Inform Yourself

My good friend Jay Niblick, founder of Innermetrix International, recently completed a study called The Genius Project. His study became the basis for his latest book, What’s Your Genius?

The title above is not a typo. You have goals in life, and based on what you’ve learned about your natural talents so far you also have an understanding for what your authentic role should be in achieving those goals to ensure that you are maximizing talents and minimizing non-talents. When you incorporate your authentic role with your goals, you create something new, a synthesis between your direction, your abilities and your duties. Jay calls this synthesis your Roal. In other words, your roal is the combination of your goals and your authentic role. Your roal is your job basically, but only after you have managed to change it so that it has goals that are realistic (based on your talents) and the way you do it (your role) is authentic as well.

For example; will your roal be the strategic person who creates policies, rules, structure and does the long-range planning (master in the head), or will your roal be the tactical, hands-on implementer who drives results and action today (master for the Hand), or will your roal be the person who coordinates others to achieve results and ensures that the human element is fully optimized towards achieving the goal (master for the Heart) – or any combination thereof.

Goals (Objectives to be met)
+
Roles(way of achieving authentic goals)
=
Roals (My authentic way of achieving authentic goals)

One precaution we give to our clients, as they create their Roals, is that any roal is what you do, not who you are. “I am more than just my roles” is a thought that while not hard to remember, is also very easy to forget. We shouldn’t blame ourselves too much. It wasn’t all that long ago that we really were defined by our roles. Consider your last name for a minute. For a great many of you your last name was derived based on either where you came from or what you did. Last names like Cooper (one who makes barrels), Baker, Priest, Farmer, etc. Our ancestors were given names to signify what roles they filled, and in many cases they were born into these roles with little or no chance of choosing their own direction. In doing so, these roles were more than just a current job. Granted, we’ve come a long way since then, but many people still suffer from role identify issues where their self-worth, their “self” in general, becomes inextricably tied to (if not replaced by) their role.

The thing to always remember is that a role is only the application of a thing – it is not that thing itself. A word helps define a thing, but it does not become that thing. By calling the object you are sitting in “chair”, that chair does not become a word. It is still a chair – defined by a word. While your roles may help define what you are, they should not be substituted for who you are.

In my next post, we will discuss the 3-C’s of becoming authentic.