Great entrepreneurs have really deep faith. Our clients may or may not believe in a higher power, religion or spirituality. Some people even claim not to believe in anything. However, to inspire a team to go create something that does not yet exist takes a whole lot of faith. Deep conviction that you feel in yourself and transmit to those around you.
Faith in externals is unreliable. Market trends and relationship dynamics evolve in uncertain ways. People of great conviction place their faith in what is always still here, no matter how circumstances unfold. What is always still here is us. The unique gifts, strengths and talents we each bring to the table.
Here are two keys we have found that help people deepen the faith they exude.
1. Value Your Unique Gifts
Inspiring people don’t waste faith on how they should be, on qualities they or others wish they had. The key is faith in your unique gifts. You as you are. An unshakeable conviction that when you are expressing what is authentically yours to bring, great things happen.
What are your gifts? The best way to clarify this is to ask others who know you well. For example, we start every coaching assignment with a 360. We want to understand how each new client has his or her most potent impact, their highest and best use — which is always when their unique gifts are in full expression.
2. Use Everything To Advantage
As we withdraw our faith from externals—from how we wish circumstances would unfold and our ideals of how we think we or others should be—and place our faith in who we are, an unexpected realization dawns. We realize that we can use anything as an opportunity to express our unique gifts. When being fully who we are is the priority, we discover how everything keeps playing into our hand. Seeming good fortune or seeming misfortune… each just brings out more of the best of us.
Take these two examples:
-One client has a gift for creating experiences that expand people’s horizons. As his unique gifts clarified in him, he didn’t just deliver great experiences. He created a company that made it easy for other people with that same gift to deliver life-enhancing experiences to new audiences. Because he valued his own gift, he understood what people of similar passion and ability needed to allow their unique gifts to flourish in the world.
–For another client, the gift was instantly seeing patterns in organizational processes. In his 360, a colleague described this client’s gift as the uncanny ability to smell a problem from 10 miles away against the wind. He always instinctively knew what needed to happen to keep things running smoothly. Seeming good fortune or seeming misfortune, he always had faith the team would prevail. Eventually he became COO of a Fortune 50 company and excelled at running its operations.
We invite you to deepen your faith. Have the humility to be constantly curious about what your unique gifts might be and how you can make the full expression of those gifts ever more of a priority in your life.
We have created a GiftFinder to help people find their unique gifts, strengths, and talents—which we are making available to you free of charge. The GiftFinder will reach out to four people who know you well, ask them about your unique gifts, and anonymously deliver their feedback to you. Email me at [email protected] and I’ll set that up for you.
-David Lesser