Consider your Gifts in Context to Creation
“I never truly considered what I was good at and how those experiences fit together. I just did the next job that I was asked to do.”
There are personality tests and strengths assessments galore. And they can be very helpful to put language around our gifts, our strengths, our geniuses.
But what they lack? How to use our gifts in context. How to best use your gifts given the circumstances surrounding you, like company culture, company growth stage or your personal role. Knowing where your company and your role exist within the creation cycle to best leverage your gifts.
This allows us to set aside titles, power, and revenue claims to get curious about what type of role or business model design is right for us.
To radically ROOT into our personal and innate sources of power.
Three Steps of the Creation Cycle
Ideation: This is the stage of dreaming, wonder, invention, conception. Your company may be dreaming of new business models, customer segments, product lines. The outcome is uncertain and experimentation is rewarded.
Activation: This is the stage of discernment and prioritization, turning chaos into order and mobilizing groups toward the shared vision. Your company may be finalizing that strategy, outlining that marketing calendar, or building teams to achieve that vision.
Implementation: This is the stage of “go time”. Of putting the ideas into defined action, managing the emotional impact of change, ensuring actions get done. Connecting deeply with humans to enable their own actions. Cycles of implementation might last for a few months (implementing a launch sequence) or years (audience building or building a manufacturing facility).
(h/t to Working Genius and Sparketype for naming some of the qualities at each step).
So, now how do we look at our gifts in context of that cycle?
Identify your gifts and genius through the lens of the creation cycle.
Are you the dreamer, loving blue-sky innovation? Are you a performer or “hype girl” who loves to gather a crowd to a shared vision? Are you the process expert, ensuring that no detail gets missed during a project? Or are you deeply connecting with the humans you serve as an advisor or advocate?
Consider your role AND the stage of the company.
What cycle is your company in, and what are you called to do? I often see ideators get frustrated because they have so many ideas but the team is at capacity. Or those gifted in implementation struggle to dream of new ideas and get them off of the ground. Do your current gifts - at your current stage of growth - match your genius?
Embrace your gifts and get support for your vulnerabilities.
What can you do more of in your current role or current cycle to embrace your genius?
And, how can you call in support for the areas that frustrate you?
Activators might participate in masterminds or summits to be inspired by industry innovation leaders.
Ideator CEOs may need an activator/integrator to translate strategy into realistic and grounded action plans - and they'll need to buffer the rest of the team from too many ideas.
And every team needs task and event planners and those who are skilled at advocating for the humans in a change process.