Your genius is precise and will play out as your life signature....but only if you know what your comparative advantage is and build on it throughout your life.
That, my friends, is the message for experiencing the third generation of those self-assessments that help you to better understand what your signature talents are and how you can express them in your life: first: Now Discover Your Strengths, second: StrengthsFinder 2.0, and now StandOut by author Marcus Buckingham.
As most of us do, you probably struggle to find the right words to capture what makes you stand out. You are either too vague: "I like challenge." Or you overcompensate, and lurch into flagrant self-promotion.
Without knowing their individual employee and corporate strengths, many leaders have tried to replicate innovations as best practices (read: benchmarking) throughout an organization without success; because one-size-doesn't-fit-all. Yet, every organization has the ability to scale innovation among employees by creating an effective configuration that amplifies individuals' strengths.
The problem is that most leaders don't know how to take his or her performance to next level and become a linchpin for corporate success. All great leaders rally people to a better future, but each does it differently. Authenticity is the currency of effective leadership but you first must know your natural leadership edge and which practices will accelerate your growth and effectiveness as a leader.
Where other self-assessments stop at description, StandOut takes the next step and provides practical advice on what to do to make the most of one's strengths. The StandOut assessment measures individuals on nine Strength Roles revealing their top two. These two Strength Roles are where a leader will make his or her greatest contribution. They are your edge--where you have a natural advantage over everyone else. And these strengths are your multiplier--where you most quickly learn and improve upon any innovations, techniques or best practices that complement these two roles:
Where you will be at your most powerful.
How you can make an immediate impact.
How you can win as a leader.
For example, my top two StandOut strength roles are "Equalizer" and "Pioneer" because I love order but thrive in the unknown---an explorer, yet I am grounded in intelligent argument. I know how to articulate my values and guiding principles clearly and concisely (nobody has to guess) and this makes my relationships straightforward and simple. The greatest value I bring to my target audiences and followers is: I won't allow us to charge ahead without proper preparation.
As a structured and optimistic leader, I inspire followers to bet against the law of averages to achieve higher and sustained performance. My career or life signature is bringing order to opportunity. An organized trailblazer, I have forged ahead with a clear purpose, and with confidence that comes from knowing that my "supply lines" would not be broken.
Specifically, I excelled as a junior military officer during the Vietnam Conflict Era. I was recognized as an officer of initiative who advances boldly yet is never reckless. Early in my military service, I competed for the position of "Top Gun" or "Honor Graduate" of our 70+ officer leadership class with Lt. Ron Brown (who was the first African -American member of his and my Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He later became U.S. Secretary of Commerce and, while holding this position, was killed, along with 34 others, in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia). That and other military and corporate leadership experience built on my signature talent to create order while pushing beyond the boundaries of current understanding.
Once you take the StandOut self-assessment, you too will see where your "ideal career" has shown itself and allowed you to acquire the self-knowledge that will continually lead toward expressing your desired life signature.
Marcus Buckingham: StandOut: The Groundbreaking New Strengths Assessment from the Leader of the Strengths Revolution
Marcus Buckingham: Now, Discover Your Strengths