Identifying Strengths and Skills

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People often use the words strengths and skills interchangeably and often incorrectly believe them to be synonymous, when in fact they are quite different.

 

 

What is a skill?

Skills are often described as something you learn how to do through repetition, for which there is a best practice or specific way of doing something. We can practice our skills, improve them, and we can learn new skills. Skills can be:

• Taught
• Forgotten if not practiced regularly
• Refined

Examples of skills:

• Speaking a different language, with practice you can become fluent
• Coding, with practice you can code more complex projects
• Swimming a specific stroke

 

 

What is a strength?

Strengths are those innate abilities, curiosities, passions within you that don’t need to be put on your to-do list. They are things we are naturally good at and didn’t really have to learn, or softer, rather more intangible character traits. Strengths:

• Are a talent, they come innately
• Last a lifetime
• Can often be identified in childhood

Examples of strengths:

• Persistence, used to learn new languages
• Courage
• Curiosity

We are usually better at identifying our skills rather than our strengths and it is only when we take the time to get to know ourselves, listen to ourselves, follow our curiosities and the opportunities that our strengths make available to us that we realise exactly what our strengths are.

 

 

How do I identify my skills versus my strengths?

To help start to identify what our skills and strengths are, try asking yourself the following questions and list what comes to mind:

• What can you do?
• What have you done?
• What have you improved at over time?

The answers to these questions will indicate more of your SKILLS.

• What are you good at?
• What do you enjoy doing?
• What comes naturally to you, without much concentrated effort, which does not for others?

The answers to these questions will indicate more of your STRENGTHS.

 

Skills vs strengths: it doesn’t have to be complicated; it’s just a matter of asking yourself “am I good at this, do I enjoy it and does it add value to me?

 

Being aware of our strengths and reflecting on them plays a really important role in our coping and our resilience. The main reason for this is the fact that many skills can be transient, so by placing a majority of our self-worth into our amazing tennis playing ability for example, our self-worth is going to take a real hit when that skill inevitably fades and we’re no longer able to see off any challenger that comes our way. By reflecting on our strengths however, we can identify our innate abilities we can tap into and areas we know we need to seek help with, when life gets tough.