A slightly grandiose title perhaps.

A training course that I went on last week made me think about perception, and the ongoing re-invention of our selves. That’s where this started.

We were discussing leadership, and in particular our personality traits and styles that influence how we behave and perform at work. It was interesting – not because for the most part we took a deeper look at some of the things that a profiling exercise had churned out.

For some of us this was very revealing, for others it wasn’t so revealing but allowed a defined allocation of time for self-reflection. Not something that many of us ‘middle managers’ get much time for.

For me, perhaps the most interesting thing was understanding more about my own ‘strengths’. For instance there are things we are naturally good at – our strengths. When we use our strengths we find that in the most part we are rewarded with some form of outcome – and this normally causes us to feel energised.

On the flip side we have our learned skills/strengths. These are things that we can do well – but that we may not find so energising. Those things that we do well, but afterwards we may feel a bit drained. Most of the group had many more learned skills than natural strengths – and most of us commented that there definitely were things identified that left us feeling tired, demotivated or drained even after successfully using these skills/strengths.

For instance, one of the traits this analysis profiled was ‘Centre of Attention’ – this was one of my learned skills. Over many years I have trained myself that sometimes being the centre of attention can be used to my benefit. I am naturally more introverted than many people realise. As a child I had to be coaxed to speak, and I hid under my mums skirts or behind my dad’s legs as much as I was allowed to.

I enjoy spending time on my own as much as I enjoy socialising. For work, and in my spare time, I sometimes have to stand up and talk to a group of people.  This is not something that I naturally enjoy, but it is something that I have to do to achieve the things in my life that I desire to.

Most of the time, it doesn’t particularly stress me out, and I can do it. But I have definitely learnt the skills, and as a result most of the time I feel extremely tired afterwards.

The simple act of understanding that there’s a difference between these two types of strengths, and the effect that this can have on our energy levels or motivation is really useful to be aware of. Particularly in a work setting, and even more so as you climb up the work ladder, because you can surround yourself with people who compliment your own strengths to make your work life more about your strengths that come naturally to you. And less about the things that you really don’t relish doing.

That works, but only if you dare to give any amount of control to anyone else around you. (top tip – do give control to others!!!)

Following this analysis and reflection, we were encouraged to thing about how we could turn one of our underused natural strengths into one that we used more frequently – meaning that we’re using a wider range of those skills that we’re naturally good at. I chose ‘feedback’ as mine – which apparently was one of those skills that I underuse. I’m not 100% sure what this means, but I am pretty sure that I can think of at least two instances where I am going to try to give feedback at work in the next week. We’ll see how it goes.

So, is where the re-invention comes in, we can change how we behave and which skills we draw on. This is in effect how we reinvent ourselves. It’s not advised that we change everything all at once. It’s more a gradual evolution. We do this without thinking. Slowly evolving, imagine you but 10 or 15 years ago. You’re still ‘you’ but you might behave very differently.

With some conscious ‘steering’ of these changes we can become more effective, less stressed and better at life. So, I am trying give and ask for more feedback in my life, which seems very esoteric to me. But apparently I am good at it, but don’t do it enough. So I’m going to take that feedback on board and roll with it…