Think of transferable skills
Helene told us, "I remember sitting in the car in front of the kids' ballet school waiting to pick them up and reading my school notes on the steering wheel so I could maximize the use of my time." A competency that many women have is the ability to multitask.
Women often fail to appreciate the worth of their inner strengths. How often have you heard a woman discount or devalue a compliment about one of her strengths -- "You are such a capable homemaker." Response (with a wave of the hand and a lowering of the eyes): "Tsch, it's nothing."
Most skills are transferrable
Women also fail to realize that their strengths are transferrable from one situation to another that is seemingly unconnected from the personal to the work environment, for example. As Kathleen Brown, former managing director of Goldman Sachs and a one-time California state treasurer, said: "The skills I learned in playgroups, trust me, I use in politics and in the boardroom."
Take such skills as multitasking, organizing, going with the flow, supervising, negotiating, planning and so on. Many women are experts at them. When Deanna taught a supervisory training course for women, she discovered most of the attendees had been out of the workforce for many years. They were nervous and lacked confidence. They did not believe they could manage or supervise others. But eventually they came to realize that many of the skills that they had developed at home could be used in a work environment. A mother of six children didn't think she possessed "system-design" skills. Yet these were the very skills she employed when she gave each of her children their own laundry basket to be delivered to the washing machine. She then did the laundry and returned the clean clothes to each child's basket for pickup. This saved her endless hours of picking up and sorting laundry.
Imagine, each child actually wore his or her own socks! Here is a woman who was an efficiency expert, who had taken this strength for granted and was unaware of its significance.
Focus on the positive
Women often focus on their weaknesses rather than on their strengths. This is hardly surprising given our overcritical society in which we spend much of our time looking for deficiencies, looking for what is missing rather than for what is there.
Focusing on deficiencies, on what is missing, on what you don't have or comparing yourself to another person whom you consider more successful, can be paralyzing and inevitably leads to a sense of inertia and despair -- an "I can't do it" attitude. It is a surefire way of slapping a very short expiry date on a dream. Strengths, on the other hand, serve to anchor and buoy you up. Your outlook on events affects how you behave, and how you behave affects how you think and feel. In fact, research has shown that when people focus on their strengths, they feel better about themselves and are more likely to take charge of their life.
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