Charge up your career by understanding the difference between strengths and skills

Understanding the difference between skills and strengths can be useful when thinking about your next career move. Both are important, especially when looking for a new job and going for interviews.  

Here’s how to uncover your strengths and your skills, and why this information is useful when considering your career and preparing for a job interview. 

Skills vs strengths – the difference   

Skills are the things that we can do that we’ve learned through training or practice. We can get better at them over time because we’ve had the opportunity to repeat and refine the skill. Often, they are task-specific. Examples are things like data analysis, driving, or learning to speak a language. 

Strengths are natural qualities, but, importantly, are also things that energise and motivate us. Strengths are role-agnostic – no matter what the job is, you would transfer your strengths to any job, examples might be empathy, curiosity, and resilience. 

Strengths can power up skills 

Combining your innate strengths with your skills is powerful. For example, if you have a strength in building relationships, this could show up a few ways. It could be that you’re a good people manager, you can build psychological safety and trust with your team members. When you’re interviewing, that strength would be evident by you putting people at ease. Or it could show up when you successfully influence a stakeholder or organisational partner.  

If problem-solving was one of your strengths, you might be able to create really sophisticated spreadsheets that save your team a lot of work, but you might also be brilliant at escape rooms! 

Finding a role with that magic combination of things you’re good at and things you really enjoy is what most of my career coaching clients are searching for. Knowledge is power, so the first step is to understand what your skills and strengths are.  

How to spot your own skills and strengths 

To identify some of your best skills, think about jobs you’ve done and what you did well in that role. What did you learn how to do? What things do people come to you for help with? What feedback have you had that you are good at something?  

When looking for strengths, you’ll need to tune into the activities you both enjoy and are really energised by. You might spot these through recognising the moments you’re in ‘flow’ (lost in the activity) because you’re loving what you are doing. When do you feel most motivated? And what do people praise you for at work, at hom,e and in any volunteering or clubs you’ve involved with because they notice your natural aptitude for it? 

The intersection of strengths and skills 

Strengths and skills do overlap and connect. You may have improved a skill that you’ve always had a natural ability to do. For example, you might have a strength with numbers, and you’ve done more learning or training to turn this into a skill you can use at work. They work in tandem in this situation.  

You can also be good at something, but it doesn’t motivate or energise you. Instead, it drains you. This is still a skill, but you don’t want to do a lot of it, as it isn’t a strength too. So for example, you might have the skill to create a spreadshee,t but it’s not something that you enjoy doing. 

I find that some people can choose jobs they do well, but don’t enjoy. Over time, they get dissatisfied and feel they’re a square peg in a round hole because they aren’t satisfied or motivated by the work, despite being more than capable of doing it. Whereas if you can find a role that plays to your strengths, you can then work on perfecting the skills you need through training and practice. 

How do you find out what your strengths and skills are? 

There are a range of tools to help you assess your unique combination of skills and strengths.  

When working with my career coaching clients . I’ve used Strength Profile by Cappfinity , and I’m qualified to use Strength Scope but you can look at  VIA Strength which is an easy-to-access free resource too.  

I use a range of skills assessments or Skills Card activities to help you assess your skillset; I rank skills you love, what you quite enjoy and what you don’t enjoy against what you’re good at, reasonable at, and what needs improvement to create a 9 box grid. We then focus on the skills you have placed in ‘good at and love using’ to combine them This can point you towards certain roles or help you understand what will and what won’t give you job satisfaction. The National Careers Service offer a free skills test and there are other free tools to assess and explore how your skills match to careers. 

If you’re interested in understanding the difference between skills and strengths, send me an email to book your free first call.