Star-shaped points

We seem to have started off talking about round holes and whether they are real holes or holes of our own making.

But what I get really excited about is star-shaped points.

In her most recent post, SJ wrote “I feel just as undervalued and underused as I did then; I’m just as convinced that my job isn’t making full use of my skills.” And I thought, oh, yeah, I remember. This is why we’re here. I spent fifteen years feeling like that. Whether or not I could have done it differently, that’s the reality of my experience and I believe it’s the experience of many women in the workplace.

I’ve spent a lot of my career working for very large financial institutions (henceforth VLFI for ease of typing). VLFI tend to have very standardised processes for people management, and one of these processes is the competency framework.

I am not an fan of competency frameworks. Their intention – to make sure that employees are competent to do their jobs – may be sensible (albeit still patriarchal and privileged). They can fulfil useful purposes, like making sure that it’s not okay to bully subordinates into a nervous breakdown. But all too often they become a way to make sure that everyone behaves alike. People whose faces don’t fit find that their careers run aground on the competency framework. It’s written by the people who are in charge at the moment, so of course it highlights what they currently do well. And then they hire people who look and act like them, because it’s safer. And so the system is perpetuated.

Mostly I am not a fan of competency frameworks because they are so stupid. How can you possibly get the best out of people by telling them all to act the same way? People are not the same. We are star-shaped. We have different strengths and different motivations and different gifts.

During my fifteen years of corporate alienation, I saw amazing things happen and I occasionally – gasp! – did some really great work. Invariably this was when people were able to use their strengths. But until now, it’s seemed to happen by chance, and it’s dissolved quickly when the organisation has re-organised or the project has ended.

I am now studying positive psychology. Positive psychology encompasses a lot of areas – it is not just ‘the science of happiness’ – and my particular area of interest is strengths. Positive psychologists have started to study strengths and, although it’s a subject in its infancy, some interesting results are emerging.

The VIA Inventory of Strengths is far from perfect, but I think it’s a really great start in helping people to understand, define and connect to their strengths. Mine are creativity, spirituality, kindness and wisdom – not obvious candidates for a glittering career in corporate life. But the fact remains that those are my strengths. I might like different ones, but these are the ones I’ve got.

When I ask the question, ‘how shall I use my strengths in the work I’m going to do today?’, everything goes better. Even the small and stupid stuff goes better. I reorganised a filing system that I’d been procrastinating about for a year, by looking for a creative solution and not a ruthlessly efficient one. (And I’m thrilled with it. Go me.) By valuing kindness as a strength, I can remember that my contribution to project teams has often kept others going. Spirituality’s probably one of the hardest to find a role for in the workplace – but it can give me the motivation to keep ploughing on through the roughest of rough patches.

I think this works for two reasons. The first is that when we are using our strengths, we’re better all-round. More authentic, more energetic, more alive. The second is that using our strengths enables us to perceive ourselves in a positive way. No longer do we rank ourselves against somebody else’s competency framework and notice only how we fail to measure up. Instead we are seeing our own star-shaped points, and by focusing on them we get more of them.