Are You Maximizing Your Motivating Skills for Career Success?

What are your strongest skills - the actions, thoughts or processes that you do that exhibit some sort of expertise that help you and others be successful. Go ahead and make a list. The skills can be ones that come naturally to you or ones that you have to study and through practice you have become very strong in.

Now that you have your list, put a star by the skills that you really enjoy using - the ones that energize and excite you when you use them. These skills are your Motivated Skills. When you are using your motivated skills you are having fun.  The work you are doing is enjoyable and engaging, rather than dull and monotonous. You might even forget that you're working. Hobbies that you really enjoy often  involve the use of motivating skills, even if hard work is involved. 

Of the remaining skills, which ones do you really dislike using?These may be skills you’re good at, but when you engage in using them at work you become disengaged from your work. Using these skills draws your energy away. These are your Burnout Skills.

If you are feeling burned out on the job, take a look at the skills you are using. If your staff are disengaged, find out what their motiving and burnout skills are. How many of your burnout skills are you using?  Are you using any of your Motivated Skills?

The key to your personal career success, as well as the success for the members of your team, is to maximize the use of your motivating skills and minimize the use of your burnout skills. Once you become aware of each set of skills you use on the job you can then start to work to use more motivating skills. Many professional positions allow for flexibility, so changing your mix of the amount of motiving and burnout skills you are using on a day to day basis may be as simple as asking or making the change on your own.