Episode 16

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Published on:

28th Feb 2025

Episode 16 How to amplify your strengths at work

In Episode 16, Sarah dives into the transformative power of amplifying your strengths at work. She discusses the importance of focusing on your natural talents, explains the difference between character and technical strengths, and provides actionable strategies to help you identify and amplify your core strengths. Learn how understanding and leveraging your strengths can boost your confidence, reduce stress, and enhance your career fulfillment.

Show Notes:

[00:00:00] - Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable with Sarah Archer

[00:02:00] - Why strengths matter: Benefits backed by positive psychology

[00:03:00] - Shifting from focusing on weaknesses to amplifying strengths

[00:04:00] - Character vs. technical strengths: What’s the difference?

[00:05:00] - Discover your strengths with the VIA Institute’s survey

[00:06:00] - Real-life client example: Finding beauty in spreadsheets

[00:07:00] - Why we overlook our innate strengths

[00:08:00] - Three pillars of amplifying strengths: Consistency, commitment, curiosity

[00:09:00] - Key reflection questions to amplify your strengths

[00:10:00] - Example: Using the strength of kindness in new ways

[00:11:00] - The power of feedback to uncover hidden strengths

[00:12:00] - Sarah shares her own top strengths and how she uses them

[00:13:00] - Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and access free resources

Useful Links

The VIA Strengths Survey

Watch on LinkedIn Live

Sign up for Weekly Career Inspiration

Learn about Leadership & Advancement Coaching Programmes

Book a Free 121 Clarity Call

Join The Love What You Do Facebook Group

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Rate & Review the Podcast

If you found this episode of Unstuck & Unstoppable helpful, please do rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

If you're kind enough to leave a review, please do let Sarah know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: sarah@careertreecoaching.co.uk

You are capable of more than you know. Shine brightly, lead boldly, and unlock the extraordinary potential within you. Be unstoppable.

Transcript
Speaker:

Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable,

the podcast for ambitious female

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leaders who want to create more impact,

income, and influence in their careers.

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feel connected to their passion

and purpose, but without

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selling out or burning out.

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I'm Sarah Archer, a leadership coach

and career strategist, helping women

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like you thrive in leadership roles

while staying true to your values.

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I'm the founder of CareerTree

Coaching and have over 15 years of

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coaching experience and significant HR

leadership experience to share with you.

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I know as a female leader it can

be hard to find time to focus

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on your career aspirations.

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The day job can be all consuming.

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Plus, no matter how senior you are,

there are always going to be times

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when you feel stuck, when you have

self doubt, or feel like an imposter.

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And that's where unstuck

and unstoppable comes in.

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Each week I'll be sharing practical

strategies, insightful interviews and

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inspiring stories to help you boost

your confidence, lead with purpose

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and achieve sustainable success.

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If you're ready to stop playing

small and unlock the incredible

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potential you have within you and feel

unstoppable, you're in the right place.

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Let's get started.

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Welcome to episode 16.

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I'm so glad you're here and what

we're talking about today is

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strengths and how you can amplify

them in your career and at work.

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I'm going to cover what strengths

are, give you a link to access your

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own strengths and also give you

some pointers around how you can

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amplify your strengths later on.

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Why are strengths important?

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Now I'm a big fan of the positive

psychology community and they've done

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a lot of research around strengths.

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What they discovered is that If

you can use at least four of your

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top five strengths every day, it's

going to have Loads of benefits and

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some of those benefits are boosting

your confidence, increasing your

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happiness, reducing stress, building

more meaning and fulfillment,

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and improving work performance.

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They're great reasons to think about

how we can amplify our strengths.

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Because what we often tend to do is to

focus on the things that we're not good

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at, to focus on improving the areas

that we're weaker in or that we need

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to develop more in, but actually our

energy is much better spent if we're

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focusing on developing and amplifying

the talents that we already have.

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I would encourage you to think about

taking a strengths based approach, which

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means focusing on the things that you're

good at, focusing on what you do well,

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rather than focusing on weaknesses.

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Because we all have natural talents,

which are our strengths, and if we

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invest in them, then they are going

to become a real strength, a benefit

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to you, and it's much more enjoyable

than slogging away trying to improve

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something that just isn't your thing.

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That's what we want to

be focusing on today.

