Developing and nurturing your natural talent and skill can be difficult throughout your career.
You can change this by asking what do I want and what do I need?
Before we talk about talent and skill we need to address the question. If you don’t know the answer you are probably too busy to think about it or have the energy to try, however, your professional/personal wants and needs are directly related to how you use your talent and skill.
Let’s begin with what do you want?
What if you are 20 choosing a career for the rest of your life but don’t know where to begin? Accept you know you can work hard enough to earn the respect of your employer using your knowledge and willingness to do a good job.
You are 27-35 doing well in your position, you like it but, you are not being offered new opportunities and nothing to look forward to and you are thinking about quitting.
You are 55, an experienced manager, innovative with a clearly defined skill set, measured success but working within a hierarchy of dysfunctional communication causing you great frustration.
In some cases, company cultures are creating more and more distance with the employees and they are losing trust between co-workers and the boss.
To protect one self, many apply a psychological safety net that makes the job more exhausting. He or she notices that people use insincere behavior to protect themselves, so they have no choice but to play the game. On top of this, there are so many tools to organize our lives; they manage us rather the other way around, there is no more transparency. How can you even think about what you want?
How do I get what I need?
First, continue developing your skills and talent at every stage of your life. For some you may need to think about it, for others it’s obvious. Recommit to your abilities and continue learning, attaining more knowledge, practical experience and practice doing what you love. You know this personal power makes you happy outside of work, just remember to apply it to your behavior at work.
Skills and talent are a distinctive attribute of your personality; you are unique, nurturing is simply about appreciating who you are with more consciousness.
To get what you need does not come without personal challenges and perseverance; it is worth all your effort to find a way to express what you are good at. How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? Know yourself; take small steps or giant leaps.
When you feel joy in what you do, and how you do it, you will receive many benefits that come from supporting what you want.
Study successful people who have similar attributes, learn from their example.
There are a myriad of people, books, workshops and personal coaches that are available to guide you.
Be aware of what you take on and don’t fall into an addictive track of only following someone else’s advice; listen to your own guidance first.Your natural skill comes with what you love, practice this with the knowledge you receive in school, work experience and mentoring from the people you work with. When you have confidence, competence and expertise to produce positive results you will be satisfied with who you are, regardless of where you work.
Your talent is your gift, individualized genius and special ability to perform what you know.
Acknowledging your talent and skill in what you do puts you at the top with all the other “Grandmasters” who have succeeded in realizing what they want and what they need to fulfill their destiny.
Remember, every person can experience the fulfillment of a full life in their work at any age. Just accept that you have abilities that are unparalleled or incomparable to anyone else. The journey to this realization is personal and can be very satisfying.
Ghaile Windeck, M.A., is a personal performance coach who provides executive coaching for professionals of all ages in Clark County. She can be reached at (503) 754-4151 or g.windeck@gmail.com.
