Character assessment: application to situations

1.0  Description of activity and signature strengths

To put my strengths into practice, I opted to volunteer as a sales employee in a business dealing with the sale of clothes for men. The mode of operation is that customers walk into the shop and move around the shop on their own trying to identify clothes they’d want to buy and the sales staff would be assisting with explaining the qualities of the dresses as well as organising for the purchase of clothes selected. The customer experience was designed to be mainly dependent on the client and the level of interaction with the employees was minimal. As such, there was a lapse in the creation of meaningful relationships between the business and the customers. I sought to invoke my strengths of humour and creativity to help in improving the quality of customer experience with the customers.

2.0  How the two strengths were used

To get the business to embrace the new operation model I was proposing, I sought for permission to use it on a few customers. The management would then use the resultant customer reaction to determine whether it was worth being adopted. I would welcome the customers at the entrance of the shop and would accompany them throughout their shopping experience. I would use humour to get customers to relax and open up in sharing their personal preferences. I would then use my creativity to recommend suitable attires for different occasions as well as recommending suitable matches between sets of clothes. This would enable customers to make purchases in batches hence help in increasing the volume of sales. My experience with the first few customers was not fruitful, but as I continued trying, it begun to bear fruit. This could be proven by the fact that customers that I had attended to tended to buy more items than the average customer in the shop. The two strengths applied were complementary in the sense that humour alone would not be sufficient to guarantee success. I would use my sense of humour in making the customers feel good about their ability to make brilliant choices then use my creativity to make suggestions that they would find to be impressive.

3.0  Description of the experience

I can describe my experience as anxious at best. Even though I knew I had a sense of humour, I had never been able to channel it in a manner that makes it useful in a commercial sense. I was also unaccustomed to making conscious use of it. In fact, I was initially very surprised to find that humour was one of my top strengths. The anxiety was also brought about by the fact that I would be using it on strangers. My humour had hitherto the experience only used on people I was already well acquainted with. I was therefore anxious that I could offend rather than charm customers with my sense of humour. However, as it begun to yield positive effects, I was excited to put it into further use and was glad to advocate for my approach to be adopted by the rest of the staff members.

On creativity, I was already confident that I had what it takes to provide creative advice to customers. I had already done a lot of background study on the customers as well as their preferences for clothes and I was very eager to put my knowledge into practice.

4.0  Application of top five strengths as a team member

4.1  Humour

This trait can be used to diffuse tensions and ensure the team is working together. It is common for conflicts to arise in organisations where conflicts may be task based or even personal. This creates tensions that can easily inhabit the ability of groups to function. With my sense of humour, these weaknesses can be converted into opportunities where light moments are created and conflicts used to enrich the groups.

4.2  Creativity

Creativity can be applied on two scenarios: in the determination of team approach to solving problems at hand; and in creation of unique solutions to the challenges being tackled. Even though my influence as a team member would be limited, I would be able to use my creativity to propose new approaches to operation in the team.

4.3  Love

My strengths on love can serve to make me effective as a team member by exploiting my abilities to appreciate other people and act in a manner that does not put them at a disadvantage. In appreciating love, I uphold the adage “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and I expect this approach to be useful in maintaining good relationships between team members. I would expect the same attitude to be reciprocated among team members and result in a team that is very effective in all the tasks assigned to it.

4.4  Social intelligence

My ability to discern people’s intentions even before they say them can be very useful in making me an effective team member. With this strength, I can help to diffuse tensions (using my humour) by initiating a change of topic whenever the team is gravitating towards an area of contention.

4.5  Prudence

Prudence is an important tool in guarding against the dangers of group think. I could use this to call the team to caution and ensure all options are analysed thoroughly before any solution is arrived at. Even though this would be at a risk of being seen as the person dragging the team behind, the overall effect would be desirable.

5.0  Jobs suiting my strengths

5.1  Sales team member in a clothing company

The main objective of the team would be to use our interaction with customers to recommend new designs for production. It would also entail coming up with new ways of reaching out to customers and ensuring that they make purchases from the organisation. My strengths such as creativity and prudence would be very useful in guiding the group towards reaching amicable solutions. I would also be able to use humour and social intelligence to ensure that the team remains cohesive and delivers to expectation.

5.2  Quality audit team member in a motor production company

The work of this team would be to identify the production processes, pinpoint hiccups and recommend solutions that would lead to improvements in production efficiency and profitability. My strength in prudence would be useful in evaluating the pros and cons of every proposal and ensure only the best ideas are fronted. I’d also want to use my creativity to propose solutions that are unique and capable of making the company more competitive.

6.0  Comments from a friend

When a friend was asked to comment on my choices of jobs in 5.0 above, he agreed that the jobs do match to my strengths. However, he was quick to point out that I would be able to utilise these strengths better as a team leader and not as a team member. He pointed out that even though as a team member I’d be able to ensure that team members work in harmony, it was the effectiveness of the team leadership that has a bigger impact on that. The same was observed in terms of my strength in prudence where my insistence as a team member on some evaluation standards would not suffice unless I had the ability to control team decisions.

My friend’s suggestion that I should rather act as a leader in the jobs cited above sounded good to me. However, I felt that I’d need to take some time functioning as a team member while strengthening my leadership qualities before I seek to act in a leadership position.