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Let's think about what strengths are.

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We've got character strengths and

we've got technical strengths.

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The character strengths, which is

what I'm going to talk about today,

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are the things that are more innate.

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They tend to come naturally.

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We tend not to always value them

because they come easily to us.

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We think everybody must feel like

that, but often they don't because

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it's something that we're strong in.

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You might find you get feedback from

people, Oh, you're so great at X or Y

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because people are noticing that they

are, they're your natural strengths.

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Whereas your technical strength is

something, it's a skill that you've

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mastered that has become strong.

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And you can think about

amplifying that further as well.

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But today we're talking about

amplifying your character strengths.

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Now if you don't know what your character

strengths are Then I'm going to put a

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link , to a strengths survey that you

can do with the VIA Institute, which

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is the Positive Psychology Institute

founded by Martin Seligman, who's one of

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the founders of the positive psychology

movement, and they identified through

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research 24 character strengths that we

all have, and the strength survey allows

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you to identify, I think gives you your

top 10, but we're most interested in

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your top five because they're the ones

you want to think about amplifying more.

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There are things like curiosity,

hope, kindness, leadership, zest,

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teamwork, spirituality, judgment,

humility, I'm 24, but there's lots.

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Lots there.

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And the survey obviously helps you elicit

them because some of them you might

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know, but sometimes just having a survey

really helps us unearth our strengths.

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Then you do need to read the

definitions that go alongside those

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strengths which are on the site.

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It's a free survey, you don't have to pay

for it which will help you understand it

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because if we think about something like

kindness or love, we might have particular

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interpretations of what that might be.

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be, but the strength definition

is the thing we really need to pay

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attention to because that will help us

unearth how we're using it currently.

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I'll give you a little example.

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I had a client worked as a VA and

her top strength was appreciation

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of beauty and excellence.

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And in her role as a VA, a virtual

assistant, she couldn't really see

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how she was using that as a strength.

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She'd previously worked in fashion.

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So she could tell See how it came into

play in terms of her fashion work as a VA.

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She couldn't see it, but when we

dived into it, what she discovered

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was that she loved getting all

the chaos from her clients.

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So all their expenses, their receipts,

their invoices, all the mess of kind

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of the finance world, if you like, and

turning it into a really functional,

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but also beautiful spreadsheet for them

that made their lives much easier.

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So what we discovered was that it

was the beauty of a process and the

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beauty of being able to turn chaos into

structure that was her strength and that

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she really played to in her VA role.

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And it then helped her think

about how she could amplify

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that, but also how she could.

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Promote that as something that she

could offer to her potential clients,

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which is why it's important to

really think about the definition.

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Because in your career, if you

can amplify your strengths, you're

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going to be more successful.

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because you're going to really enjoy it.

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It's going to be easier to do

because it comes naturally to you.

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You're going to have more impact.

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You're going to be more visible

because you're going to be using

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the strengths really effectively.

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So there's a real, drive to make sure

we are using them, but because they are

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innate, we tend to, not focus on them just

saying, Oh yeah, that's, yeah, I'm just.

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I'm good at that, but not really

thinking about how we could make

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ourselves even better at it.

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There's three things you need to

think about in terms of amplification.

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One is consistency.

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Like anything, it's applying that

amplification process every day.

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So thinking about 10 to 15 minutes,

which is not a huge amount of

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time to focus on that strength and

how you're going to develop it.

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Having commitments and really wanting

to develop that strength, which might.

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Go back to the benefits I shared earlier

about why, you should amplify your

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strengths and the benefits of using them.

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Remembering, it's increasing enjoyment,

it's increasing confidence, it's

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reducing stress, it's increasing

wellbeing, et cetera, et cetera.

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And then the third one is curiosity.

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Being prepared to self coach

and ask yourself questions.

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That keep that focus around.

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How am I amplifying my

strengths on a regular basis?

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There's lots of questions

you can ask yourself.

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I'm going to share four with you

because I don't want to overload you

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and I think these four are really key.

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The first one is doing reflection

on how am I currently using my top

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four or five strengths at the moment?

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Thinking about what your strengths might

be when you've done the survey and then

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thinking, okay, how am I using them?

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in my current career.

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Am I using them?

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If you find you are using all four

or five, brilliant, that's fantastic.

