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Bite-Sized Scenario Training™Finding Your

Unique Strengths

Bite-Sized Training™

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Version 3.1.

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Finding Your Unique StrengthsBite-Sized Training

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iiiFinding Your Unique Strengths Bite-Sized Training™ | Mind Tools

1. Introduction 1

2. Understanding Uniqueness 2

3. Determining the Competencies That People Value 3

4. Ranking Your Abilities 6

5. Your USP 11

6. Building and Marketing Your USP 14

7. Key Learning Points 16

Contents

1Finding Your Unique Strengths Bite-Sized Training™ | Mind Tools

1. Introduction

In this Bite-Sized Training session, we focus on helping you make the most of who you are – both at work and in your personal life.

We’ll explore how you can use Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Analysis to do this. It’s a tool commonly used by businesses to determine how to market their

products and services, and to discover how they can set themselves apart from their competition.

Individuals can also use USP Analysis. You can use it to analyze your strengths, so that you can make best use of them and develop them for the future. By completing this exercise, you can discover what makes your skills uniquely valuable, and reap the rewards as a result.

However, the reality is that many other people will have similar strengths to yours. For example, it’s not uncommon to find effective communicators, who work extremely hard, or who are strategic thinkers. You may also find that some people with similar skills and abilities do these things better than you!

To be the very best at anything takes focus, determination, sacrifice, and natural aptitude. But even if you are “the best” in one area, it doesn’t mean that you should necessarily put all of your “eggs in one skill-type basket.”

What is much better, and easier, is to be the most effective person you know, across a number of disciplines that your customers or employers really value. This is what USP Analysis focuses on: how to make yourself stand out in a sea of common traits and factors. It isn’t just one of your strengths, skills, talents, or abilities that makes you unique; it’s how, and where, you use and combine them that makes the difference. How you package your strengths, and how you tailor them to the opportunities that you seek, is the whole point behind a personal USP Analysis.

This Bite-Sized Training™ session focuses on how to conduct a personal USP Analysis. In one hour, you’ll learn how to:

• Determine what your employers and/or customers value the most in you.• Understand what your strengths are, compared with other people’s.• Identify how you can improve your career prospects by building on the

skills that matter.

This session on USP Analysis will give you the tools that you need to assess your strengths intelligently across multiple dimensions. The exercises will also help you come up with a marketable USP that you can use to pursue the career of your dreams.


2. Understanding Uniqueness

Think about the last time you bought something expensive, such as a car or an item of jewelry.

Did you go into the first showroom or store that you saw and buy the cheapest product you could find? Or did you think carefully about what

you wanted, research the market, choose the product that best suited your needs, and then try to get the best price?

Some people do buy things based on cost alone, but they may then have a product which isn’t completely appropriate. However, many others look for a product that best fits what they want. And while it’s usually difficult for businesses to make a profit solely by setting the lowest prices, it tends to be much easier to offer a higher-quality, higher-priced product if it uniquely meets someone’s needs. This is why being unique is such a highly valued attribute.

For most businesses, their uniqueness comes from their core competencies. The people who defined this relationship most effectively, C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, argued in their 1990 Harvard Business Review paper, “The Core Competence of the Corporation,” that core competencies are some of the most important sources of uniqueness. These are essential selling points that represent what a company does uniquely well, and that no one else can copy quickly enough to have an impact.

A core competence must be:

• Highly relevant to the purchaser.• Difficult to imitate.• Widely applicable across a number of markets.

When you apply the concept of core competence to individuals – say in a recruitment process – it’s the person who best suits a role who gets hired. And it’s the person whose skills benefit an organization the most who can command the highest rewards package.

When you look at your own competencies using the three criteria above, you can see that it’s quite hard to define personal core competencies. This is why we need to look at them as a package. So, for us to be uniquely valuable, we need to define a set of competencies that we can use to make the most of our life, and our career.

https://hbr.org/1990/05/the-core-competence-of-the-corporation

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3. Determining the Competencies That People Value

The first step in USP Analysis is to determine the skills and competencies that decision makers value. In our case, this person is likely to be a hiring manager, recruitment consultant, or HR professional during the recruitment period, a line manager who’s deciding on promotions, or a

client looking to hire you for a key role.

These “customers” are the gatekeepers to the opportunities that we want to pursue. They highly value certain skills, knowledge and abilities, which we can gain if we work in a certain field or industry, or if we return to education and retrain.

However, before we can look at the skills, knowledge and abilities that really matter, our first step is to decide what we want to achieve. In other words, what opportunities are attractive to us?

Action:Find some examples of opportunities that you are really excited about, and that you believe are achievable.

Choose your top three opportunities, and make sure that your current position is one of them. We suggest this because your current job can be used as a benchmark against which you can evaluate other options, and you don’t want to make the mistake of always believing that “the grass is greener on the other side.” Write these opportunities down below.


