Career Branding When Responsibility Is Your Strength
I get a whole lot of questions about how to align your CliftonStrengths talent theme of Responsibility with your career.
In this series, I break down one strength per post \u2014 so that you can add to the insights from your StrengthsFinder report and make a better match between your job and your strengths.
\u2013 If you\u2019re exploring this concept as a manager, use this series for career development ideas and even new clues about responsibilities you could give a person with this talent theme so that they can show up at their best.
\u2013 If you\u2019re exploring this concept for yourself, use this as a chance to build a reputation for your strengths so that you\u2019re more likely to be given assignments that live in your strengths zone.
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Today, the talent theme of the post is Responsibility.
You\u2019ll get three layers to chew on:
- Career Branding
- Red Flag Situations At Work
- Fresh Application Ideas
Let\u2019s start with career branding. You probably already have a reputation for what you know. If you imagine your resume or your LinkedIn profile, I bet it\u2019s full of \u201cthe what,\u201d which are things like job titles, skills, knowledge, expertise, or the degree you earned. Now, what\u2019s missing in most of them is \u201cthe how,\u201d and this is where your StrengthsFinder talent themes live. This is an overlooked use for LinkedIn, which is not just for job seekers.
I bet you are just like my StrengthsFinder training clients, where you don\u2019t see your teammates and customers every day. That\u2019s why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding. It\u2019s how your teammates, customers, and vendors go look you up before a meeting \u2013 to see who they\u2019re about to talk to. And rather than only telling them\xa0what\xa0you know, you should also give them a peek at\xa0howit is to work with you.
With that in mind, here are a bunch of adjectives you can use in your career branding and your LinkedIn profile. People who lead through Responsibility are often:
- Trustworthy
- Loyal
- Diligent
- Dependable
- Accountable
- Conscientious
- Promise-Keepers
- Honest
- Committed
- Responsive
These are the cultures, interactions, or situations that feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone with the talent theme of Responsibility. They might even make you want to quit the team. So I\u2019ll give you a couple of these to be on watch for \u2014 because if they fester, you might get the urge to quit the job or become detached and disengaged at work.
Here are two Red flags for Responsibility:
- Chronically Missed Deadlines.\xa0If you lead through Responsibility and your team culture is one that is cavalier with deadlines, it will suck the life out of you. To you, your word is your honor, and you expect other people to honor their commitments as well. So when people miss their deadlines and treat it like no big deal, you\u2019ll likely feel like it\u2019s a place where mutual respect is severely lacking.
- Imposed Urgencies.\xa0You\u2019re conscientious and dependable. You plan things out diligently so that you can keep your promises. So when other people constantly blow up your day with their lack of preparation, you\u2019re likely fuming. If you work in a place where people tend to launch their hand grenades at you \u2014 which puts you at risk of not keeping your promises, this will suck the life right out of you.
These are ways to apply the talent theme of Responsibility at work, even when the job duties on the team feel pretty locked in. If you\u2019re exploring this concept as a team manager, be sure to have a conversation around these ideas. You\u2019ll both be able to come up with places to apply them.
For someone who leads through Responsibility, put this talent to good use with one of these options:
- The long haul.\xa0When you need someone who will consistently chip away at a project over time, assign it to someone with Responsibility. They are self-starters who will diligently follow it through the long term.
- Trust.\xa0When you need to hand something off to someone you can trust, assign those responsibilities to someone with Responsibility. When you know you can\u2019t babysit the process, the person who leads with Responsibility will keep you posted on timelines, deadlines, and progress without any hand-holding necessary.
- Ownership.\xa0Think of a project or process that no one has really owned before \u2014 one of those things that sort of gets done, but never that well. Change that up by assigning clear ownership to someone with the Responsibility talent theme. They\u2019re great at covering it from soup to nuts when they know they can take charge and bring order to a neglected part of the business.
So there you have it. It\u2019s a quick tour for building your career through the talent theme of Responsibility. So, here\u2019s your homework:
- Go take action on your LinkedIn profile with the career branding section. Challenge yourself to write one sentence in the Summary section of LinkedIn that captures how you collaborate as a teammate at work.
- Then think over the red flags to see if there\u2019s anything you need to get in front of before it brings you down.
- And finally, volunteer your talents through the application ideas. And if you\u2019re a manager, have a conversation with your team members about which of these things sound like something they\u2019d love to have more of.
If you\u2019re thinking about doing a virtual or in-person event to kick off your strengths-based culture, head on over to\xa0our training page\xa0to see if our current offerings are a good fit for you. Until next time, thank you for being part of this powerful strengths movement that helps people unleash the awesomeness already inside them.
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