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And I've got a question for you

that will help you stretch that.

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If you're not using many, say maybe

you're only using one or two, it's

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then thinking, okay, how can I

bring those other strengths into

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my daily work and use them more?

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You might need some help with that

or you might be able to spot quite

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easily how you could do that.

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Then the next question is how

could I use them differently?

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So if you are using your strengths

already Or you get to the point

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where you can see you're using four,

then you want to be stretching that

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by how can I use them differently?

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Because we are creatures of habits.

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We tend to use our strengths

in the same way over and over.

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And by thinking about how we can use

them differently, it can really start

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to amplify that strength and develop it.

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I've got a example for you.

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I had a client who her

top strength was kindness.

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And that is doing favours and good

deeds for others and helping people.

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And so she could see how she was

using that in terms of her way of

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being at work, but she couldn't see

how she could do it differently.

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She was really struggling with that.

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And what we discovered was that , as we

explored it with her, she could see there

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were certain groups of people where she

was disinclined to use that strength.

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And the group of people that she

could think of that she wasn't

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using it with was her in laws.

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She had a very difficult relationship

with her in laws and she decided to

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experiment and to actually be different

with them and extend that kindness

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strength into that relationship with them.

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And obviously it created a different

dynamic for them, both parties, and

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they responded differently to her.

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She could see how it made it a better

encounter whenever they were together.

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It made her feel better.

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It just changed the relationship.

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And because she could see

how doing it differently with

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a different group of people.

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was a way of extending

that particular strength.

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She could then see how she could

bring it into her work and started

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to notice where the groups of people

at work, where she was disinclined

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to use that strength in the same

way that she would normally use it.

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And therefore she made an effort to be

using it in that way with everybody.

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And it gave her that stretch

to, to challenge herself.

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Some of these things you have to

think quite laterally about in terms

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of how can I do it differently, but

it's good to push yourself to think,

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okay, I can see how I'm using it.

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currently, or I can see how I'm

using it with certain people.

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What could I do that would

make it a different experience?

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And then the other question you

can think about asking is who can

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I ask for feedback on my strengths?

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Because that's going to give you

a different perspective on how

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your strengths are being received.

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Again, how you, it might help

you , use them differently.

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And to give you that

perspective on your strengths.

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I'd love to know how you get on.

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I'd love to know what your top

four or five strengths are.

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I'll share mine with you.

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So mine are hope, perspective, social

intelligence, kindness, and love.

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And I use all of those.

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I can see how I use all of

those in my coaching practice.

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And also I challenge

myself on a regular basis.

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How can I use them differently?

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In my business as well as

in my coaching practice.

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So yeah, let me know how you get on.

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And, do get in touch if you need any help

with some of those questions, or if you.

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ticked off those questions and you want

some different questions to help you

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amplify your strength, let me know.

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I've got lots that I could share with you

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This episode is also available

to watch on LinkedIn.

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And while you're over there, please

do send me a connection request

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if we're not already connected.

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Thank you so much for listening

to this episode of the Unstuck

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and Unstoppable podcast.

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I have lots of free resources you

can access on my website, ww.career

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tree coaching.co

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uk, and I'll also put

links in the show notes.

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If you found this episode

helpful, then please subscribe

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so you don't miss the next one.

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And please do share it with a

friend and leave me a review

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and I will personally thank you.

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Remember, you're capable of

more than shine brightly.

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Lead boldly and unlock the

extraordinary potential within you.

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Be unstoppable.

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About the Podcast

Unstuck & Unstoppable
Career Talk For Ambitious Women
Unstuck & Unstoppable is the go-to podcast for ambitious female leaders ready to amplify their impact, boost their income, and achieve career success on their own terms—without burning out or compromising their values. Hosted by Sarah Archer, a leadership coach and career strategist dedicated to empowering women in leadership, this show provides the tools, strategies, and inspiration you need to thrive in your career.
Whether you’re looking to overcome imposter syndrome, enhance your leadership skills, or create a sustainable path to success, each episode will offer actionable insights, expert interviews, and real-life stories to help you take your career to the next level.
It’s time to stop playing small, unlock your full potential, and create the impact you’re destined for. Tune in weekly to discover how you can lead boldly, live fully, and succeed with confidence and integrity.

About your host

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Sarah Archer