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