Ilana Golan: 7 Steps to Unlock Your Zone of Genius | E87
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What do you want to be known for in your career?
What do you want to be known for? I don't want you to think too far away when you think about what you want to be known for. I really want you to think about a year or two because our life changes and our priorities changes. And I talk a lot about this in my keynotes. But here, I just want to give you a little bit about the reason why I want you to focus only about these specific weeks. is because you have value that you can give today. And the question is, what is it, right? So maybe it's businesses and you know how to operate in lean situations, or you know how to entertain kids remote, or you can help adults with the lower stress meditation, building their reputation, right? Whatever it is.
So what is it that you can help today that will give value immediately in the coming weeks and build that reputation while you do it? And when you do that, you're going to do two things. One, figure out if you love it. and also start building that trust that you can be known for this. Now, I want to talk about what do you want to be known for, right?
What are the four categories of skills according to Gay Hendricks?
How do we figure out what you want to be known for? So Gay Hendricks actually creates a really interesting pyramid in which he divides our skills into four categories. One is incompetence. So incompetence, basically, you're not really good at this. When we were kids, we were taught to focus on the skills that we're not great at. But here as adults, I will tell you, stay away because you're always going to learn new things. You're always going to have gaps. But if you're focusing on an area that you're never going to get better, then you're really focusing on the wrong place. Okay. So for me, it's probably me in the kitchen. Nobody wants me there for too long. But the good news is that I married well.
So at least I got that, right? But that's my zone of incompetence. Then there's zone of competence. Competence is basically, you're okay. You're doing pretty okay. But honestly, others will do it better. This is probably me in coding. Yes, I was a good coder, but honestly... The minute I started working with customers, that's when I realized that's my zone of genius. Not the coding. There are better coders. There are people that love to do it 9, 10, 12 hours a day. That was not me. So figure out what are those skills. And then there's zone of excellence. Zone of excellence is actually a tricky one because you can actually have a really good job for the rest of your life, paid well, and you're going to be at that zone of excellence.
How can you identify your zone of genius?
But the problem is with going zone of excellence is that it's not your zone of genius. So you're going to be good, but you're not going to be uniquely, extremely amazing, or it's not going to make you as happy. Okay. So there's definitely some things that I can probably put in that zone of excellence, but I can probably assure you that I'm not as happy as I am now because now I'm operating at my zone of genius and I love it. Okay. So Figure out what that is for you, because if you can focus on that, you're still going to have gaps. You're still going to learn a lot. You're still going to have things that won't work well, and you're still going to fail all the time. We're going to talk about it in other videos, but you're still going to focus on that zone of genius, and that's what's going to make you remarkable and really successful and happy, shining, okay? Proud of yourself. So this is what we want, okay? We want to find that zone of genius. Now,
What strategies can help you focus on your strengths?
In Career Leap, in the actual program, we dive super deep into this and analyzing your skills and everything. But here, I was just going to give you a few tips, okay? So first of all, focus on your strengths. Literally write those down. So take a piece of paper, shut down any social media, and write down what are those strengths? What are you great at? And really think from childhood. What did you do as a child that was amazing and let everybody look at you and like, wow, like... She did that? Like, that's amazing. Okay. So really look back at what people were amazed by you. And write down those skills. What is that? Where do you think you're actually at the excellence and genius mode? And then write down what is interesting for you, because that's not necessarily the same.
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Chapters
4 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
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