I was working with a client yesterday when a lightbulb moment hit.
We were developing her marketing mosaic, looking to pin down that intersecting sweet spot between strategies that will leverage her natural strengths and what her potential clients are most likely to be drawn to when I couldn’t help but notice an air of hesitancy surrounding her.
- Is she not happy with the suggestions I’m making, I wondered.
- Does she doubt her ability to implement them?
- Is she concerned about the time and resources involved?
The lightbulb switched on and before I jumped to any conclusions, I pulled out her strengths profile and checked the Thinking Styles area.
Sure enough, it revealed a crucial piece of the puzzle: Incubator is a core thinking style for her.
Business women with an Incubator Realised Strength:
- Love to think, to ponder and to reflect throughout your day, every day.
- Enjoy giving yourself dedicated thinking time.
- Don’t like to be rushed, want and need time and space to come up with ideas and questions.
In direct contrast, Incubator is at the opposite end of my thinking spectrum. I have a bias for optimistic action, course correcting as I go along.
What’s your style?
There are many different approaches to thinking and acting. My client needs time to ponder and deliberate. I need to take faster action. This contrast is not about which approach is better, but rather about understanding that our unique thinking styles significantly affect our strategic planning and decision-making processes.
Knowing whether you resonate more with being an incubator, action-oriented, or another thinking style altogether can be a game-changer.
It empowers you to approach strategic development in an unapologetic way that aligns with your natural inclinations, enhancing not only the effectiveness of your decisions but also the joy and fulfilment of being in business.
It’s no fun when you’re a square peg continually being forced into a round hole.
Change your way of working
If you identify with the incubator style make sure you integrate ample reflection time into your planning stages. If you’re a more action-oriented individual you’ll likely benefit from adopting a more dynamic, iterative approach to strategic development.
The goal is not to change who you are but to leverage your inherent strengths to create a business strategy that feels authentic and sustainable.
Of course thinking styles are only one of the Strengths families – we’ve also drawn on her strengths of Being, Motivating, Communicating and Relating as we remodelled her business core and services before we turned our attention to her marketing.
I firmly believe that your business needs to serve you as much as you serve your clients, and one of the core ways we achieve this goal is by leveraging what comes most naturally and easily to you. Research shows that when you are in your strengths, productivity, engagement, innovation, creativity, resilience and more all lift,
It’s a no-brainer strategy in and of itself!
Reflection time
Take some time to reflect on your own thinking style.
- How do you approach decision-making?
- Are there adjustments you can make to strategy development to better suit your natural inclinations?
Understanding and embracing your thinking style is not just about being more strategically effective, it’s also a Self-leadership skill. It’s about moving from a place of uncertainty and reactivity to a position of clarity and strategic action, as you shift further into your own internal authority as a business leader.
And my client? There’s a comfy incubator-friendly break before her next business mentoring session before we bed down those marketing initiatives!
P.S: A Strengths Profile is just one piece of the pre-work I have my clients complete before a Strategy workshop. If you’d like to know more about what it’s like to work with me to unlock the next chapter of your business, you can book a call with me here to chat.
