Comparing The Best Self Exercise With The VIA Strengths

The “ Best Self Exercise” is a tool that assists in identifying strengths, competencies, qualities and attitude by analyzing others positive feedback and recalling your best self-moments. It enables you to create your best self-portrait, on which you will rely on to further enhance your strengths and elevate your weaknesses. In this essay I will share my experience with the feedback, my best self- portrait and compare it with the VIA strengths results, and reveal my ideal future trajectory.

At the very beginning, I was kind of embarrassed to request only strength-based feedback, it sounded like I am fishing for compliments. But, when I received the feedbacks, which were supported by stories, that sense of compliment disappeared. Instead,

Referring that strength to my best self-portrait, I believe it can be seen with the expression “I am a good observer with analytical thinking, who is able to evaluate situations, investigate the root causes of certain problem or success and give straight answers.” Moreover, I believe that being a good listener gives me the strength to be objective and insightful with my advice to others.

My second strength in the VIA survey is honesty or authenticity. It is strength of courage where you have to present yourself genuinely to others and to be sincere in your action. Being honest means being truthful, responsible and committed to your words and promises, to be authentic and align your deepest values with your actions.
That strength can be matched with the expressions “Accordingly, I speak up my mind genuinely and express my sincere opinion, as long as it stands for what I believe.” And “I take ownership, responsibility and the commitment to achieve the

By doing so; I will feel more obligated to avoid the influence of zest, self-regulation and perseverance since ownership will make me more responsible toward my self and others to finish what I have already started and will not allow negativity to prevent my persistence.

In the process of achieving the shared vision, I am planning to spend more time in team building activities in social events with an effort to create more fun and casual environment to left up my sense of humility and humour characteristics.
By doing so I am employing my signature and middle strengths to overcome my lesser strengths limitations. I believe this plan will be a step toward my ideal self to be a resonant leader and an agent of change.

What worth noting is that such exercise dives deeply into one’s personality, which makes it a supportive tool for OD practitioners to facilitate their role as helpers, for instance in their one on one coaching sessions, in training their teams or even with leaders to manage stress and