our politician friends…

The pursuit of self knowledge in continually crystallising your understanding of your inherent skills, values, natural abilities, interests, style and goals is the holy grail that is worth pursuing with the determination of Indiana Jones.

Self interest pursued to a conclusion produces worthwhile intelligence:

I’m most skilled at… ?

I struggle with and should avoid tasks such as… because I have reached my ceiling of capability ?

My key natural abilities are… ?

The style I best respond to in a boss is… ?

My authentic style that gets me my best results and makes me most happiest is… ?

What ‘I value’ that gets me out of bed in the morning and gives me energy. My values are…?

How did you do in effortlessly producing answers to the above?

Simple but not necessarily easy!

I have found in my work that people who can answer the above… tend to be those who are most content, at peace, happiest and fulfilled. Sounds like a worthwhile project and it’s one of my works in progress.

I’ve been doing some powerful work with senior teams having them jointly and openly conclude the answers to the above. The experience switches on lights in how to get the most out of each other and how to leverage the uniqueness of the individual abilities for the benefit of the unit.

Words people/clients used in a follow up review to our main session that utilised DISC profiling:

“Powerful, extremely useful, practical, insightful, high impact, switched on multiple lights.”

It’s not because I’m claiming to be super clever or anything like that – I just know that most Top teams or Boards are operating way below their capability and it’s not that complicated to raise the bar through some great conversations.

Self Interest is Power.