Work Your Strengths:
A Scientific Process to Identify Your Skills and Match
Them to the Best Career for You
Do you panic when your car won’t start or blurt out the first thing that pops in your
mind? Can you keep track of your possessions and remember your appointments? How good are
you at coming up with long-term plans and then actually sticking to them? The answers are
determined by your Executive Skills, a set of cognitive functions hardwired in the adult
brain that define who you are and how you operate. Figure out the strengths and weaknesses
of your own skill set and you can figure out exactly what job you’ll excel at.
That’s the promise of Work Your Strengths, the most on-target,
research-based career advice you’ll ever find.
Written by an award-winning author, together with experts in the field of
neuroscience and psychology, Work Your Strengths draws on the latest discoveries about the
brain and the authors’ original data to help you accurately assess your Executive
Skills, pinpoint your ideal job—and avoid potential trouble. You’ll learn about
working memory, emotional control, sustained attention, organizational skills,
goal-directed persistence, flexibility, stress tolerance, and more—skills that can make
or break your chances of success. Take a free online test to gauge your own skill set,
then match your profile against the Executive Skills exhibited by more than two thousand
high achievers in a multitude of industries and positions.
Packed with the authors’ eye-opening findings, this unique book
gives you a wholly new, scientifically sound way to play to your strengths—and locate
the job that best fits your own strongest set of Executive Skills.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Finding the Right Job
Playing to Strengths Leads to Goodness of Fit
Matching Strengths of High-Performing Individuals
The Executive Skills .
Frontal Lobes and Executive Skills.
The Spread Between Strengths andWeaknesses: The Differentiator .
CHAPTER 1: DETERMINING YOUR OWN STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES . . . AND FINDING
THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF OTHERS
Skill 1: Response Inhibition
Skill 2:Working Memory
Skill 3: Emotional Control
Skill 4: Sustained Attention
Skill 5: Task Initiation
Skill 6: Planning/Prioritization
Skill 7: Organization
Skill 8: Time Management
Skill 9: Goal-Directed Persistence
Skill 10: Flexibility
Skill 11: Metacognition
Skill 12: Stress Tolerance
Finding Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses
Workload and Executive Skills
Voices from the Front Lines:Workload
Exceeding Your Cognitive Bandwidth
Knowing in Advance .
CHAPTER 2: FINDING SUCCESS AND AVOIDING FAILURE: WHY YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
ARE THE WAY THEY ARE: THE SCIENCE BEHIND EXECUTIVE SKILLS
Executive Skills in Psychology
Executive Skills and the Brain
Executive Skills and Brain Development
CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS A HIGH PERFORMER AND HOW DO YOU BECOME ONE? SELECTING THE RIGHT
PATH TO INCREASE THE CHANCE OF SUCCESS
Performance-Based: Consistency Is Key
Quantitative: Expectations and Results
Qualitative: Some Subjectivity
Position in the Organization
Company First
Multidimensional
How Many Are High Performers?
Voices from the Front Lines: Number of High Performers
What Sets High Performers Apart
Voices from the Front Lines:What Sets Them Apart
CHAPTER 4: NAVIGATING YOUR ROAD TO HIGH PERFORMANCE: FINDING YOUR SKILLS
COMBINATION TO DETERMINE WHAT INDUSTRY YOU SHOULD BE IN
Most Prevalent Executive Skills Strengths andWeaknesses
Some Skills Go Hand in Hand
Strengths vs. Commonly FoundWeaknesses
High-Performing Males vs. High-Performing Females
Executive Skills of High Performers by Age
Task Initiation: The CommonWeakness
The High-Performing Pair
Executive Skills of High Performers by Industry
Financial Services
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Technology
Education
Nonprofits
Finding the Match
CHAPTER 5: WHAT’S THE RIGHT DEPARTMENT FOR YOU? THE STRENGTHS OF HIGH PERFORMERS
BY DEPARTMENT
Marketing/Advertising/Promotion: Always Getting Better
Sales: Not Falling Through the Cracks
Systems/IT: All About Road Maps
General Management: Goal-Oriented
Operations: Good on the Fly
Customer Service: Strategically Important
Administrative: Organized and Can Adapt
Finance: Modify on the Fly
Accounting: Methodical Approach
Clinical: Organized and Starting Right Away
Executive Skills in a Department: Clinical High Performers
Right-Seating People the First Time
CHAPTER 6: DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE IN THE CORNER SUITE? SKILLS BROKEN DOWN
BY TITLE
' Are You in the Right Job?.
The Brains in the Corner Office
The Brains Down the Hall
The Self-Correcting Directors
The Managers with a Plan
The Organized Employees
CHAPTER 7: HOW YOUR STRENGTHS MATCH THOSE OF OTHERS AT WORK: WAYS TO MATCH
BEHAVIORS TO EXECUTIVE SKILLS IN YOUR BUSINESS
Shared Strengths in One Organization
Shared Strengths in Two Nonprofits
Mapping Characteristics to Executive Skills
Avoiding Potential Conflicts
Focus on Executive Skills Strengths
Voices from the Front Lines: Strengths andWeaknesses
Healthcare: Clinical vs. Nonclinical
High Performers in Sales-Buyer Interactions
Observable Behaviors
Strong Flexibility: Typical Behaviors
Weak Flexibility: Typical Behaviors
Strong Response Inhibition: Typical Behaviors .
Weak Response Inhibition: Typical Behaviors
CHAPTER 8: AVOIDING THE WRONG PROMOTION: SORTING THE STRENGTHS OF EMPLOYEES VS.
MANAGERS VS. EXECUTIVES
Voices from the Front Lines: High and Low Performers
The Failed Sales Promotion
Voices from the Front Lines: Promoting Salespeople to Management
Sales Employees vs. Sales Management
Working in a Comfort Zone
Voices from the Front Lines: Job Satisfaction
IT Executives Can Shield the Heat
Operations: Order and Organization
Administrative: Organization Is Key
Customer Service: Recalling Past Solutions
Can Performance Be Predicted?
CHAPTER 9: DETERMINE YOUR FIT—THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE EXECUTIVE SKILLS MAP: WHERE
DO HIGH PERFORMERS WITH
YOUR STRENGTHS WORK?
Response Inhibition
Working Memory
Emotional Control
Sustained Attention
Task Initiation
Planning/Prioritization
Organization
Time Management
Goal-Directed Persistence
Flexibility
Metacognition
Stress Tolerance
The High-Performance Executive Skills Map
Industries by Executive Skills Strengths
Departments by Executive Skills Strengths
Job Functions/Titles by Executive Skills Strengths
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX A: HOW THE TWO-YEAR STUDY WAS CONDUCTED: HIGH PERFORMERS AND THE
EXECUTIVE SKILLS PROFILE
Determining High Performance
Using the Executive Skills Profile
Selecting Subjects
Selecting Industry Types and Departments
Job Functions and Titles
High Performers by Age and Gender
High Performers by Company Size
The Questionnaire
Organizations in the Study
The Study Continues
APPENDIX B: THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE EXECUTIVE SKILLS TABLES
Top Six Industries
Executive Skills by Department: Top 10 Departments
Job Function/Title
Employees vs.Managers vs. Executives
Males vs. Females
Profit vs. Nonprofit
Profit vs. Nonprofit (Excluding CEOs)
Healthcare: Clinical vs. Nonclinical
APPENDIX C: ABOUT NFI RESEARCH.
NOTES
INDEX
235 pages, Hardcover
