When I first signed up to do a confidence building workshop, I didn’t really know what to expect. I chose to do it feeling that I could do with feeling more confident about seeking out professional opportunities, having had difficulty with this previously. I was open to learning from this and getting to work refining my career goals.
We were immediately asked to write down three things that we were confident in ourselves about. I was struck by the time it took me and I could only think of one- I am an empathetic communicator. I was pleased that this was taken as a good example and written up on the board. I felt instantly validated in this quality and it set the atmosphere that this was a nurturing and encouraging space. I felt that I would leave the workshop feeling better about myself.
The main activity was to analyse our strengths from some Strength Profile cards. I expected that this would be writing down things that we were good at so we felt more positive. The thought of this didn’t challenge me initially, but I found myself learning something new and important.
Qualities are categorised in 4 ways: Realised Strengths, Unrealised Strengths, Learned Behaviours and Weaknesses.
Through separating good qualities into these quadrants, I was able to analyse my strengths in a meaningful way which I hadn’t done before. I saw that my Realised Strengths, the things that energise me when I do them, were person-centred: things like “Relationship Deepener”, “Compassion” and “Openness”. I was glad to feel these qualities as valid things to build a career on.
When I looked at my Learned Behaviours, those things that are de-energising to me but I have conditioned myself to do, I found it undermining to what I had previously thought about myself. I had prided myself on “Service”, “Adherence” and “Resilience” but when I looked more closely about the way I implemented them in my life it was always an emotionally draining experience. I came to the uncomfortable realisation that I wouldn’t benefit from a career where I had to demonstrate these qualities, and I pledged to spend some time thinking about alternative options.
I found that there were few things that I viewed as an outright Weaknesses, the biggest of these being “Self-Esteem”. I had no surprises here but began to feel again quite hopeless that this was a thing that was set in stone and would permanently impact my professional development. It was then we were introduced to the concept of neuroplasticity- the idea that assumptions about ourselves and negative self-talk can be remodelled by directly challenging them.
I knew that these concepts would not revolutionise the way I thought about myself overnight, but I felt affirmed by what I discovered during the workshop. Whilst I didn’t feel super confident, I knew that I could challenge the way I dealt with any professional failures in the future.
I got to work on my final assessment- a video interview.
