Unleash Your Strengths: Find Energy, Joy and Purpose at Work

You were made to thrive, not just survive. 

In this first episode of a special mini-series, Jill O’Boyle takes a deeper dive into her previous conversation with Melissa St. John, showing you how to uncover your natural gifts/strengths, blend them with your passions, and create work that energizes you while making a meaningful impact. 

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Transcript

Jill O'Boyle (00:04.28)
Hey friends, welcome back to your life, your story, Rise Up podcast. I'm your host, Jill O'Boyle, and I am just so glad that you landed here with me today. If this is your first time here, welcome. I am so happy you found this podcast. If you've been following for quite some time, honestly and truly thank you for continuing to show up and continuing to come back.

So I have to tell you, I absolutely loved my latest episode with Melissa St. John. We talked about designing the life you love, five pillars to workplace happiness. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, be sure to go back and just give it a listen because the insight that she just shared, I thought were really, really incredible and just practical. And so I felt it was just necessary.

to slow down a minute, rewind the tape, and really unpack these pillars one by one, giving us time to just kind of fully understand and apply each of them. And so that's what we're gonna do. Today, I'm kicking off a special mini series, diving deeper into the five pillars that Melissa shared for workplace happiness. So we're gonna kick off.

for this episode with a focus on those first two pillars, which was knowing your strengths and then blending them with your passions. So again, if you haven't listened to Melissa's episode, the five pillars of workplace happiness, stick around, listen to this episode, make sure that you go back. And even if you already have listened to it and you're thinking, well, I don't need this, like, please stick with me here for a minute because today we're just gonna go deeper with that.

with just new insights, faith and research that I think can transform how you really work and live. And so to kick us off today, I wanna start with a question for you. And that is, do you really know what your strengths are? Like have you paused to think about the things that you do really naturally well, the things that energize you, the activities that just make you feel alive and engaged?

Jill O'Boyle (02:26.892)
Because listen, like what we're talking about today isn't some just feel good exercise. It truly is the key to workplace happiness, productivity, fulfillment. And as Melissa had shared with us on pillar number one, unleash your strengths, I started to do that. I started to reflect and pause on my own strengths. So I had taken the strength finder assessment.

That's one that she recommended in the episode. I had taken that assessment a while ago. And so I went back to that assessment to kind of pull up my top five strengths. I remembered my number one strength. I know what that is, but I was just curious, like, what are my other strengths that was uncovered in that assessment? And so my number one strength is communication. And then my second strength is woo.

W O O means winning others over. And so as I started to reflect on these two strengths and what the results had shared about my strengths, I really had this just light bulb moment. Like I realized that much of what I love about what I do right now, coaching, speaking, helping women just live intentionally comes from really leaning into these strengths that I have been given.

So that connection, that spark, that aha moments that my clients have, like helping others and women find their true voice and identity, like that is what really energizes me and what brings me like so much joy. And so as I was pausing and as I was reflecting on these strengths, I started to think back to my corporate project management role.

And in that role, I really wasn't able to fully operate in those strengths. I spent a lot of my time in that career on logistics and operational task processes. And yes, sure, right? All of those revolve around communication, right? Communication is a broad area. But if I really think about it, in that line of my work, communication back then relied heavily on

Jill O'Boyle (04:53.324)
I would say problem solving, that just daily communication, that follow up, maybe hand holding, if you will. And sure, these are things that I did really well, I could do really well, but they weren't necessarily things that were energizing me or bringing me the same joy that I feel like I have now. And so as I reflect on how I'm using my strengths now in my coaching and my speaking business,

I just realized how much more my strengths just align with the work I do now. And it's also why my life and my work feels so much more lighter. It feels more purposeful. It feels more joyful. And so I love that. I love that I took that episode and went back and re-listened to what Melissa was saying. And I did what I'm asking you to do and just go back and pause and really, really think.

And it gave me a lot of clarity of how I should be aligning my strengths with the work I do. Now, if you know me well, if you've been listening to this podcast for quite some time, you know that I really get geeked out when things are like backed by science, they're backed by research, and they're rooted in faith and scripture. And so I decided to also dig a little bit deeper and take what Melissa said about unleashing our strengths for happiness

and went to the research and went to the Bible. And I'm excited to talk about this today because here's what I found. Research shows that people who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged at work and three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life. Six times more likely to be engaged at work and three times more likely to have this

Excellent quality of life like I don't know about you, but those stats should make you really want to pause really want to dig in and go a little bit deeper into knowing your strengths and Ensuring that you are using them Daily in your work like who doesn't want a better quality of life and being more engaged in your work like come on I think we all do right so do the work to figure out Where your strengths are and how are you showing up every day? Okay

