How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

FIND NEW WAYS TO APPLY YOUR STRENGTHS
Now, how can you apply your strengths more deliberately to your workday?
How would you approach your tasks differently if you were applying one of
your personal strengths?
When I worked at McKinsey, I discovered that I had a particular appetite for

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inventing new services for our clients. (Perhaps no surprise, given that my top
strength on Seligman and Peterson’s character strengths survey turned out to be
“love of learning.”) McKinsey had an established way of launching these kinds
of entrepreneurial initiatives, which entailed presenting your ideas to colleagues
until you found someone who thought your ideas could help their clients. I
started my first business-building effort that way, when I was establishing a
service to improve the effectiveness of senior executive teams. It involved a lot
of long nights, some delightful teammates, a lot of paper, and a long, slow
accretion of small but spreading successes that left me feeling great in the long
run. But along the way, I felt drained by the effort.
So the next time I started a new initiative, I tried something different. I
decided to play to the interpersonal qualities that also figured strongly in my list
of signature strengths, by using a more people-focused approach. My
entrepreneurial goal this time around was to build a new business in helping
healthcare organizations improve their performance. Instead of writing pages of
material, this time I sent an enthusiastic email to hundreds of people, asking who
might be interested in helping out. A few generous souls replied—more than
enough to get started. Then I focused on creating and nurturing a community of
colleagues who would build the new service together. Some people helped
hospitals redesign patient care; others helped biotech companies speed up their
drug development processes. I would convene meetings for them to share their
experience and expertise with each other, while giving them all the support I
could. This approach meant a rather different set of priorities for me as a leader.
For one thing, I worried less about formal presentations. I spent much less time
in front of a computer, and much more time in coaching conversations with my
new community.
Both approaches ended up being successful, for me and for the firm. Neither
was the “right” approach. But the energy I got from tapping into my extroverted
personality meant I felt as if I was on a perpetual high the second time around.
Of course, if a top strength of mine had instead been “making order out of
chaos,” I might still have gotten other people involved. But then I would have
focused on coordinating the creation of a seamless standardized product, rather
than encouraging my colleagues to let a hundred flowers bloom. And 
that
would
have been highly energizing for me. The point is, we can approach the same task
in many different ways—and our chances of having fun and being brilliant are
higher when we’re using at least one of our strengths as a springboard.
So consider how you can use your talents and interests more fully in your

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work, especially in areas where you’re uninspired or overwhelmed. For example,
explore whether you could: