Self-confidence

How do I find out what my strengths are?

In an environment where you are constantly and critically evaluating research, asking questions and looking for gaps, you equally apply some of the same thinking to yourself – daily, you need to develop some skills further, do things better than you did them in the first version and constantly look for novel ways of approaching things. The ongoing requirement to improve can often be delivered in a deluge of critical evaluation which you can sometimes interpret as personal criticism rather than criticism of your work.

The StrengthsFinder book is useful to give a language of strengths to add to your lexicon to balance out the ‘critical voice’ inside you. The book has an access code in the back to take an online assessment generating a personalised report and it may be something you’d find useful to articulate some of your strengths – particularly if you can translate them to the research environment and use them to strengthen the story of your CV or job/fellowship/ promotion applications.

You don’t need to use or read the StrengthsFinder book to think about articulating your strengths – 10 minutes with this resource and a pen, together with some space to think may be sufficient to get you started.