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Jessica Lackey shares an article designed to help you find and leverage your talents and strengths.

“I never truly considered what I was good at and how those experiences fit together. I just did the next job that I was asked to do.”

There are personality tests and strengths assessments galore. And they can be very helpful to put language around our gifts, our strengths, our geniuses.

But what they lack? How to use our gifts in context. How to best use your gifts given the circumstances surrounding you, like company culture, company growth stage or your personal role. Knowing where your company and your role exist within the creation cycle to best leverage your gifts.

This allows us to set aside titles, power, and scope of responsibility to get curious about what type of role is right for us.

To radically ROOT into our personal and innate sources of power.

Three Steps of the Creation Cycle

Ideation: This is the stage of dreaming, wonder, invention, conception. Your company may be dreaming of new business models, customer segments, product lines. The outcome is uncertain and experimentation is rewarded.

Activation: This is the stage of discernment and prioritization, turning chaos into order and mobilizing groups toward the shared vision. Your company may be finalizing that strategy, outlining that marketing calendar, or building teams to achieve that vision.

Implementation: This is the stage of “go time”. Of putting the ideas into defined action, managing the emotional impact of change, ensuring actions get done. Cycles of implementation might last for a few months (implementing a launch sequence) or years (building a new warehouse or manufacturing facility).

(h/t to Working Genius and Sparketype for naming some of the qualities at each step).

So, now how do we look at our gifts in context of that cycle?

Identify your gifts and genius through the lens of the creation cycle.

Key points include:

• Using the lens of the creation cycle
• Your role and the stage of the company
• Identifying vulnerabilities

Read the full article, Consider Your Gifts in Context to Change, on LinkedIn.