Put your strengths to work

by : Business expert Marcus Buckingham

Are you unhappy in your job? You're not alone. Four out of five people quizzed in a CareerBuilder.com survey are unhappy at work—that's 84 percent of the nation's workforce!

Business expert and best-selling author Marcus Buckingham has helped millions of people reach new levels of success and happiness at work—including employees at Coca-Cola, Gap and Microsoft—with his radical "strengths training" approach. His key to success is simple: Stop spending so much time trying to fix your weaknesses. Instead, focus on what makes you special and unique. "A strength is an activity that makes you feel strong," he says. "If you want to know what your strength is, you've got to pay attention to how you feel. It feels like focus. It feels like concentration. You feel invigorated. Energized."

Another way to think of strengths training is to look at it as a report card. When a child comes home with a report card, Marcus says most parents would focus more on an F than an A. Really, they should give more attention to the A. "You grow the most in the area where you already show some natural advantage, some natural area of talent or strength or passion. That's where you start," Marcus says.

Marcus says being dissatisfied with work can filter into other areas of your life. "Your family [and] people that are the most important to you in your life are the ones that hurt," he says. "If you're going to win at life—if any of you or any of us are going to win at life—we've got to flip that switch."

In October 2007, Oprah invited Marcus to Chicago to hold a special workshop for 30 working women to help them rediscover the passion in their careers. "Most of you in this room are not living a second-rate version of somebody else's life," Marcus told the group. "Most of you are living a second-rate version of your own. And what we have to help you to figure out how to do is to find your life within your life."

During the workshop, Marcus asked the participants one very important question: Do you play to your strengths during a typical day? Their answer was shocking. "We had nobody saying they played to their strengths most of the time," Marcus says. "When we asked them, 'Do you think you're the best judge of your strengths,' nobody said they're the best judge of their strengths."

The workshop also busted a common myth that led to many aha! moments—just because you're good at something doesn't mean it's a strength. If what you're doing completes you, it's a strength. If it depletes you, it's actually a weakness.

Ultimately, Marcus encouraged all the women to find something they are passionate about. "This is about contribution. It's about performance. It's about doing more and making it last," Marcus says. "If you're going to make a lasting contribution, then the activities that you're filling your job with have got to feed you."

- oprah.com -