Jill O'Boyle (07:19.042)
The other cool stat about this is Harvard Business Research reported that teams that focus on strengths outperform teams that focus on fixing weaknesses. That's huge, right? So they're focusing on the strengths. So these are corporations that are focusing on their team's strengths versus sitting over here and nagging about the weaknesses and making them stay stuck and trying to fix their weaknesses.

versus just being like, hey, they're not good at that, let's move on, let's focus on where they're good at, right? So they're gonna outperform because they're giving people the ability to focus on what they do well. What a concept, right? my gosh. So it's really, really big. It's huge, honestly, because it means that your natural abilities aren't just good for you, right? But they're good for your whole team. They're good for your company. They're good for the people around you. We wanna be.

around people that are walking in their strengths because they're going to be more engaged, they're going to be more happy. I have a real life example that I can share about this. thinking back to my corporate career, right? So the company that I worked for, they actually did a great job of recognizing my strengths in that communication in woo that winning others over and relationship building actually pretty quickly. Like I was quickly promoted from project manager

to senior project manager and then quickly to manager of project management. So overseeing my project management team, right? So they recognize Jill is best suited in a role where she can be relationship building. She is loves to communicate and connect with her team. Let's promote her to oversee a team, right? So a role where I could fully lean into those strengths.

lead my team well, inspire collaboration, motivate my team, bring connection into our workplace with the people around us. So good on them that they recognize that early. Where did we fall short though? Here's where they fell short. Instead of letting me focus primarily on those areas, I was still tasked with like managing the day-to-day operations,

Jill O'Boyle (09:45.442)
the project level task on top of all my managerial responsibilities. So I was promoted to be the manager, but yet I had a, just a book still of clients, projects, tasks, demands. So the workload just increased, right? And sure, I did a really good job for a long time of just handling that. But again, it wasn't where my energy or my passion naturally flowed.

I found myself really stretched thin. I was spending time on work that really drained me rather than work that honestly lit me up, which would have been staying in that management role and building my team up. That is where my gifts and strengths lie. And it would have been beneficial to the team. It would have been beneficial for that corporation. So, you know, this is just a perfect example of the research honestly in action.

Like when we focus on fixing weaknesses or filling gaps instead of leaning into strengths, engagement drops and our potential impact honestly is just gonna be limited. And so at the same time when we structure roles around people's strengths, not only does that individual thrive, but honestly the whole entire team and organization is gonna benefit, right?

So had I been able to dedicate my time primarily to leveraging my natural gifts and strengths, I would have seen greater results in my work. I wouldn't have been probably burning out like I was. And I would have had experienced this kind of a fulfillment and energy that the research just highlighted there, right? But you know me, all things work together for good, right?

So luckily for me, I am fully leaning into communication and woo later in my career, right, journey. So in my coaching and speaking business now, this has allowed me to experience that energy, that joy, that impact in a way that I couldn't in my earlier corporate role. So again, all things work out together for good, but if you can recognize your strengths and bring that up,

Jill O'Boyle (12:07.406)
for you not only yourself, but actually have a conversation with your human resource department and your or your direct boss and supervisor. It would benefit you and it would benefit them like 100%. All right, but we're gonna take it a deep step further because like I said, I love research. I love backing things up with research, but I love to see how this shows up in the Bible, how this is also.

Rooted in faith because let me tell you everything is in the Bible. Like the Bible is not boring. Get out your Bibles read it Any lesson that you need can be found in the Bible So I'm just gonna put put that there so I took it back I took what Melissa said about unleashing your strengths and I went back and Found where is this also showing up in Scripture? Where is it also rooted in? faith

because God has uniquely gifted each of us with strengths and passions for a purpose. So I already knew that, but I wanted to go and just dig into the scripture and find the one that shares it pretty boldly, which is in Romans 12, six through eight. And it says, we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Right? So you can continue reading on that verse.

Also in 1 Peter 4 10, God also reminds us to use whatever gift we've received to serve others as faithful stewards of God grace.

So in other words, basically what God is saying is he did not make us generic. He designed us intentionally with unique abilities to go out and serve and make a difference and bring impact to this world. That is what he wants us to do. And you have that ability in your DNA. Like he's given you these gifts, not just willy nilly, but on purpose to actually go out.

Jill O'Boyle (14:11.2)
and do the things that he's given you the ability to do. And actually you'll be happier and more joyful and make a difference. So do it, right? Do it. Because when we step into our strengths and we begin to blend them with our passions, which is what Melissa was also sharing on that episode, we're not just finding personal fulfillment for ourselves. We're honoring God. We're serving others. We're creating

A ripple effect of just impact, legacy. And that is a workplace happiness that goes beyond just perks and paychecks. Like you're making a difference. It's meaningful, it's purposeful, it's for eternal. And I think if we can wrap our head around that a little bit more, and when we think about how we show up for others,

and how we show up for ourselves and how do we show up to honor God? And we get out of our day to day mundane lives and just realize like everything that we have been given is for eternal.

