Elvira Marie Chang, Gallup^®-Certified Strengths Coach

Everyone's different somehow.

That was clear to me very early on. Chinese-Cuban-American, female, usually the youngest in the room, equally good at math and art - whatever the situation, I never quite matched it. (Those were just the differences I could see as a kid. Most of what shapes how a person sees things isn't visible at all.)

So I got curious about how the parts that make me up shape what I see. And just as curious about what shapes everyone else.

Different was never an excuse to keep to myself. It sent me looking for what we had in common instead. What are you seeing that I'm not?

I did what was expected, and it was OK until it wasn't.

I chose engineering because it was the practical, safe path. I landed in a product management role at a global company, and for a while it was a great fit. The work took me all over the world, working with people from the factory floor to the executive suite and from various cultures, which kept feeding the same curiosity.

Over my 15 years there, the company grew through acquisitions and mergers - from about 500 people worldwide when I started to almost 200,000 by the end. I kept doing well. Promoted multiple times, assigned lead roles in key projects and product lines, reviews still high. On paper, everything was fine. But I'd stopped lighting up. Nothing pulled me in, and there was nothing I was working towards.

I couldn't explain it. Something had to change.

My last manager was a good one. She could tell my heart wasn't in my work anymore, and she offered to help create a new role for me. But there wasn't anything I was interested in. Whatever I picked would have been a band-aid, and I'd have been back at the same conclusion six months later.

At the same time, my dad had been diagnosed with cancer a few months earlier, so leaving meant I could be there for him. I walked away with no plan. I still couldn't have told you what I was moving towards. Only that staying wasn't it.

I had my CliftonStrengths results for 14 years before I understood the power underneath them.

I first took the assessment around 2002, back when it was still called StrengthsFinder^®. I took it again in 2009, with a coach my company paid for. She included the assessment in her work, but Strengths wasn't her focus. Both times, something resonated. And both times, I didn't know what to do with the results. I'd only ever met it as a work tool.

The third time was in 2016, the same year I left. I trained as a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach. I wasn't planning on doing this for a living. I was just curious. But going deep is what finally showed me the power behind the Talent Themes, and put words to what had been going on with me for years. The disengagement wasn't a problem to fix. It was information I hadn't learned to read.

I found my fit. Now I help other people find theirs.

I didn't find it by landing a better job. I found it by finally understanding what I was working with, and choosing from there. In my work, and in everything around it. For me that meant leaving. For most people it doesn't.

That's the part I love most now. Watching someone realize that what they'd written off as ordinary is the thing nobody else brings. It's why I teach the concepts underneath, not just the results. And why I don't stop at work.