If you want to get ahead in your career, working with your strengths is one of the best things you can do. The first article in this series discussed some of the benefits you’ll get from playing to your strengths, including working fewer hours to get the same amount of work done, being more effective, and improved productivity.

What do all of these equal in the workplace? Improved performance. After a few months of emphasizing your strengths and seeing the benefits from it yourself, your superiors will notice how well you are doing too. That will eventually result in tangible effects such as promotions and pay raises.

Being better at your job will in turn lead to other side effects. It will make you more confident and help you believe in yourself. You will then be more likely to take on new tasks and learn new skills you wouldn’t have attempted before. When you succeed at mastering those, you will gain yet more self-confidence.

This will lead to a self-fulfilling cycle in which you believe you can do more at work, master new skills, and then have more self-confidence. Improved self-confidence will also be visible to your superiors and coworkers, which in turn will increase how favorably they see you.

See how all of these effects build on one another? All of it leads to further improvements. One improvement you will see over time is the ability to make more choices about the projects you take on, which will let you work with your strengths still more and give you the option of creating your own career path.

Another, less obvious, benefit to your career comes from the improved self-awareness you develop while learning to discern your strengths and weaknesses. This will both translate into other areas of your life and make you better able to read, understand, and communicate with your coworkers.

That will make working in a team more enjoyable for you and make them more likely to enjoy working with you. They may also like you more as a person. Being liked in the workplace is never a bad thing!

Finally, once all of these benefits are in full effect, you are going to be more likely to be offered leadership roles and opportunities than you would have been before. You may or may not take them, depending on your goals and strengths, but you will at least have the chance.