So your strengths are not given to you willy-nilly, they are purposeful. So how do we take all of this and go apply it? How do we get practical? So for me, leaning into communication and woo does, like I said, show up in my coaching, it shows up in my speaking, it shows up.

with helping women live intentionally. It's why I love leading workshops, hosting retreats, having conversation, creating this podcast, right? Creating space where women can discover their own potential. Like it's so energizing for me. It's so fulfilling for me. And so I want you to get practical.

Jill O'Boyle (16:18.262)
I want you to find that same joy, that same energy that's gonna light you up, like light a fire under you. And so my challenge for you this week would be to just take a moment to really reflect on your top strengths. Like go back and pause and really think about what are your top strengths? And then ask yourself, are you fully leaning into them at work? Like, are there ways that you can shift your focus to...

utilizing those gifts in ways that's gonna bring you energy and joy. And like I said before, like not just for you, right? But to serve your team, to serve the people around you, to honor God. So do that for yourself, but also my other thought is do you lead a team? Are you in a position in your corporate job where you are a manager? You are responsible for your team.

And if you just said, yes, you do, then I have another question for you. Do you know your team's strengths? And if so, can you help them shine? And if you don't know your team's strengths, I think it's beneficial for you to be sure that that's a goal for Q4 or Q1 to add. How can you lead your team well if you don't know what motivates your team?

So I would make sure that you do the strength finder assessment for your team. You know what their strengths are. Because honestly, as I was thinking back to Melissa's episode, she kind of gave a really good example about this. And she said, somebody on her team was just naturally gifted in strategy.

And so she's like, well, I'm gonna put this person in a role that's gonna allow them to be a natural strategist for our business, right? So is there a person on your team that just has that ability to be just a great strategy mindset where they might thrive when you give them planning responsibilities? Or is there someone on your team that is a relationship builder, right? That may excel in like client facing.

Jill O'Boyle (18:45.132)
roles, team support roles, are they somebody like me that is a woo, they love to win others over? Are you giving them opportunity to utilize that strength of cheering on their team, promoting their team, having fun games where the teams can get motivated and competitive? If you have some people on your team that are super competitive,

energizing that fun with that competitive and making games in your organization would probably be a great thing for that person. Right? So think about your team and think about what's going to energize them the most because this is going to be a beneficial for them because they're going to come into work more energized, more happy to be there. And you're going to see the results, right? Engagement plus productivity plus innovation equals profit. That is what Melissa outlined for us.

in the latest episode. So, highly recommend that you take some time to just dive into yourself, dive in your team and find out what are the strengths that you bring. Because these little small steps, they may seem silly for you, but small intentional steps make a huge difference. So, one is I asked you to go and identify your top three to five strengths. Like go and take the strength, find your test, you can just go on Google.

type in strengthfinder.com and purchase that assessment. That investment into that assessment is an investment into your life, I promise you. Everything that's gonna cost you for your wellbeing is not a cost, it's an investment into yourself. So reflect, take that assessment and begin to reflect on where do these strengths naturally show up in your work, in your life? And then also take it a step further, that pillar number two that Melissa shared was blending that strength

with your passions. So start to consider your passions. What do you love doing? How can you pair that with your strengths to create just true joy and fulfillment? So I love the example that Melissa shared in our episode the other week about somebody on our team loved to bake. And so she ended up like paying her to bake and bring all the goodies for all of their, you know, events that they would have in their organization.

Jill O'Boyle (21:14.018)
so you can be super creative with how you can bring somebody's passion into your work. If we just kind of get out outside of just the box thinking. So I would just consider, consider taking just one intentional action this week to find your strengths and then use, a strength that you discovered in a way that's going to serve others and it's going to bring you joy.

and just continue to just seek God to guide you and how you're going to use those gifts intentionally for his impact and his purpose for your life, like not just your own personal gain. So.

Today, we unpacked a lot, right? But we explored knowing your strengths and blending them with your passions. How to identify what energizes you, how to leverage it in your work and live in alignment with God's design. So, lot we just shared there, but I'm excited to just kind of keep this momentum going as we continue to just unpack these top five pillars. So next week, we're gonna dive into pillar number three, which is who.

you work with and why the people around you matter more than you might realize. This is going to be a great episode just diving in to people. We all love people, right? So this is going to be a great episode. So make sure you hit the subscribe button if you haven't already so you don't miss our next episode on this mini series. And I just so appreciate you.

taking the time to be here with me today. Thanks for listening. Until next time, go out, make it a great day.