When seeing the words “assets and liabilities,” you may think of a balance sheet – a powerful tool for visualizing and evaluating your financial position.
What lights you up, and what depletes you.
Similarly, having a clear picture of your career assets, “the strengths you put to use,” and liabilities, “what’s expected of you with little return,” can help you prioritize, focus, and balance where you invest your time.
Assess what’s right for you.
There are no correct or incorrect answers regarding your job satisfaction. We each have our distinct reasons, motivations, values, needs, and ways of approaching work. I have found the most effective approach for me is striving to base 80-90% of my work on activities that energize me. I then create strategies to handle or minimize tasks that are a heavier lift (the other 10-20%).
Pinpointing your wants and needs.
Psychological and personality assessments, which I view as a “cornucopia of insights,” can be transformational tools when applied to liabilities and assets. I find they help me connect with my “inner knowing” and provide me with tangible ways to turn awareness into action and, in this case, transform liabilities into assets.
One such tool is the Sparketype® assessment, designed to help you discover the work that makes you come alive. This analysis illuminates your strongest impulses and underlying drivers for what energizes you. It also highlights the type of labor that requires the heaviest lift, where you may need an incentive or the most recovery time.
Eliminating friction between your mind, body, and heart.
Sometimes the most challenging part is discerning between what you’re jazzed about and what efforts will reap recognition and reward. I keep the poignant words from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visible on my desk to help me decipher and choose: “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.”
Another profound assessment is the Enneagram, which introduces the theory that each personality type has strengths and vulnerabilities, aka “liabilities,” connected to their corresponding center—the Action Center (body, gut), the Feeling Center (heart, emotion), and the Thinking Center (head, intellectual).
All nine Enneagram types contain the emotions from the three centers, but one is the most prominent and impacts our perceptions and how we show up in the world. For example, my Enneagram, Self-preservation Two, falls in the Feeling Center, which deals with image and shame themes. When I’m at my worst, this plays out with me making decisions to control how I’m perceived. As I become less attached to my Type’s tendencies, I can objectively observe the situation, decrease my automatic impulses, stay true to my convictions, and articulate an effective response.
Transformation begins with you.
If you’re looking to ignite you or your team’s fullest potential, please reach out to me. I provide customized services, programs, and workshops that tap into various disciplines, modalities, and techniques to achieve the desired goals and activate the best within you and everyone on your team.