Defining Myself Through My Strengths

Once I stepped into Professor Sharon George’s FSUS 100 honors class I learned about a test that determines your strengths and helped me look at what I am good at and not what I am bad at. Once I stepped into Dr. Bishop’s PREL 390 class, I was reminded I am able to define myself through my strengths and not my weaknesses. This assignment was to talk about what our top five strengths were and how to work with them in a team environment. With being in both majors; hospitality management and digital marketing, I will constantly be working in a team environment whether its serving and working events or working as a team to start a new campaign. To begin I will talk about the strengths and what goes into each one then to close I will walk through the connections to be able to pull it all together.

Restorative, communication, woo, futuristic, and positivity are the top five that relate to me. A neat thing about the strengths concept is that they each have what is known as a need, balcony, and basement. A need defines what the strength feeds off of in order to be a strength. A balcony faces the positives of the strength where the basement faces the negatives of having that strength. To begin, we have restorative. This is my top strength out of the five and individuals who have this strength are ones who can adapt to dealing with problems. They can figure out what is wrong and how to solve it for sure. The need is a problem to solve, the balcony is finding improvements to troubleshoot the problem, the basement is that we focus on the negatives and weaknesses. I can relate to this one hundred percent.

When talking in my appointment about this specific strength I was able to talk about a problem I solved over the summer and I will share it here and in other strengths and interviews for however much longer. This past summer (2018) I was employed at Boyne Highlands for an events/food and bev intern, my main area of work was serving at events and set up while also serving at the Country Club of Boyne. One July evening guest wanted to have her sunset wedding at the top of Kathy’s Peak which is one of the ski hills that overlooks Lake Michigan. For this event my colleague and I were in charge of the ceremony; starting on time, getting the right music, organizing the wedding party as they walked down the aisle and timing was everything. This particular groom had been cut off at the bar and arrived at the top of the hill drunk. He was slurring his words, could not walk straight and was loud while talking. The ultimate goal was to keep the bride happy and out of the loop, she was not to know what he was saying at the moment and he took one look at me and said, “Maddy I cannot commit.” That’s a problem, a drunk groom telling me he is not going to commit as he needed to be in front of their family and friends in less than three minutes. Everyone at this point has been seated and they are in line about to walk, I got excited as this was happening, my strength took over and I told him he is committing after a conversation with him and his sister. She helped me get him up off of the ground and as he sat up on the ground in front of his family and friends, they still said the grand ole “I do”.

Moving on to communication before relating all of these together, communication has a need of an audience. I want someone to talk to, I want to listen, and I need to be able to put my input in. For the balcony, communication is a storyteller, someone who is easy to talk to, and someone who is entertaining, energetic, and charismatic. Looking at the basement, it is more of a Michigan basement, this is what I need to work on more and it deals a lot about what I’ve noticed while working over my ego. The characteristics with the basement include self-absorbed, blabbermouth, and always needs attention. Like I said earlier, a need is an audience and someone who will listen, so it goes hand and hand. For communication, our conversation dealt with retelling the story about the groom. It is one I mentioned I talk about a lot especially in interviews because if I can handle a drunk groom, I can handle a guest who is not happy. I like to remember the small details when retelling it which is also part of communication and she was able to pick up networking without me even saying that I enjoy it.

Next up is the strength known as woo; winning others over. The need for this strength is social variability. The balcony is outgoing, people-oriented, and even networker whereas the basement deals with fake, shallow, and does not care about relationships. This is one where I can play devil’s advocate though. When reading about balconies and basements there are specifics that do not always come into play. When it told me that individuals who have the woo strength does not care about deep relationships, I enjoy building such relationships. The individual who I had my appointment with talked about how a woo individual will be able to go up to anyone in a crowded room and talk. I can pull a specific example for you, when living in the dorms last year I noticed the freshman who shared a wall with me was in the hospitality program and I left my number on a sticky note for her to contact me if she had any questions. Coming back from the store one day I noticed she had taken the note but not contacted me, so I walked to her door and knocked until she answered, fast forward and now we are close and built a friendship because I was focused on winning her over to be friends.

Futuristic is a favorite of mine to learn about because I know I have it and I know I have used it without even realizing it was a strength in this test. With this strength I got to talk about what I want to do moving forward. I love to plan ahead and get excited when people ask me what I want to do with my life. Last Thanksgiving, I was able to answer my family’s questions confidently and I was able to go and do the same in the appointment. I explained how I walk in May of 2020, graduate in August of 2020 and how I am moving out west, I want to build my dream house, and this is what it is going to look like. I talked about how I am getting two dogs and I have the breed and names picked out already and I know who is going to stay in my circle moving forward. A need for this strength is someone willing to talk about the foreseen future with, the balcony is as expected; imaginative, creative, visionary, and even prophetic. The basement is also as expected, it includes dreamer, “fantasy land” and out in left field. When talking about the future I get excited, she picked that up during the appointment as well, however others I have talked to bring up the basement. I have gotten, “be realistic, Maddy” and “you cannot build your dream house with a job like this” which brings me down but then I realize it’s my vision, not theirs.

The final strength is positivity. If you know me then you know this is something I focus on, negative situations make me feel uneasy and I try to flip it to find the light. A need for this is freedom to be positive and look for it. The balcony is enthusiastic, lighthearted, energetic and optimistic. The basement is insincere, naïve, and Pollyanna. That concept is where individuals remember the pleasant items more accurate than the unpleasant ones which I agree with. For example, an unpleasant experience is when my parents got divorced but I look at how they are happy with their new significant others and not how they are split up. Another example that really gets to me deals with my ex and how after he treated me the way he did I still want him to just be happy, so I am not looking at the unpleasant factor.

Now that I went through to explain what each strength I have is, let’s look at how they work together. In the last ten minutes of the appointment, I learned about which strength links with which and how I can be more proactive about using them together in the best way possible. Restorative linked well with communication and futuristic, this is helpful in the way that the three strengths are more in tune with one another. She was able to relate back because she has it as well but mentioned how others use it differently. She explained how she has more of a selfish take but how I focus on helping others then how I can use that to benefit me. The second one is communication and she did not link this one the way she did with restorative, but she told me how others with this strength builds on storytelling and how I can take on leadership roles and picked up how I am great at networking. With woo she was able to pick up how I’m interactive with others and enjoy meeting new people, she linked it with positivity. This works in the way where individuals who have woo are normally positive and optimistic, and how I can talk to anyone and everyone. Futuristic was next, she picked up how I share my vision with others, and I keep looking for opportunities to reach out. She linked it with communication because I have it all planned out, in order for me to reach my goals communication will be the one to push on and networking will get me into my career further. For positivity, I am upbeat, and I don’t like to be in negative situations which is obvious for those who know me. At the end of the discussion I explained how I am going to be managing at a restaurant up in Petoskey this summer for my hospitality internship. I asked the question, “how do I use these strengths to my advantage when walking into a new environment where I knew no one but everyone else knew each other. Making note that I will be taking on a management position.”

I was told to start with futuristic. In this case I have a vision in mind because I’ve have already looked at things that had been going on and listened to past intern experiences. With this being said, I have a background and a mindset where I will be saying “moving forward” instead of “right now” which goes with the two strengths; positivity and communication. I have to have a confident impression to get the current staff behind me with a positive outlook. Woo plays an obvious role because I’d have to win them over first. I had been warned to not walk in there with a plan set in stone because that throws off a vibe from the start and the restorative strength comes into play which is not ideal in this situation.

Overall, this exercise was very eye opening in how I learned more about myself this way than just going on without learning the good and bad of the strength. This helps me become more self-aware with things I work toward and roles I take on in the future.