Brainstorm Valuable Characteristics Your personal USP is your unique selling point – the package of skills and talents that you have and others don’t. You won’t know what sort of package to bring, or to develop, unless you understand what makes people successful in the roles that you desire. You also need to consider what your “customers” want.

Look at successful people who currently work in your desired position or field, and consider these questions:

• What skills and personal qualities do they possess?• What skills and education do they value?• What skills set apart the people who excel in this field?• What skill set does their organization value? (If you have a particular

employer in mind, try to find out what competencies the hiring managers look for.)

First, you must identify the most valuable characteristics that you need to develop to take advantage of each opportunity. As this is an important step in the process, spend a good amount of time on this – after all, if you analyze yourself based on factors that the employer, or industry, doesn’t value, then you will waste your time. For example, if no one cares that you can write well, don’t include it as a valuable characteristic.

Note:For now, record your best guess of what makes a valuable characteristic, given the amount of knowledge that you have, or the research that you’ve done on your opportunity. After this training session, get more specific information on your opportunity from direct sources. For example, talk to people who already work in the job, department or company that you are interested in, look at organizational websites, and so on.

Action:Use the brainstorming template on the next page to record the most valuable characteristics for your opportunities.

Start with the first opportunity, and then move on through the USP Analysis. When you have more time, you can come back and do the same for the other two opportunities.

Opportunity #1

Likely Valued Characteristics

Opportunity #2


Opportunity #3




4. Ranking Your Abilities

Now that you know the characteristics and valued competencies for the opportunities you’re interested in, you need to understand how your talents measure up against other people’s (unfortunately, only one person gets the promotion, or that dream job). Remember, this exercise

is designed to identify how you can best market yourself, through your unique combination of skills.

This doesn’t mean that you have to be the best at any one individual thing. Rather, you have to understand and develop what you’re good at, so that you can select the opportunities that are most likely to suit you. And, developing your skills will give you an advantage when it comes to getting the role you want.

As you go through this exercise, it’s really important that you evaluate yourself, and others, objectively against each skill or attribute. When you do this, you can market yourself in the most effective way, and work to add the extra “product features” that make your USP truly unique.

If you don’t rank highly in a certain skill, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful, or that you can’t pursue the opportunity. It indicates that you need to have a well-thought-through strategy to improve this skill or overcome this issue. Perhaps you should emphasize the combination of skills that you have, and other areas where you excel, while also setting a goal to develop skills in your weaker area. Or, perhaps you should focus on parts of the industry where the weakness doesn’t matter.

Action:Identify the top valuable characteristics that you think you need for the first opportunity. Make sure that you include technical skills, soft skills, and attitudes. Then give yourself a score out of 10 (where 1 is poor and 10 is excellent) for these top characteristics; a score for an “average person” in the field; and a score for two identified high performers who are already in the job. Record the characteristics and the scores in the table on the next page.

For now, do this based on your current knowledge. However, take time to talk to people in the field to get a more accurate assessment.

Complete this for the first opportunity now, and come back to complete the other two later.

CharacteristicScore

(10 = excellent, 1 = poor)

You Average Person

High Performer 1

High Performer 2

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Opportunity #1:

Tip:You can use your gut instinct to determine the top valuable characteristics for each opportunity, or you can use decision-making tools, such as Decision Matrix Analysis and Paired Comparison Analysis.

http://www.mindtools.com/connect/?url=http://www.mindtools.com/community/pages/article/newTED_03.php



CharacteristicScore


You Average Person

High Performer 1

High Performer 2

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CharacteristicScore


You Average Person

High Performer 1

High Performer 2

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Opportunity #3:

Opportunity #2:


Plot the ResultsFor a visual view of your results, plot the rankings for each characteristic within each opportunity onto a bar chart.

Opportunity #1:

Opportunity #2:

Action:Print out this page and the next one. Use one chart for each opportunity. Plot the characteristics for your first opportunity on the first chart, then plot your scores and the scores for the other people you have evaluated on a line graph. Use different colors for each person. (We show an example of this on the next page.)


Opportunity #3:

Example:

In the example below, our personal scores are represented by the black line. The blue line represents the Average Person, the green line represents High Performer 1, and the red line represents High Performer 2.

The graph shows you rate the best in the second characteristic you identified, and you are good in two others, but you’ll need to develop skills in other areas to excel in this opportunity.

Areas that matter where youare top ranked

Areas that matter where youare well ranked

Areas that matter where you are weak


5. Your USP

The graph that you’ve just completed shows how your skills and abilities rank, compared with those of people who are already successful in the positions, industries or organizations that you’re interested in. Analyze your scores against these benchmarks and you can quickly determine how

competitive you currently are, and where you need to develop additional skills to improve your position.

