How to Move from Feeling Stagnant in Your Career to Engaged and Thriving at Work
Are you feeling stuck in your role? Ready to move from stagnant to growing? Whether you're pivoting careers or just looking for more energy in your current role, the path to career fulfillment and change is the same: increase your engagement at work.
Most of us don't walk into work asking, "Am I engaged?" Yet, engagement is key to thriving. Engagement reflects how committed and motivated you are in your role. If you want to move from feeling bored, drained, or disconnected to being energized, interested, and strong, start by caring about your level of engagement.
The Power of Strengths: Your Inside Game
Research shows that knowing and using your strengths leads to deeper engagement. The challenge? Your strengths are unique to you—your "secret sauce." But many people overlook them entirely. Instead of playing to our strengths, we often focus on improving weaknesses—a strategy that doesn’t work.
In fact, statistics show most employees aren’t engaged:
70% of the workforce is disengaged.
40-50% are actively looking for new jobs.
These trends predate the pandemic. Disengagement leads to boredom, lack of confidence, and lower effectiveness. Yet, most people don’t know the steps to reverse it.
Why the Conventional Approach Fails
The traditional approach to growth—focusing on weaknesses—sets you up for failure. We've been taught to fix what's broken, whether it’s low grades in school or areas for improvement at work. But this approach only deepens feelings of inadequacy and disengagement.
For mid-career professionals, real growth comes from knowing, activating, and communicating your strengths.
Discovering Your Secret Sauce
Your secret to increased engagement lies in these four areas:
How you influence others.
How you build relationships.
How you digest and analyze information.
What motivates you to take action.
It’s not just about improving skills. It's about identifying your unique way of contributing and using it to make an impact.
Common Strengths That Drive Engagement
There are many dozens of strengths but here are some examples of strengths that boost engagement:
Collecting and analyzing data.
Designing effective programs.
Launching new initiatives.
Solving complex problems.
Building key relationships.
Transforming average projects into great ones.
Influencing others to support initiatives.
Mentoring or managing people effectively.
Activate Your Strengths and Boost Engagement
To increase engagement, identify what energizes you. Ask yourself:
When am I most energized and engaged?
When do I feel strong?
When am I most “in the flow”?
How have I uniquely contributed to success at work?
Once you pinpoint your strengths, communicate them. Update your resume, LinkedIn, and, importantly, share your strengths in conversations with colleagues and supervisors.
Focusing on your strengths boosts confidence, amplifies your professional impact, and helps you find fulfillment in your career.