Building your academic success on your strengths – Blog post from Barbara Budrich

If you try to eliminate your weaknesses, I have often heard coaches say, your best outcome will be mediocre. Therefore, make sure to build on your strengths. Do you know what your particularly strengths are?

 

What is important?

The difficult thing to know about yourself ist o find out what role any of your strengths may play in helping you furthering your career. In most cases, you consider your own strengths as rather “normal“ – “anyone can do that“, since, naturally, your strengths come easy to you. Thus, you don’t consider them special in any significant way.

Let’s say, you’re a great communicator. You love talking to people. You don’t think much about networking or small talk. You just strike up conversations with whomever very easily, are interested in the person you’re talking to, ask loads of questions, and are not particularly worried about being understood first. However, you love discussing things, too, and do have your own opinions, make no mistake.

Could that be helpful in academia? Oh, yes, indeed! And not only in academia!

Communication is the clincher in so many situations anywhere, and if you even love it, you’re destined for success. Most people’s egos and self-consciousness come in the way of communicating well. So if you don’t have any chip on your communication shoulder, you’re all set!

 

How can you see your own greatness?

As I mentioned earlier, you can probably not even see this. To you it is just the way you are. You can’t help it, and possibly, you have always been that way (and gotten on some people’s nerves, too: not everyone loves that kind of skill in others). And, as we all know, the fish is the last to see the water.

How can you go about finding what is absolutely natural to you in case you have difficulties coming up with your strengths? I can recommend two different ways.

Ask your past

Looking back at the turning points and successes of your life may give you clues as to where to find your own strengths. “Success leaves clues“, says success coach Tony Robbins. Going on an exploratory trip in your own past to find your past successes and testing the ingredients you may find there, can give you a sound idea.

Ask your peers

Alternatively, you can ask others. I remember an instance coaching a friend and giving her this assignment: ask five people who know you best about your strengths. She was really frightened of what the others may say and expected the worst. And was so overwhelmed by the feedback she got. She could have easily built a career aiming for a noble prize on the base of those comments alone.

 

What to do with it

Once you have found out what you are really good at, you can look at that in two ways: either you go ahead and directly build on that foundation. Or you think of the career you do want to pursue and consider any skills and learnings you reckon you’re still missing. Keep in mind what I said about being mediocre in the beginning of this blog post. Surely, there is a lot you can do to improve regardless.

 

If you happen to be among the few humans who really know what they want with all their hearts, go for it with all you might! Don’t let anyone talk you out of it. Particularly not yourself!

And if you have a bad bout of imposter syndrome, watch Amy Cuddy’s video again, and fake it till you make it! (https://youtu.be/RVmMeMcGc0Y)

 

About Barbara Budrich

Barbara began working as an editor at the publishing house Leske + Budrich, which belonged to her father Edmund Budrich, in 1993. In 2004, after the sale of Leske + Budrich, Barbara founded her first own company, the publishing house Verlag Barbara Budrich. In 2007, she founded Budrich UniPress Ltd, which became Budrich Academic Press in 2019. Barbara also works as a coach, author, and translator and has published numerous books and essays.

 

Image Barbara Budrich: Nina Schöner Fotografie.

 

 

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