How I help you get to know yourself
One of the things I most enjoy doing with clients is helping them find what makes them unique – their inherent personality style, strengths and preferences. Once they know these, it makes decision-making about life, career and relationships so much easier. Rather than focus on what’s wrong with you, and trying to fix that, focus on what’s great about you and on what comes naturally! It truly makes life simpler and makes you feel better too.
The 24 character strengths
A strengths-based approach to life is:
> Honest – it acknowledges problems but doesn’t get lost in them.
> Positive – it focuses on what is best and good.
> Empowering – it encourages and advances the individual.
> Energizing – it uplifts and fuels the person.
Some of the primary tools I use to help clients hone in on their strengths and preferences are:
The Enneagram, an ancient personality-typing framework enjoying a huge resurgence, scientific validation and an array of applications including personal development, career development, teambuilding, personal relationships and parenting. The enneagram framework includes nine distinct personality styles, each of which has its own predominant way of thinking, behaving and relating to the world as well unique strengths and weaknesses. It offers fascinating and profound insights into the things we do, the ways in which we tend to trip ourselves up and how to grow as a person.
I am an enneagram coach certified by The Enneagram In Business, run by renowned author and researcher Ginger Lapid-Bogda, and use a combination of tools to help clients determine their own enneagram style.
The VIA Survey of Character Strengths, offered by both the VIA Institute on Character and the University of Pennsylvania’s school of positive psychology. This free internet-based survey (web address) asks 240 questions and then provides a ranking of 24 character strengths that are considered to be the fundamental building blocks of character. The top five strengths are typically the things you tend to do naturally – and once you know what they are you can consciously draw upon them when making career and life choices and dealing with challenges.
As a ‘VIA PRO’ member of the VIA Institute I am able to help clients understand their strengths and the many ways they can nurture them and apply them in their lives and work.
The VAK (visual-auditory-kinesthetic) assessment of learning styles, developed by Victoria Chislett and Alan Chapman and available on my website here. Knowing how you learn best is another way to play to your strengths: if you know you prefer visual learning, for instance, you might draw brainstorm options for a project by drawing a mind-map. An auditory learner might talk with a colleague and a kinesthetic (physical) learner might go for a walk while they think or trust their ‘gut instinct.’
I’ve noticed over the years that knowing your VAK learning preference can also be useful for helping you relax; clients with a visual preference tend to like visualization exercises or activities like coloring mandalas, auditory learners like guided meditation and kinesthetic learners like physical activities like conscious embodiment movement, doing things with their hands or good-old exercise. In my coaching practice I often use one of these relaxation activities at the beginning of a session to help clients release the stresses of the day and make the most of our time together.
If you’d like to get more in touch with your strengths, call/email me or try one of these tools. They really work!
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