(6) Strengths & Gifts

Strengths: Your unique gifts

Pursue impact as a group or an individual - either way do it from a place of strength. All of the effort to understand where to make the biggest difference is incomplete without putting yourself in that picture. Too many people - including me many times! - become a chameleon for a social change effort. In trying to become the thing you're supposed to be; a healer, a campaigner, a public speaker, a website designer, a policy analyst, you will gain a lot of perspective of what you are truly good at. It's not a bad thing to say yes I'll try managing the finance team, but if you want to give your *best* self to your impact work, take some time to identify what your natural talents are.

When I was involved in cofounding a volunteering based climate change youth movement called Generation Zero, we realised that being young people was a key strength in the context. Climate change is an intergenerational issue, and appealing to the moral imperative to protect children and future generations is an emotional gesture that influences older people, including power holders. We also realised we each had very different aptitudes and the cofounding team started to carve out different roles - Solutions Coordinator for the policy brains, Communications & Operations Coordinator for the organisational/community organiser brains and many more. We had a lot of comments from partner organisations and mentors that we were so lucky to have such a strong set of capabilities in the team. But really I think we did a good job at working out how to leverage each other's strengths. In another context, I was working at the heart of a project named LifehackHQ focussed on innovating around youth wellbeing, mental health and technology. In this case we were paid staff and we iterated through different role descriptions based on strategy pivots over time. But, near the beginning, when the work was unclear and there was no formal strategy, our personalities drove the development of the overall principles and approach. What do we believe and value about working in an ecosystem to create social change? What are we gifted at? What does this ecosystem need? Where is our sweet spot? It's complex to work this way because you have to hire people, not role descriptions, but it meant that we could give all of our best insights and deepest talents to the work at hand. We even went so far as to put out public job applications for a role called "General Awesome Human" with an outline of the kinds of talents we were seeking.

Exercise

What are your gifts?

Expand your knowledge of your own gifts. Write them down and consider what this means for the work you want to do in the world.

Call your close friends and colleagues, or email them, asking for some input about where your natural talents lie. Also ask about the opposite: Where do you see me suffering in my responsibilities? What do you think I should be doing less of in order to enable my gifts to lead my working life?

Think for yourself:

• Imagine you are a philanthropist - you're giving part of your life-budget of 80,000 hours of effort to something. How do you want to spend it? what type of effort do you want to put in day after day?

• Meditation: It's a Friday afternoon - you feel that you have had the most powerful, fulfilling week of your life. What did you do that week that made you feel that way? What does that tell you about what you find fulfilling?

• The collision of curiosities: From a personal standpoint your passion might lie at an intersection of many of your curiosities. Can you map these out to find what energy you want to give? Get paper and write all over it different topics you care about and different life-long curiosities you have explored or want to explore. Put circles around clusters and question where the overlaps are. What does this reveal to you about what your ultimate gift is to give?

• Deathbed - Ask yourself what you want to have given to this world from your deepest self by the end of your lifetime. What will you mourn not having given when you're leaving this Earth?

Summarise and reflect - what does this mean for my impact strategy? What do you have to give that no one else does? What's your piece to offer in the ecosystem that already exists?

Team gratitude circle

Set aside 1.5-2 hours, possibly over a meal, sit in a circle and shower each person in your team with constructive, insightful praise. This can be uncomfortable at first, but then it's likely to last hours if you let the power of it really take hold. Celebrate each other and take the time to be very descriptive of what each of you are talented at, both naturally and the skills you have learnt.

As you provide your team mates with gratitude, use the formats you feel will have the best possible effect. Some people like to write notes about each person so it's easier to remember what to share. Some people just like to flow as a group and let it all bubble up like popcorn. Some groups like to share clockwise, taking turns to shower an individual in praise, and some groups like to let long silences between comments enhance the power of each comment - allowing them to emerge like mediative realisations from whomever feels called to share.

Resist the urge to balance your comments with feedback or "you need to learn....". The point of the exercise is to see your group and yourself with fresh eyes. Resist the urge to write every quote down - either nominate a graphic facilitator to capture the themes in images and writing, or take a few simple notes and let an audio recording device like an iPhone capture the stories and magic.

Get beyond "you're really nice and collaborative". Dig into "you take the extra time to plan your day in the evenings and then do powerful work at 830am - this shows me you have a big capacity to plan how to use your energy and time well", or "I've seen you make difficult decisions and communicate in a way that made everyone feel really respected", "I want to celebrate the way you naturally bring the team into a joyful playful place when things feel stressful". You can focus on character AND skills.

What is your overall team skillset or gifts? What might that mean for the work you want to do?

Feedback (Going Deeper)

Call on your board members or advisors or customers or partners to give you input about what the natural strengths of your organisation are.