I love a good personality test. DISC, Enneagram, Meyers-Briggs, I say bring on self-awareness and understanding!
I think what I love most about them is the part that tells you how great you are ;), but I’d be lying if I didn’t find the weakness section to be a dead ringer.
So when I came across the book Strengths Finder 2.0, recommended by Michael Hyatt as few years back, I pounced.
But truthfully, I didn’t touch it until a few months ago when one of my Speak Up to Level Up clients (who happens to be a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach) delivered a pilot of her upcoming keynote presentation.
She kept talking about the term “superpower”.
I’d heard others in the online space use this phrase, and logically, I knew what they meant, but also I didn’t really know what they meant. As a business owner, we have to wear SO MANY HATS. How does one tap into their superpower to grow their business.
It sounds so good, but what does it mean?
You’re about to find out.
I asked that coach to join me on the podcast for a real and open conversation about what strengths and super powers mean for online business owners.
Meet your new favorite person, Anna Nelson.
Anna works with online business owners to build profitable and fun businesses. Through 1:1 coaching and team workshops, she helps entrepreneurs discover their superpowers and assemble a team that empowers them to do more of what they naturally do best. Making friends, celebrating people and telling them why they’re uniquely awesome is literally Anna’s superpower.
In our conversation we talk about how focusing on your strengths or ‘superpowers’ and delegating the stuff that you might not be so good at is the key to true business growth and success. But to do that, you need to be able to identify what your superpowers actually are.
Episode Show Notes
What is a superpower? And how does someone go about discovering what theirs is?
Superpower is something that you are already good at like if you start with talent, something that you’re naturally good at. It becomes a superpower when you’ve invested in it, you’ve purposely added skills and knowledge to the thing that you’re naturally good at.
If developing your strengths is the secret, why do most focus on training for their weaknesses?
A lot of times we’ve never been told we’re really good at the things that we’re good at instead it was something else so we get put down for the things that we naturally are good at. It’s humbling to have to learn this and sometimes people don’t value what they’re good at because they might not have been encouraged to do that or they don’t appreciate it themselves. It takes a while to really say this is who I am, what I do, how I show up, and how can I now use this in a way that helps other people. It is hard work becoming a better version of ourselves but in the end, it’s totally worth it.
Understanding what your strengths are and connecting these to your business
Pay attention to the things that you do and use these four guides to know and recognize whether something is a talent / your superpower:
- Ease – How easy is it for you to do that thing?
- Excellence – Do you do that thing with a level of excellence pretty much every single time?
- Energy – Does it give you energy both during and after?
- Enjoyment – Does it give you so much fun and you think you could enjoy doing this over and over?
This is where you take those things that seem like they don’t really compute and have the self-awareness to boil it down to: what does this mean and how could you build a business around this?
CliftonStrengths Assessment – how does it work?
It has 177 questions and you have 20 seconds to answer them. It’s really quick. You could be done in 20 minutes, then it kicks out a report. They have 34 talent themes and there are four domains that the 34 talent themes are divided into: relationship building, strategic thinking, influencing, and executing. It tells you which domain you are strongest in and what the order of your talent themes. It will give you a description of each talent theme.
Importance of having a coach or getting a buddy to review your strengths with
We have a tendency to skip over our strengths and minimize our own accomplishments. Having a different perspective and having someone make you pause and tie your strengths to actual things you’ve done and truly face them is impactful so you couldn’t shy away from it. You can actually review these things and honor yourself at the same time.
How do you help someone sit in their strengths and really start exploring them to see the gift that it could bring to their life and their business?
Each person is different. It’s just connecting the dots, asking good questions, and knowing what they ultimately want, and then helping them see how their strengths can get them there.
Developing self-awareness and trusting your gut when you think everything is not working ( especially for digital entrepreneurs)
If you find yourself wondering why things aren’t working for you or questioning your processes (which we all naturally do!), know that sometimes it doesn’t mean that you’re doing the processes wrong or that your business is flailing.
It just might mean that the way you engage and interact with your audience or the way you set up your program needs to be different because your strengths and structure for your business are not going to be the same as the person that you learn from. Having this level of awareness for yourself could help you stop second-guessing your decisions and try the damn things you actually want to do and see what happens.
Getting better at something you feel like NOT a natural strength for you
It’s easy to think that we have all the answers. We don’t have all the answers. If you know that you want to get better at something and it’s something that you have a natural tendency towards, go learn more about it. Take a class, watch a YouTube video. Be humble about the fact that you have a skill and you are talented at it. Be humble and go learn from people who can teach you things. You can always be better so be humble and go out and be that better version.
Tune into the episode with the player on the top of this page, or read the full episode transcript here.
About my guest, Anna Nelson
As a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach Anna works with 6, 7 and 8 figure business owners to build a profitable, fun business by helping their teams go from feeling disconnected and unproductive to being united – where everyone is working in their zone of genius and contributing to the bottom line.
She’s helped and mentored hundreds, and having earned her MBA and worked in the financial, retail and marketing industries, she firmly believes that everyone has something of value to offer and that to succeed personally and professionally, everyone needs to learn their strengths – not just to realize how to use them, but how to express them everyday.
| Connect with her
On Instagram
Via her Website
Check out her podcast: The Anna Nelson Show
Grab Anna’s freebie: Why understanding your superpower is the only way to build an online business you love
Links mentioned in episode:
You Need More Cowbell: The Power of Personality in Email with Bobby Klinck – Ep #35
