Your strengths don't need to sound impressive

“But these strengths seem quite basic.”

One of the students in our first Launchpad cohort said this during a session last week.

We had been talking about strengths. Not strengths from an assessment or a list of words to choose from, but things he could recognise in himself from his own experiences.

And when he looked at what he had come up with, his reaction was that they didn't sound impressive enough.

I thought that was interesting.

Somewhere along the way, many of us have started believing that a strength has to sound exceptional before it counts.

The qualities that matter can sound quite ordinary.

I've spent many years hiring and working with people at different stages of their careers. The qualities that make someone valuable are often not unusual at all.

Being dependable. Following through. Staying calm when something goes wrong. Making things easier for the people around you. Asking good questions. Taking ownership when something needs to get done.

None of those sounds particularly dramatic.

But when they are genuinely true of someone, and that person can point to experiences that demonstrate them, they matter.

What feels ordinary to you may still be a strength.

The harder part is often recognising it in yourself.

We tend to notice what comes naturally to other people because it looks impressive from the outside. What comes naturally to us can feel ordinary precisely because we have been doing it for so long.

That's one reason self-awareness matters. It isn't about creating a more impressive description of yourself. It's about getting better at recognising what is already there.

That conversation stayed with me after the session.

Perhaps a better question than “Does this strength sound impressive?” is:

“Is it genuinely me, and where have I seen it show up?”