A skill is something you are good at or perhaps you are learning to do well.  Organisations often use skills as a standard way of describing the tasks or requirements of a role or within their learning industry.

Skills are an important part of our work, a set of needs that enable us to perform to a certain level at work to get the job done successfully and sometimes safely. However, not everyone enjoys performing these skills and that’s where strengths come in. A strength is something you are good at and enjoy. When we enjoy what we are doing we perform better, are more confident and engaged in what we are doing. We meet our goals and find ways to be more creative. Strengths help us to lean into our uniqueness to be successful and be authentic in who we are, as no-one has the same set of strengths in Strengths Profile.

Most people have a combination of skills and strengths within them which is a good approach. The key to success is to understand the difference and try to shape your role and life more towards your strengths.

In summary, if you want to make a comparison you could view the 60 strengths in Strengths Profile as 'skills' before they are assessed. Once assessed and personalised for you, they are then a realised or unrealised strength, learned behaviour or weakness based upon your results. Within Strengths Profile, our learned behaviour category is similar to skills, in that they are the things we are good at but may not enjoy.  An example would be Detail where it is common for many of us to need this in our role but not that many people love using it!