By Monica O'Neil. First appeared in The Advocate October 2008
God’s given all of us the ability to contribute. It’s a gift, a package of genetics, environment and the work of the Holy Spirit within us. We might call it our ‘capacity’. Jesus’ parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 shows us we can use our capacity effectively or poorly. We can increase it by being savvy and working hard or we can bury it in fear and inactivity. How do you go about increasing your capacity and being the good steward God wants you to be? Here’s six suggestions to start.
1. Value your gifts
It is possible to highly value the gifts God has placed in you and remain grateful, humbled and sobered by them. Acknowledging them doesn’t mean we have to become proud and self sufficient. Some people get so scared of being ‘full of themselves’ that they refuse to use their gifts. But this as much a refusal of God as selfish ambition and self reliance. If you remember your capacity is a gift from God of genetics, grace and opportunities, then you’ll stay humbly grounded while increasing your capacity.
2. Experiment
You’ll never know if you never try! Increase your capacity by experimenting. Any time is a good time to experiment – even and especially when you’re not sure what you have to offer or when you’re going through a life-change. It is not a sin to do badly at something - it’s okay to try something and be miserable at it. Get some feedback from trustworthy others on how you have gone.
3. Become self aware
You can increase your capacity by being self aware. In Spiritual Leadership, J.Oswald Sanders writes, “Most people have latent and undeveloped traits which, through lack of self analysis and consequent self knowledge, may long remain undiscovered.”
How do you become self aware? Be teachable – read, take courses in personal growth, listen to feedback from others and solicit specific feedback about yourself. Find out if people experience you in the way you intend. Try modifying your behaviour to better reflect your intent. When you miss the mark, hear the problem and change. When you do well, learn what it was, humbly enjoy it and watch for a pattern of giftedness. A self examining habit helps us learn from successes and failures.
4. Become aware of others
You can build your capacity by being aware of others. We are not all the same, and yet we think others will think and act as we do. We are encouraged in different ways and we have different intelligences (you can read Howard Gardner or Daniel Goleman for more on this).
We have different speeds for innovation and change, as well as the pace at which we live. Some of us would rather a pile of paperwork to a party, and for others, the party would be a definite first choice!
Understanding others can help you adapt how and what you communicate. It can help you in how you delegate, request change, challenge, fight and encourage. There are many useful instruments for helping you discover the wonder of being different. Some common ones are the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, DISC profiling, Leading From Your Strengths, and Strengths Finder. All these are available here in Western Australia. You can contact us at Vose Leadership if you want to know where. Understanding and harnessing diversity will build your capacity.
5. Skill up.
You can build your capacity by learning from others. As a girl - and even as a grown up - a favourite fun thing for me is to stand on someone’s shoulders in the water and dive off. Exhilarating! It is much more fun than trying my own leap off the bottom. Our ability to springboard from the platform someone else has built is a wonderful thing. We learn from others who have gone before us.
Rather than having to discover everything for yourself, you can feast on the experience of others and then apply it in your own field of endeavour. How? Take a short course, read and dissect a good book or journal article, enrol in a formal study programme, employ a coach, mentor or supervisor. In any order or combination, they will all grow your capacity by adding knowledge and skills.
6. Build resilience
You can increase your capacity by becoming more resilient. Resilience is the ability to expend energy, or take a knock, and to bounce back. Burnout results from over-expending yourself. Knock-outs are caused by injury, usually from conflict or failure. It is a great loss when you can no longer function to capacity because of these things, so here are some beginner tips on building resilience, drawn from a book called How to beat burnout by Frank Minirith and others.
- Build resilience in your body – exercise; create a balanced diet; get enough sleep.
- Build resilience in your emotions – laugh often and feast on sights and activities that rejuvenate you. Follow Jesus’ advice - live in today and don’t obsess about the past or the future. Build friendships.
- Build resilience in your spirit by taking time in scripture and letting it shape your behaviour. Forgive others and confess your sin readily. Be aware of the places you feel close to God and seek them out.