Investing in yourself and tapping into your potential highlights what you do well, what you enjoy doing (often the same) and those activities that suck your energy.
I am obsessed about potential. Your potential, your team's potential, your organisations potential. Because there is often much potential left untapped.
My very first job as a teenager was in a forestry commission in rural NSW. I lucked into having a boss who empowered me and let me explore and discover what I could do well. I was allowed to revamp several systems within that office - from how to manage bee leasing sites, to tracking logging in public forests.
That nine months set me up for how I have spent my career – enjoying myself.
Contrast that with a later role in a major bank, where every day (pretty much) I would catch a lift to my floor with a colleague who said EVERY SINGLE TIME ‘another day, another dollar’ and as the lift door opened finished by saying ‘less tax’.
This was a person who wasn’t passionate, or enjoyed much about their role, or their boss, or the wider organisation. They were there for the paycheque and not much else.
I became curious about this lack of engagement and started to explore what made people happy and even passionate about their work. I couldn’t understand then why people, spending more time at work than anywhere else, didn’t find ways to enjoy what they did.
This is a lifelong journey for me to help people focus on those parts of their roles they enjoy, or help them find ways to enjoy what they are doing.
Questions to consider to help you here are:
- What is the most important thing you learned this past year?
- What do you consider to be your best strengths? (Or, what are the gifts you have that you have oriented your life around?)
- If you were not doing what you do now – what would you be doing instead?
- When in your professional career have you enjoyed yourself the most
- What are the Top 5 things that contributed to that enjoyment?
Your answers will indicate whether you are on track or not to reach your best potential.
If you had a budget to spend on your development what would you spend it on first?