Becoming the best of who you are
[Music]
hello everybody
what do adele sean connery and mary
streep
have in common you might argue
that they are all geniuses in their own
field
and that is true yet it is only one side
of the coin what also links them is that
they
build their careers and development on
their individual talent
the good news is that you do not have to
be a genius
to achieve great things and become
the best of who you are
a quote that is often attributed to
albert einstein
is everybody is a genius
but if you judge a fish on its ability
to climb the tree
it will live its whole life believing
it is stupid this implies that everyone
has a different ability or particular
genius
it is your task then to identify your
individual talents
and align your career accordingly in
order to maximize your potential
and the aim of my talk is to help you
doing precisely this
as you can derive from the picture i was
drawing to illustrate the einstein quote
my talents are obviously not rooted in
the arts of drawing
and what you see took me two hours of
hard work
the all i actually took out of a book
of how to draw animals i once purchased
for my little daughter
when she was three years old
in the next minutes i will create
awareness for important aspects
and triggers that have changed my life
and helped me to become my personal best
obviously not an artist
and that will also support you to become
the best
of who you can be
i want to begin by telling a short
yet powerful story
about herbert van karajan
in the mid 80s the famous conductor
gave an interview on german radio
returning from vacation the interviewer
asked him
whether he had recovered well the
orchestra leader
was annoyed and replied angrily
how she could ask such an ignorant
question
he stated that he had not been able to
work at all
the journalist was surprised and said
that holidays
were for recreation and not for work but
the musician
said that she did not understand the
facts of the matter
since for her her work as a journalist
was a job but for him
his profession is his passion
taking away his conducting stuff
is like taking away water from a plant
i call this the carrion factor and it
tracks the degree of intrinsic
motivation
you have for your job if it is zero
you work for living and if it is a
hundred
you literally live to work as your work
and your vocation
are identical
consequently try to orient and plan your
career
according to your strength as you will
then
experience a higher intrinsic motivation
in the performance of your work
this may come across as a no-brainer
but countless people spend most of their
time
on trying to minimize their weaknesses
by attending trainings online seminars
and so on and so forth let me tell you
my personal story about my development
and how i became a university professor
in order to best bring to life and
illustrate what i have in mind
when i started my professional career at
shell international petroleum company
limited
i also made the mistake of attending
workshops and seminars
in order to compensate my weaknesses
but this changed overnight after a
discussion
with one vice president human resources
who told me
the following analogy as to personal
development the human being can be
compared with a hand
the fingers represent the strength
and the spaces between represent the
weaknesses
of the person if you try to minimize
your weaknesses
it is very cumbersome and maybe new
little fingers may grow
in the gaps but this is rather
counterproductive because it is now
harder to grasp with a hand than before
instead you should concentrate on your
individual strength and thus extend
the existing fingers to maximize your
grasping radius
that is also beneficial from an
organizational perspective
as other people’s strengths or fingers
fit exactly into your weaknesses or gaps
so that the employees and their profiles
complement each other it is like forming
snowballs in wintertime
it is easier to do this with a fingered
glove which is
focusing on your strength than with a
mitten
which is created when we concentrate on
our weaknesses
from that day on i have mainly focused
on my strength and align my career
accordingly now
of course the question arises as to what
a strength actually is and what
constitutes it
a practical definition comes from the
us-based renowned
gallup institute which states
that an individual strength is comprised
of talent
knowledge and experience knowledge you
acquire through learning
reading books and education in general
or listening to my talk
experience you gather over time and it
grows automatically
now we come to talent as the most
important ingredient of a strength
many people consider talent to be a
special gift that is only handed down
to a few lucky people such as adele or
mozart
who wrote his first compositions at the
age of four
it is paramount to understand however
that everyone
has individual talents which enable us
to be great at certain things but you
cannot create talent your talents are
given by nature
for example i’m a good tennis player
but no matter how many tennis lessons i
will get
i will never play as good as roger
federer and that is okay
as i have other talents which roger has
not
and in this respect everyone can be
great
at something
let me tell you the story of a friend
and former working colleague
at shell he was working in the loyalty
cards department
within marketing and liked his job
his passion however was soccer
and he was a talented photographer
and finally he decided to change his
life completely
and follow his strength and passion and
he left the company
to become a sports photographer and
whenever i talk to him afterwards
he says that he has the best job in the
world
as he made his hobbyist profession and
never
has to work anymore in his life
against this background it is clear that
