Strengths Profile

Dimension: Mindset · Type: Foundation

A four-quadrant model that maps your abilities against energy and current use, with a sharp definition of what counts as a strength: it must energise you, you must perform it well, and you must use it.

Introduced by Mirka Packard (IMO) at the Use Your Strengths to Boost Your Career session of the UN Inter-Agency Career Week 2026, on 7 May 2026, with practical extensions on managing learned behaviours and weaknesses from Jesús Guerrero (UNOG). Reinforced at the Make Career Moves with the 5i Framework session by Shihui Xu (UNDP), who added the Talent x Investment formulation as a complementary frame, on 7 May 2026. The session also pointed to the Strengths Profile Free Starter Assessment as a complementary psychometric tool.

The framework

A strength is more than something you do well. The framework offers a tighter definition than most people carry. Things you do well but that drain you are learned behaviours, not strengths, and overusing them is a path to burnout.

When to use it

• When you are reflecting on what to invest your career energy in.
• When you have a vague sense that your role is not bringing out your best, but cannot articulate what is missing.
• Before a career conversation with a manager or a mentor, to bring concrete material rather than general dissatisfaction.
• After a skills self-audit, to layer in the energy and use dimensions on top of the protect, evolve, let-go decisions.

What you need

• 30 to 45 minutes of honest self-reflection.
• A notebook or four-quadrant template.
• The seven reflection prompts in the steps section below.
• Optional: the Strengths Profile Free Starter Assessment as a follow-up to validate or deepen what you find.

The strength formula

Two complementary formulations from the corpus.

Strength = Energy x Performance x Use (Day 4 Session 5).

All three must be present. High performance alone is not a strength.

• Energy. It engages you. You feel alive while doing it, in flow. You would do it even if you were not paid for it.
• Performance. You do it well, consistently. Outputs are good day in, day out.
• Use. It is part of your everyday life. The strength is being practised, not stored.

Strength = Talent x Investment (Day 4 Session 8).

A complementary lens for the development side of the same idea. Skill at something draining is not a strength worth doubling down on; you can be competent and still have it be a weakness in career terms. Real strength requires both an underlying talent and an active investment of time and effort.

When evaluating any ability, ask: does it energise me? Do I perform it consistently well? Am I actually using it? Do I want to invest more time and energy in it? If any answer is no, it is not a strength in the operational sense; it is something else (an unrealised strength, a learned behaviour, or a weakness, depending on which boxes are missing).

The four quadrants

Map each of your abilities into one of four cells, defined by two axes: do you do it well, and does it energise you?

Realised Strengths

Good at, enjoy, currently using. Your sweet spot. The things you flow with naturally and look forward to.

Career action. Use them more intentionally. Make them visible to people who can connect them to opportunities. Feed them so they stay alive (skills atrophy if not exercised).

Unrealised Strengths

Good at, enjoy, but not currently using. Your untapped potential. Often things you did in the past, or skills you developed but no longer have a platform for.

Career action. This is the most concrete growth lever, because no new skill-building is required. You only need to find a platform. Use the Silent Coaching Sequence to activate one unrealised strength at a time.

Learned Behaviours

Good at, currently using, but draining. You have developed these because you had to. You can perform them, but they take effort and over-using them leads to burnout.

Career action. Manage carefully. Do not push harder on improving them; that path leads to deeper burnout. Use them when needed, but balance them with realised strengths. Where possible, delegate or partner with someone whose realised strength is your learned behaviour.

Weaknesses

Not good at, do not enjoy. The bottom-right quadrant.

Career action. Do not invest heavily in fixing them. Delegate when possible. Find complementary partners. Manage them minimally rather than heroically. The exception: a weakness that intrigues you and might widen your career options is worth a small, deliberate investment.

Steps

Reflection prompts (the diagnostic)

Spend 30 minutes with these seven questions before placing anything in the quadrants:

1. What are you good at?
2. Which skills do colleagues notice in you?
3. What do people come to you for, at work and outside?
4. Which tasks make work feel energising and engaging?
5. Which activities make time pass quickly?
6. What kinds of challenges are you naturally drawn to?
7. What types of tasks drain you, even if you are good at them?

