I bet you had things that you struggled with when you were growing up. We all do, aren't we? Maybe you weren't as good as far as you wanted to be or maybe you struggled with reading. You were dyslexic or maybe you just weren't as tall as you wanted to be. We've all got stuff as a kid that we struggled with. Me I had a stammer or a stutter you might call it. But the weird thing was that even though every word was a potential chat for me, I don't know why I couldn't stop putting myself in situations where I would have to make my mouth perform. If there was some line to be read aloud in class, I would stick my hand up like I was reaching for something or if there was a part going begging in the cast play, I'll be first in line to sign up for it. Even though most of the time my mouth did fail to perform and I would end up embarrassing myself, when I was done with it, I didn't feel drained and small. I still felt energized in a weird way so much so that if there was another time when a speaker was required, up will go my hand again. I think all strengths have that quality. Maybe they have, I can't help but quality. Even though right before you do, you might hear that little voice going, maybe you shouldn't do this. Maybe you're not good enough to, maybe you will mess up. There's a much bigger voice that comes in going, hey buddy, you can't help it, you got to do it, you've got no choice, and so up it goes that hand again. There like a force of nature, your strengths. But like all forces of nature, they can go to waste, so it's up to you to harness them. The real challenge of life is not, as some people think, to conjure new forces from within. The real challenge of life is to free up and focus the forces that are already there. But you need to deliberately seek out situations that call upon your strengths. It sounds obvious, but it's amazing how many people trip up at that step, or just assume it's going to happen inevitably, and it doesn't. If you want to free up your strengths, if you want to focus or harness that force of nature inside, you got to seek out situations that will call upon it. If you love meeting new people and winning them over and getting them to like you, you got to seek out situations where you're going to meet strangers. If you have a need to be physically active, then you got to seek out situations where you're going to be on your feet. If you thrill to the challenge of helping other people learn, then you better volunteer to do so. Or if you're already a manager, then you got to deliberately carve out time in your working week where you're going to flex that coaching muscle of yours. The more you do this, the more you deliberately seek out situations like that, the more you'll learn about exactly which situations will call out the best of you, the more detailed and specific you'll become. As a kid, I kept volunteering to speak in class or play in that class play, and yet my stammer persisted until one day back in, I think it was June '78, I did what you've probably done with one of your strengths. I put a little additional pressure on myself. I upped the ante. I volunteered to read aloud, not just to the class, but to the entire school, 400 boys. I knew I was in trouble because the night before I practiced the piece with my headmaster, and I managed to stretch what should have been a five-minute piece into 15 minutes of suffering. The next morning I got up, walked down the aisle of the Church, turned to face this sea of eyes and unbelievably, the words flowed perfectly, smoothly, as though I was born to say them. Right then I made a discovery, for me, the size of the audience is important. The bigger it is, the better I can speak. God, it was a really helpful discovery for me. Since that time and the intervening years, I've refined and focused that discovery. I now know almost exactly what situations will allow me to speak better. Some people, they just like to speak off the cuff. You're in a meeting with them and you say, "Hey, Johnny, could you stand up? Give us 15 minutes on project X; would you?" They jump up, they're not prepared, but they love it, they're extemporaneous, the words come perfectly. Me, I'd be terrible at that. I'm rotten at that and I know that. I need to be prepared. Some people like to jump up after dinner. They'll tell a joke, they'll make a speech, they'll make a toast. They're fabulous, not me. I'm rotten at that again, terrible. Hate it. I need a formal setting and a serious subject, then I can do it. If I put those kinds of insights together, what that means for me is that each week I need to be looking for opportunities to give a well-prepared, seriously focused speech or presentation to a large group of people. Any week which has any element of that, either the preparing part of the presenting part is going to be a really strong week for me. Now I'm not suggesting you swan into work and demand only to do those things that play to your strengths, no one want to work with you if you did that. All I'm saying is that maybe at five o'clock on a Friday or maybe at eight o'clock on a Monday, you ask yourself, this week what one or two additional situations could I put myself in that would call upon my strengths? Just ask yourself that. Each week ask yourself that. I'm not suggesting that each week you'll be able to put yourself in those situations every week. I mean, the world's not made for your happiness, is it? But I do think that if you took it upon yourself to think about those situations and actually go and ask someone, go ask your teammate or a manager and say, "Look, this is a strength I'm trying to play to. This is why I think it's going to help the team." I think you'll be amazed by how easily small things like a shift or a meeting or schedule can be changed. Once you've done that, once you've put yourself in situations that really call upon the best of you, you'll see that there are other steps that you can take in this freeing journey of yours. You can challenge yourself to think out, maybe there are some new tricks, new techniques that I can use to really focus that strength of mine. Or maybe there are new skills you can actually go and learn that will help you to sharpen the strength. Or maybe there are some people out there that you work around who are already brilliant at that strength and you can actually go look at them or study them or interview them even to learn. Maybe you can even figure out nifty ways to measure how good you are at using that strength. I remember I once interviewed probably the best bartender in England, a woman called Janice. She was brilliant at remembering not only people's names, but the drinks to go with them. She got such a kick out of it. She would she would keep track of it, like how many names she could remember. Her company saw this and they thought, well, that's great. Let's build a program called; they called it The 100 Club actually and they did this for all the bartenders across the whole system of pubs that they had. If you can remember the names and the drinks to go with them for 100 of our customers, then you get to be in the 100 club and you get an award. They made the pinnacle of achievement like the top level, the 500 Club because they figured, no one's going to be able to remember the names of 500 customers and the drinks to go with them. But they hadn't figured on Janice. She made it a focus of her daily work. She really bore down on that strength of hers and she got good. Last I heard she was the founder member, actually the only member of the 3,000 Club. I'm not saying you could do exactly what she did, but it just goes to show if you pick a strength of yours and you figure out a way to measure it and who knows how good you can get. If I were to get you on the subject of one of your strengths, you'd reveal yourself to be this fountain of new ideas and new innovations, and new ways of doing things. That's a great thing about your strengths. Is they reveal the very best of you, the very best of what you have to give. Take them seriously for crying out loud. Honor them, live up to them. Take it upon yourself to figure out how to free them up. Take the time to focus them. This is the most important thing you can do for your company, for your teammates, for your customers, but most of all, for you.