How to Find Your Top Strengths at Work

If you are considering a career change, searching for a new job, or simply want to deepen your involvement in your current role, consider taking the VIA (Virtues in Action) Character Strength Survey.

In short, the idea of this survey is that individuals who routinely use their top three strengths report higher degrees of personal and professional satisfaction.

This clinically validated tool is free to use and takes under 15-minutes to complete. Click the link here to discover your strengths!

Credit: VIA Institute on Character

BACKGROUND 

Psychology has a reputation for looking for what’s wrong with people. Sometimes, this eagerness for a diagnosis can cause more harm than good. There’s even a word – iatrogenesis – for when a psychologist causes a condition they are treating because of how they act toward a client.

For example, take a child with an extreme fear of loud noises. A psychologist asks if the child is afraid of the dark because she wants to know what they generally fear. The child says no, they aren’t afraid of the dark. The psychologist asks why. The child suddenly thinks about the dark – all of the spooky things that can occur – and quickly becomes afraid of the dark. That’s a simple example of iatrogenesis.

In the late 1940s, several psychologists, led by Carl Rogers, aimed to avoid accidentally suggesting illnesses by moving to patient-centric models instead of diagnostic-centric models. Rogers became one of the founders of Humanistic Psychology, which gained popularity in the '70s. By the late '90s, Humanistic Psychology had moved to a data-driven field under the banner of Positive Psychology.

This movement shifted from dwelling almost exclusively on negative behavior, as earlier movements like Freudian psychology and Behaviorism did, to finding and reinforcing more positive and empowering impulses. One of its pioneers, Martin Seligman, noted that psychologists had spent a century studying what makes people unhappy, but rarely what makes us happy: “psychology was half-baked, literally half-baked. We had baked the part about mental illness […] The other side’s unbaked, the side of strength, the side of what we’re good at.”

Along with psychologist Christopher Peterson, Seligman conducted hundreds of experiments and thousands of interviews to understand what makes people happy. They developed in-depth methodologies and more applicable tools. In the workplace, one of their most popular tools is called the VIA Character Strengths Survey (VIA stands for ‘values in action’).

This survey is based on the belief that we all possess a set of core virtues; by exercising them, we contribute to our overall well-being. These virtues include wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

The survey measures 24 character strengths, such as creativity, perseverance, kindness, and leadership, that fall under these broader virtues.

Researchers found that employees who routinely exercised their top three strengths had higher job satisfaction and success. For example, someone with strong leadership and communication skills might excel in a managerial role, while someone with a knack for creativity and innovation might thrive in a more entrepreneurial setting.

Understanding your top strengths can also help you leverage these strengths to perform better and make a unique contribution. It can guide your goal setting and help determine which training, certifications, or conferences to attend. Lastly, knowing your top strengths will help you communicate your value to employers and clients, leading to greater opportunities for advancement and success.