Action:Let’s look at the first opportunity that you’ve been working on. In the table below, record the results of your analysis for that first opportunity. Identify the characteristics where you are more highly ranked than anyone else, those where you score well, and areas where others score higher than you.


Now look at the common characteristics (competencies) listed on the graph on pages 9 or 10. Some may be highly developed, some may need work, and some may be your present weaknesses. Remember, this process is all about packaging – working with what you’ve got, and making a plan to improve where you need to.

Develop Your USP StatementYou are now in a position to start writing your USP statement.

Action:Start with the list of areas where you’re top ranked. These are the obvious competencies that you should highlight in your USP. You can then move on to the other characteristics that you rank highly in, and ask yourself:

• Which of these reinforce areas where I’m top ranked?• If I focus on a particular type of work, do any of my strengths cancel

out my areas of weakness?

Next, look at your areas of weakness. Be realistic: do they have a negative impact on you (in which case, should you consider other opportunities), can you neutralize them with some strategic thinking, or can you correct them with education or training?

Beyond that, you need to look closely at the highly ranked competencies of the people who are already successful in the position, industry or organization where you want to be, and identify those areas where you should develop your skills further.

For example, if Joan and Barry are both creative thinkers, and this is not a well-defined strength of yours, you need to ask yourself:

• Can I be successful without being highly creative?• If I can’t, can I develop my creative abilities?• If this is difficult, should I focus on a different opportunity?

Action:Spend a few minutes pulling together a clear and simple USP statement for yourself in relation to your opportunity, and record it on the next page. Then look at the USP and think about what sort of organization would be interested in someone with those skills.

Here is an example:

I am an effective communicator, who excels in understanding the needs of large customers in the ABC industry; communicating those needs clearly and accurately; and guiding the development of effective solutions to meet those needs.

My USP


Tip 1:If you’re in the great position of having to choose between different USPs, think about which one is the most sustainable. A good way to do this is to look at each USP, and use the tests for core competencies based on: relevance, difficulty to imitate, and breadth of application. (You can read more about core competencies in this article.)

Tip 2:Before you finalize your USP, make sure that it is realistic. First, put yourself in the minds of the people who are the “gatekeepers” of the opportunity, and ask whether the USP will really matter to them. Second, make sure that the USP is authentic, that it genuinely suits you, and that it captures the essence of who you are. People will quickly see through you if you’re trying to “fake it.”

http://www.mindtools.com/connect/?url=http://www.mindtools.com/community/pages/article/newTMC_94.php

I will build my USP by...


6. Marketing and Building Your USP

You’ve now started building an “effective” sales pitch for the role you want, and you’re confident in your ability to make your career goals a reality. But, just like any business out there, new competitors may emerge, and current competitors can adjust their own USPs to compete with you.

Developing a USP is not the end; it’s just the beginning. From here, you need to identify how you will continue to build your USP, and what you can do to keep your position strong and viable. This may include activities like:

• Engaging with professional development.• Re-entering education to get the perfect qualification for the role.• Consulting with key industry employers to build experience.• Freelancing to gain further experience.• Reading around the subject area in depth.

Once you’ve built your USP, you should plan how to market yourself and make the greatest use of it. Remember, it doesn’t matter if your USP is well suited to a certain career or industry if no one knows about it.

Action:Take some time now to identify some USP-building goals that you can work on right away, and record your thoughts in the box below.

I will market my USP by...


Finally, go back and repeat this exercise for the other two “top” opportunities that you identified. You can then compare the USP statements that you developed for each of the opportunities. Which is strongest? This may help you to choose between opportunities, because you are most likely to succeed where you are strongest.

Action:Take a few minutes to identify ways that you can market your skills to the people in a position to hire you, or who can help you move toward your ultimate career goals. Ideas include:

• Demonstrating your skills on key projects.• Networking.• Writing for industry publications or blogging.• Delivering seminars or speaking on the subject.• Mentoring.


7. Key Learning Points

USP Analysis is a great tool for determining how you can market your skills and abilities in a way that is unique, compared with other people who are interested in the same career as you.

After going through this exercise, you should now have a greater appreciation for what makes you who you are, and for the combination of skills, knowledge and attributes that you possess. Now you can capitalize on these strengths to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

You must remember that you don’t have to be the best at any one thing in particular. What you are doing by developing your USP is making your package of skills more desirable, compared with your competitors’ skills.

The process of the analysis makes you aware of other people’s positioning, as well; this is something that you need to keep an eye on regularly. If you view a USP as a dynamic statement that changes as you develop, you give yourself the best chance of keeping yourself in a good position. Soon, you’ll be well placed for the career of your dreams.

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