From the course: Discovering Your Strengths

Recognizing your skills

From the course: Discovering Your Strengths

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Recognizing your skills

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- After you discover your natural gifts and uncover what you love to do, it's time to determine your skills, what you've been trained to do. In a variety of ways, all of us are educated throughout our lives to improve our skills. While school provides some skills training, it's not the only source. Family members, friends, mentors, and courses just like this one also provide skills training. Every job that you've had has given you some on-the-job training. Your employer may have provided other learning opportunities as well. We need to list all of these learning experiences. To make this process easy for you, I've created a simple worksheet that you can use. First, you'll answer questions on the worksheet yourself and then you'll have someone else respond to similar questions. Let's cover the questions you'll answer about yourself. You can ignore the Both column for now, we'll get to that later. With all these questions, just write down the first thing that comes to mind. Don't overthink your response, and please do write it down. Written responses are important to the whole process. The first question is, what did you focus on in your education? If you went to college, what was your major? What was your minor? If you attended a trade school, what trade did you learn? List all of that here. Next, what careers were you exposed to while growing up? The influence of your parents may have affected you in ways you didn't appreciate when you were younger. For instance, my father was in news radio and my mom was an educator. You can see the combination of those influences in how I'm training you right now. Write down anything that comes to mind. Next, who have your mentors been? Mentors can have a significant impact on your skills, perception, and understanding because you look to them as an example. List a few of these mentors and what careers they've had. Next, what positions have you held in the past? List the most influential jobs you've had and list a skill or two you've learned from each career experience. Next, what do you study or read about in your spare time? Think about the magazines you subscribe to, the books you enjoy, the blogs you visit, or the podcasts you listen to. Self-directed learning like this is sometimes the most powerful when it comes to skills development. Write it down. Finally, what additional training have you received? For instance, which online courses have you completed? Maybe your work paid for you to attend some seminars or perhaps you've gained some skills doing volunteer work. Write all of this down. With your answers to these questions written down, you're ready to move to receiving feedback about your skills.

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