“Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.” — Marilyn vos Savant
Want to feel strong and alive each day?  Put your strengths to work.  You have some skills that just make you feel powerful and engaged.  They grow you.  You could spend all day doing these activities and still want more.  These skills come easy for you and you look forward to using them.  Maybe you don’t know what they are yet, but you just notice that some days feel better than others.  Then there’s the …

"It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always." — Oprah Winfrey
What are your best abilities?   Not just what are you good at, but what are your core strengths that run deep.  These are the activities where your passion, your talent, and your ability collide.  The more you do, the stronger you get, the more jazzed you feel, and the more you grow.   Do you know your own strengths?  Many people don’t.  They’re too busy trying to fix their weaknesses.  
SIGN” …

"When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." — Audre Lorde
Want to lead a life of strength?  Well, what holds you back?  Chances are … you do.  You’ve been trained to focus on your weaknesses.  At school, it’s not how many you got right.  It’s how many you got wrong.  At work, chances are you spend more time fixing your weaknesses than growing your strengths.  Want to make the …

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Does fear stop you from becoming your best?  Is fear an obstacle to building on your strengths?  Our fear of weaknesses can overshadow our confidence in our strengths.  Our fear of failure can stop us from giving our all.  The ultimate fear that can hold us back is fear of who we really are.
I find that sometimes the most important growth is painful.  One of my mentors has a saying for this "… …

"A snowflake is one of God’s most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together!"  — Author Unknown
How can you make your best contribution at work?  Play to your strengths.   The sooner you move to your strengths, the sooner you improve your contribution.   Find your strengths and offer them to your team.  It’s how to be your best.  It’s how you’ll feel stronger each day. 
As a Program Manager (PM) at Microsoft, I’ve built a lot of project teams at patterns & practices over the …

"Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow." — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Are you a part of the strengths movement?  The strengths movement is a shift from focusing on weaknesses to focusing on strengths.  The idea is that you’ll gain more by improving your strengths than improving your weaknesses.
In Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, Marcus Buckingham traces the source of the …

"Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power." — Lao Tzu
Finding your strengths is one of the best ways to improve your energy and effectiveness.  If you know your unique combination of strengths, and you play to your strengths instead of focus on your weaknesses, you can dramatically amplify your impact.
One of the key things that can hold you back is spending too much time on your weaknesses and not enough time on your strengths.  The better you know your strengths and talents, the better you can …

How do you build a team that trusts each other to speak their mind and take risks?  How do you make it possible for the team to engage in passionate and sometimes emotional debate, knowing that they will not be punished for saying something that might otherwise be interpreted as destructive or critical?  It’s not about trusting that your team members will behave in a certain way.  It’s about building vulnerability-based trust, where it’s safe to take risks and face conflict on the team rather than fear it.  In The …