Passion, Strengths, & Skills - Oh My!

In my coaching practice, we work a lot around the thought of “passion”. Passion is defined loosely as those things that you LOVE to do…those things that bring you great pleasure…those things you will spend all of your time on if you are not careful. My lead question is usually, “Tell me some things you are passionate about and how much time you spend doing these?”  

Clients can tell me several things that are their passion. And most tell me that they aren’t spending much time on these at all. Not engaging your passions is an energy drain.

We also do a lot of work around strengths.  Strengths are traits you are born with. And, as we grow into our professional lives, we spend a lot of time working from our strengths. We go to school to fuel our strengths. We take continuing ed classes to build skills to enhance our strengths.  We rely on our strengths to help us succeed.

Yet sometimes the problems are beyond our strengths. And when this happens, we experience failure. And this is another energy drain.

Skills are behaviors we learn to build on our strengths. Hopefully, these skills emerge from the challenges that are before us that we don’t feel confident about. Learning new skills gives us confidence that our “toolbox” is being fitted with the appropriate actions to keep succeeding.  

However, all to often in today’s world, challenges bombard us. And very few of us have had the passion, the strengths, or the skills to deal with the new reality of the Covid world.  

Coaching supports you as you realign your strengths and skills. And as your skillset realigns, your strengths increase, and your confidence grows. When realignment leads to renewed confidence, your passion for the work thrives.

Bo Prosser is the director of coaching for the Rural Clergy Initiative.