It is good to be from Alabama today!  I am so proud of the Crimson Tide!  Of course, I love the success of winning our 14^thNational Championship, but it is about so much more.  As I listen to our coach, Nick Saban, talk about his competitive nature and his passion for developing his players physically and mentally, I think about all the people who have helped and continue to help “develop” me.  The list is too long to include here, so I would like to share an experience with you that helped me understand my strengths.

Several years ago, I took a class called “Ministry By Strengths” at my local church.  It taught me more about “me” than any other personality test I have taken.  Here is the list of “Strengths” given to me:

• Positivity

• Empathy

• Woo

• Developer

• Activator

I found several of these really funny…

• “Activator”… I heard my mom saying, “Do you have to have it RIGHT NOW!?”

• “Woo”… Persuading people to think like me… This could really be dangerous

• “Empathy”  Sooo… That’s why people like to tell me their stories!

But when I really think about it, this list was right on! I like being positive and listening to others stories while interjecting my opinions :).

All joking aside, the two Strenghts that helped me the most were Activator and Developer.  Understanding how these strengths shaped my daily decisions taught me how to be more productive.

Activator… I like to get things started and don’t really understand sitting around talking about doing something over and over.  However, I have learned to respect “some” push back from the “planners”.  It is good to write a plan and review the results… This is a hard lesson to embrace for an Activator, realizing it has made all the difference!

I am most proud of the strength, Developer.  I like to watch people aspire to greatness.  I guess this is why I am a sucker for Award shows… I am just thrilled to see someone accomplish his or her goal.  I can look back and see that some of my happiest times in my career were when I was allowed to help develop a colleague.

I hope that I can continue to use my strengths to help the industry… And, I hope you will use yours to help as well!

If you don’t know what your strenghts really are (we all have them), I encourage you to get this book, Strengths Finder.