Strengths Use at Work Scale

One of the most effective and rapid measures of job satisfaction, and its impact on your life, is whether or not you are using your strengths. You can look at this as: “The genie doesn’t like to stay in the bottle.”

Try this brief survey that can help you see if your strengths are being used in various situations. While the overall score is meaningful, what may help you even more is to note which of the 14 questions rank lowest for you, and how relevant this is to your situation. As always, actively thinking about or contemplating your results is helpful.

Here we go…

The following questions ask you about your strengths, that is, the things that you are able to do well, or things that come naturally to you. Please respond to each statement using the scale below:

1               2               3               4               5               6               7
Strongly disagree                                                     Strongly agree

1. ______ I am regularly able to do what I do best
2. ______ I always play to my strengths
3. ______ I always try to use my strengths
4. ______ I achieve what I want by using my strengths
5. ______ I use my strengths every day
6. ______ I am able to use my strengths in a lot of different situations
7. ______ I use my strengths to get what I want out of life
8. ______ My work gives me lots of opportunities to use my strengths
9. ______ My life presents me with lots of different ways to use my strengths
10. ______ Using my strengths comes naturally to me
11. ______ I find it easy to use my strengths in the things that I do
12. ______ Most of my time is spent doing things that I am good at doing
13. ______ Using my strengths in something that I am familiar with
14. ______ I am able to use my strengths in lots of different ways

Reprinted with permission: Robert Biswas-Diener: “Positive Psychology Coaching”

The total possible number score is 98, so a total score of 50 or greater indicates reasonable use of your strengths from an overall perspective. But look at the different scores for each of the items – that’s where the contemplation comes in.