Question 7 is the key to separating strengths from learned behaviours. Most people have not been asked this question explicitly.

Mapping

Take your answers from the seven questions and place each item into one of the four quadrants:

• Currently using and enjoying? Realised Strength.
• Good at and enjoying, but not currently using much? Unrealised Strength.
• Currently using and good at, but draining? Learned Behaviour.
• Not good at and not enjoying? Weakness.

Action by quadrant

For Realised Strengths: ask how you can use them more intentionally in your current role.

For Unrealised Strengths: pick one. Run the Silent Coaching Sequence on it.

For Learned Behaviours: identify the most draining one. Where can you delegate, partner, or minimise it?

For Weaknesses: which one might be worth a small investment because curiosity could widen your options?

Worked example

A senior staff member runs the framework after months of inexplicable fatigue despite good performance. She works through the seven questions:

• What she is good at. Strategic thinking, partnership negotiation, written analysis, complex coordination, presenting to senior audiences.
• What colleagues notice. Her ability to find alignment across teams; her writing; her composure under pressure.
• What she does that energises her. Strategic thinking and partnership negotiation. She loses track of time in both.
• What drains her even when she does it well. Complex coordination (she is excellent at it, but it drains her). Presenting to senior audiences (she does it well; she would never volunteer for it).

Mapping:

• Realised. Strategic thinking, partnership negotiation, written analysis.
• Unrealised. Coaching and developing others (she did this in a previous role, has not for two years, misses it).
• Learned behaviours. Complex coordination, senior-audience presenting.
• Weakness. Detailed financial modelling (avoids it).

The pattern: her current role has loaded her up with learned behaviours (coordination, presenting) and not provided a platform for an unrealised strength (coaching). The fatigue is structural, not personal. The career action is not to fix herself; it is to reshape the role or move toward one where coaching becomes a real part of the work.

Pitfalls

• Treating “good at” as enough. The Strength Formula explicitly excludes things you do well but that drain you. Distinguishing strengths from learned behaviours is the framework’s central move.
• Putting everything in Realised Strengths. Most people overestimate how many of their strengths are currently being used. Push back on yourself: am I actually using this, or is it sitting?
• Investing in weaknesses. A common career-coaching error. Energy spent on weaknesses produces marginal gains; the same energy spent on realised or unrealised strengths produces compound returns.
• Identifying an unrealised strength and then doing nothing. The point is to activate it. Pick one. Use the Silent Coaching Sequence to commit to a specific first action.
• Hiding learned behaviours from yourself. Naming what drains you is uncomfortable. Some learned behaviours have been part of your professional identity for years. The discomfort is information, not a verdict.
• Confusing the framework with personality typing. The four quadrants are about specific abilities, not about who you are. The same ability can shift quadrants over time as your role and energy change.

When not to use it

When you are in acute crisis (burnout, mental health concerns, immediate financial pressure). The framework is for reflective career planning; in crisis, prioritise stabilisation and professional support first.

When you are at a very early career stage with limited evidence of what you do well or what energises you. The framework needs a few years of varied experience to produce useful answers. Earlier in a career, exploration matters more than mapping.

A note on the source

The four-quadrant model is widely associated with Cappfinity and the Centre of Applied Positive Psychology (Alex Linley and colleagues), who developed and commercialised the Strengths Profile assessment. The named formula (Energy x Performance x Use) and the operational distinction between strengths and learned behaviours come from that lineage. The session presented the framework as a practical tool rather than introducing a new model; this page consolidates the speakers’ framing with the established source.

How I use it

Personal note pending. Davide to fill.

Related frameworks

• Silent Coaching Sequence, the 24-question protocol for activating a single unrealised strength.
• Career Mapping, the upstream gap analysis where strengths identification helps name the destination.
• Career Conversation Playbook, the structure for translating the strengths analysis into a manager conversation.
• 5i Framework, the umbrella where the Strengths Profile sits inside the Inventory dimension.

---

Notes compiled by Davide Piga. Last updated 2026-05-09.