combining
talent with knowledge and skills will
help you consistently achieve
exceptional performance and moreover
happiness
always try to set your goals in such a
way that you have
to build on your strength and not reduce
your weaknesses
in order to achieve them it is much more
motivating
for you to improve in an area where
you’re already good
the energy you use for this is much more
productively used
than if you try to eliminate your
weaknesses
in addition this strategy has another
career related advantage
individual strengths are much more
likely
to be registered by your environment
and your superiors than the absence
or weaknesses when searching
for your personal strength take a
differentiated approach
like steffi graf the former professional
tennis player
who was ranked world number one for a
record
377 weeks
what was her strength people would argue
tennis but that is only partially
correct
in fact her forehand was her dominant
talent whereas her backhand top spin
was a weakness how did her training look
like
a traditional approach would have been
to focus on improving the back end
topspin
but the contrary was true steffi and her
coaches
turned their intention to the most
important work
refining and perfecting her greatest
talent
her forehand they only worked on her
weaknesses
just enough to ensure that they did not
undermine her strength
think about what your talents are
knowledge and skills
by following the so-called efp process
e stands for ease so think about what
you find easy to do
carry a piece of paper with you for a
month and write down what is easy
to do for you regardless of the category
especially if you have
achieved an extraordinary performance
and you have managed to do it
without much effort there may be a
talent behind it
write down these activities f
stands for financially independent so
imagine you get as much money as you
want
on the condition that you keep working
what kind of work
would you do if material considerations
were not important
what would you want to do every day
and finally p stands for positivity so
think about
the task that will positively charge you
be sure to consider activities outside
the office
or those that you are attracted to
but have not yet implemented for which
activities do you forget the time
which activities make it easy for you to
deepen your knowledge
and to be completely absorbed in a task
after which tasks do you feel charged
and happy
what are you looking forward to when you
think about next week
which tasks did you enjoy in the last
week
when you have collected enough
information through the
efp process create your individual
strength
profile collect all your talents
knowledge and experience
and then write down three concrete
activities
that you want to dedicate yourself to in
the future
also think about how you can manage to
integrate these activities more
into your work in the future and plan
for it
if you find or recognize only one talent
through this exercise and can integrate
it more into your life
listening to me will have been
worthwhile for your professional
and private development in this context
it is
important to remember when analyzing
your talents
that a lack of a talent for a certain
job is not a weakness
of the person but at most a weakness
with regard
to a specific job
this worked out for me as well because
like with my shell working colleague my
professional career
changed as well after i was asked
to do a workshop at the university about
marketing although i had not much
experience to talk about i love being
exchanged with young students
and i got the feeling that i helped them
unlocking their potential
and this intrinsically motivated me in
such a way
that i started giving lessons about
management at the university in parallel
to my job at shell
when doing so and talking about human
resource management i always embedded
the analogy
of the hand after some while
i was getting an email from a student
who left the university
some while ago to start his own business
in the reference line he wrote thanks
for your impact
on my life and in the mail itself he
wrote to me
how the analogy with the hand and my
lecture helped him
change his life for the better
from that moment on i decided
that i wanted to become a full-time
professor and use my
talent to help people discover and
unlock their potential
and therefore make an impact on their
life
and i never did regret this decision as
my carry-on factor is 100 now
finally i want to pinpoint at some
important aspects
when it comes to self-realization in
this respect
as the u.s military once stated we do
live in a vuca
world which is an acronym and it stands
for volatility
uncertainty complexity and ambiguity
this is particularly the case nowadays
where we encounter
the corona pandemic and disruption
everywhere
if the world changes and poses new
challenges upon you
you have to react like a ship on the
waves of change
always keep in mind that the words
change and chance are different
by one letter only
when marketing yourself try to focus on
challenges
that people are facing and then analyze
and how far
your strength can provide solutions to
that
do never try to sell yourself as a
product but look for the problems
that people organizations and
institutions have
and then develop solutions by building
and capitalizing
on your individual talents
antoine de san diegori
the author of the little prince once
wrote
building a boat isn’t about weaving
canvas
forging nails or reading the sky
it is about giving a shared taste for
the scene
i hope that i made some impact on your
life
in the form of an intensified taste
for the sea which is all inside of you
as you are not a drop in the ocean but
the ocean in a drop
and i wish you every success on your way
to become the best of who you are
thank you all very much
you