By
Clare on
January 9, 2012
Every 6-12 months I like to take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths. You can take this test (and many others) on the University of Pennsylvania’s Authentic Happiness site [registration required - free] and the great thing is that the site keeps track of all of your previous test results. The test ranks 24 different character strengths and the idea is that the top 5 (your signature strengths) are the ones to pay attention to and find ways to use more often.
I’ve taken the test a total of 7 times between August 2007 and today (January 2012). The signature strengths that topped today’s test are as follows:
- Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
(signature strength in 7/7 tests taken)
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.
- Love of learning
(signature strength in 7/7 tests taken)
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.
- Capacity to love and be loved
(signature strength in 2/7 tests taken)
You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.
- Curiosity and interest in the world
(signature strength in 5/7 tests taken)
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
- Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness (signature strength in 6/7 tests taken)
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.
Overall, I think my test results are pretty consistent – with the exception of the ‘capacity to love and be loved’ strength. This strength has only appeared as one of my signature strengths in the last two tests taken (it was ranked 8, 7, 15, 14, 7 in the previous tests) which I think reflects a growing comfortableness with myself and deepening of a number of important relationships (Jason and I got married last year too!).
I didn’t deliberately set out to regularly take the test or monitor my test results over a number of years but I’m glad I have (and grateful that the Authentic Happiness site keeps all the previous test results – I would have surely lost track of them otherwise). Looking back, the results seem to provide both confirmation of the key elements of my character/personality and evidence of how I’ve grown and changed over time.
The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance by Tony Schwartz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My notes from The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working
[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They're written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven't read the book)].
(8-9) Four primary energy needs: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
(11) Physical level – sustainability. Four factors are key: nutrition, fitness, sleep and rest.
(14) Perhaps no human need is more neglected in the workplace than to feel valued. Noticing what is wrong and what’s not working in our lives is a hardwired survival instinct. Expressing appreciation requires more conscious intention.
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Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
My notes from Rapt
[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They're written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven't read the book)].
(10) That little piece of reality that you tune in on is literally and figuratively far sketchier and more subjective than you assume.
Top-down attention (conscious choice) vs Bottom-up attention (biased toward most salient thing/signal). Competition for attention.
(18) Drawback of sharpening focus on a target = shrinking larger experience. FOCUS EXPERIENCE.
(28) To enjoy the kind of experience you want rather than enduring the kind that you feel stuck with, you have to take charge of your attention.
(more…)
By
Clare on
April 27, 2011
I’ve noticed that many management/business blog posts and articles I’ve read recently have focused on ‘the F word’…. failure. It seems that failure (or at least talking/writing about failure) is ‘in’. The entire April 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review was devoted to the topic of failure and The Economist is talking about ‘the failure fashion’.
More and more business leaders and management writers are realising that failure is a necessary (and even desirable) part of innovation. To innovate means to try new things, to have a go. But anytime we try something new there is a risk that it won’t turn out as we hope or expect, and that we’ll get it wrong. But as Ken Robinson notes in his humorous, inspiring and powerful TED talk “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
While we might know that risking failure is part of the innovation process, there’s still something quite uncomfortable about it (the title of this blog post pretty much sums it up – ‘Failure Sucks But Instructs‘). To me, failure is kind of like debt. It’s what you do with it that determines whether or not it’s a positive or negative thing – whether or not is allows you to grow and build, or weakens and depletes you. So, with that in mind, here are a few articles that may be helpful in thinking about how we build our own resilience to and understanding of failure (and that of our staff) to ensure that it positively enhances our personal and organisational innovation capability.
- In this article, Seth Godin points out that not all failures are the same and proposes a hierarchy of failure from ‘good all the way’ to ‘please don’t'! A hierarchy of failure worth following – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/a-hierarchy-of-failure.html
- And in another post, Seth shares six ideas to help you fail better, more often and with an inevitably positive upside. How to fail – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/04/how-to-fai.html
- Dealing with failure is part of being a leader. Rather than expend enormous energy to avoid it, this HBR blog post (part of the recent failure series) suggests you should build an organisation that is resilient in the face of inevitable failures by taking the following three steps: create a culture of sharing failures as well as successes, reward the act of risk-taking, and define the limits. For fans of good stories, this post also has a great story about how Domino’s Pizza admitted and addressed a major failure. The Art of Admitting Failure – http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/the_art_of_admitting_failure.html
- On the topic of good stories, in this post regular HBR contributor and master storyteller Peter Bregman shares a personal story about kayaking rapids in the Grand Canyon to highlight the power of visualising failure. Visualize Failure – http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/03/visualize-failure.html
There are many other HBR blog posts published as part of the special issue on failure which are listed here – http://hbr.org/special-collections/spotlights/2011/apr
The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research’s Innovation Blog has also recently published a piece (and started a discussion) about how we share lessons from failure – http://innovation.govspace.gov.au/2011/04/15/how-do-we-share-lessons-from-failures/.
By
Clare on
April 24, 2011
In part 1 of my post on the topic of ‘work-life balance’ I shared my thoughts about why I don’t particularly like the term and suggested that paying attention to the range of aspects that make up your ‘life well-being’ (your emotional/mental health, physical health, financial health etc) was a better approach than simply trying to balance the time and energy you spend at ‘work’ with the time and energy that you spend on everything else.
And rather than just rolling my eyes or having a little rant to whoever is unfortunate enough to be near me every time I hear the term ‘work-life balance’, I’ve done some thinking about how I’d like to apply an alternative way of looking at balance in my own life and figured that as it might be interesting, relevant (or perhaps just humorous!) to others, it was worth writing a blog post about it.
People who know me well know that I’m a visual person and like to construct or use stories and analogies to make concepts/ideas/opinions more tangible. And those people will also know that I’m not a gardener. But, for whatever reason, it’s a gardening analogy that helps me to explain my concept of ‘life well-being’… (more…)
