Hidden Strengths
Are you still unsure what your hidden strengths and talents are? Remember, they’re innate in you; you just need to know how to discover them.
In this cozy episode of Secrets in Medical Device Sales, The Girls of Grit, while enjoying their coffee, dive into a critical topic: uncovering and leveraging hidden talents for career success. They share personal anecdotes to illustrate how innate talents, often unnoticed, can significantly impact professional growth.
Cynthia recounts her childhood as a middle child, where persistence became her hidden talent. She draws parallels between her experience and the discipline required to complete an Ironman triathlon, emphasizing how these traits enhance her sales career. Anneliese discusses her background in opera singing, revealing how performing under pressure helped her develop confidence, which she now applies in high-stakes sales scenarios.
They encourage listeners to reflect on their own hidden talents by considering childhood experiences and seeking feedback from close acquaintances.
This episode highlights the importance of recognizing and harnessing these strengths to navigate job interviews, sales pitches, and career challenges.
Explore how these hidden talents can propel you forward in your medical device sales journey!
Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments
Everyone Has Hidden Talents: Recognize that everyone possesses unique strengths and skills that may not be immediately apparent but are valuable for success.
Reflect on Childhood Experiences: Childhood memories can reveal significant talents and characteristics that are still relevant today. Take time to reflect on your early experiences.
Ask for Feedback: Seek feedback from people who know you well, such as family or close friends, to identify your hidden talents. Their perspective can provide insights you might overlook.
Leverage Your Strengths in Interviews: Use your unique talents and experiences to stand out in job interviews. Authenticity and self-awareness can make a significant impact.
Understand the Value of Authenticity: Being true to yourself and showcasing your genuine strengths is crucial. People can sense when you are authentic, enhancing your credibility and trustworthiness.
Embrace and Cultivate Your Talents: Take proactive steps to recognize, develop, and utilize your hidden talents. This self-awareness and confidence can propel you to greater success in both personal and professional arenas.
Words of Wisdom: Standout Quotes from This Episode
“Every one of you out there has a hidden talent.” – Cynthia Ficara
“These hidden talents can help take you to that next level or get you over the hump when you're struggling with making a decision on something.” – Anneliese Rhodes
“Discipline is key to being successful in medical device sales.” – Anneliese Rhodes
“You have life experiences that really get to excel and show who you are.” – Cynthia Ficara
“Whatever you're looking at, remind yourself of who you are because that's the authentic you.” – Anneliese Rhodes
“The biggest hidden strength is that nobody has your strengths.” – Cynthia Ficara
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Blog Transcript:
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Anneliese Rhodes: Good morning everybody. As you can see, Cindy and I are here together, and for those of you who can't see us, we are sitting in a very beautiful, old historic hotel, having a cup of coffee together. We thought we would sit here today and have a little coffee talk with you guys,
Cynthia Ficara: Something different. I mean, it's so great to be together in person, and what a great way to just have a conversation with each other. Like we normally do. So I can kind of see how we normally talk about things and so we're excited today to do something different. And recently, we've been asked a lot about interviewing and how can you have a great interview. Like, what do I need to make an impact? What do I need to make a difference? How do I land this interview? How do I move to the next step? So, the funny thing is, it came up in a topic that we think is important to share. So, what are we calling this Lisa?
Anneliese Rhodes: Coffee talk and the secret of the hidden talents.
Cynthia Ficara: Yes, every one of you out there has a hidden talent. We're going to talk a little bit today about how you discovered that because you have one and maybe you just haven't taken the time to reflect, look back, and know what we mean by that. So maybe we should just begin with an example.
Anneliese Rhodes: Perfect because I'm going to say this, sometimes I think you think you know what your talents are and maybe they are some talents, but there might be additional ones that you don't realize that you have that you can really call upon, but sometimes they need to be brought up by others.
Cynthia Ficara: Absolutely. So the word talent sounds a little bit overbearing. Don't worry, we're not asking you to stand up and be a magician and show us your tax. Yes. I mean, in the talent show. Every one of us has a strength, every one of us has a skill that you never thought was a skill.
But when we talk a little bit today, you realize maybe this really is a skill. But what we mean by that also is that we're defining characteristics and there are many words people use to say, hey, what are your strengths? People may say, oh, I'm very confident, people may say, I'm very persistent.
Anneliese Rhodes: There you go. Energetic, I'm a people person, love running, I love training, I love programs, I love structure, I am very organized and all of these things that we're going to talk about today, one, I think are important to remember that a lot of this is innate in you and it was actually born into you. You just may not know that they exist in you.
Number two is why is this important for you and your professional career. We're going to go through some examples of why we think that these hidden talents can help take you to that next level or get you over the hump when you're struggling with deciding on something, right?
Cindy or calling on that next customer, or something to that effect. So that's what we're doing today with our little coffees and sitting here in our fireside chat because we think it's both important, but we want you guys to understand that it's natural. Yeah, it just comes across naturally.
Cynthia Ficara: You said something and then it made a story pop in my head when she said it's innate.
It's something we're born into. So let's make this really simple, I am born as the second child. So yes, birth order is my strength. Why? Well, I think it's my strength. Don't ask my sisters, they may disagree. So I am the middle child of three girls. So that evens the playing field, you know, all the same gender.
So one sister's a year older, one sister's five years younger, but they're both very smart. You know, the firstborn is the firstborn, let's face it, so they're always heard. Then there's the youngest and that's all you are the youngest out there.
Anneliese Rhodes: The babies.
Cynthia Ficara: Exactly, they get away with everything. When you're in the middle, You have to fight for your position. You have to fight to be heard, you have to fight to be known and you have to know when not to be blamed for everything. So you've got to have your story, so the funny thing is my parents will laugh.
I think we said this in an episode, Cindy, why are you so loud? You know, like I'm sitting right here. Well, I always had to be loud cause I always had to be heard. And when I wasn't heard, I would talk louder to be here and I realized I was fighting and I wanted my way and a very simple talent of mine is that.
I was born a middle child and my skill is persistence for being born in a defensive position. The funny thing is I was actually in a job interview once and something came up about being competitive or whatever. And I was like, I had to do everything I could to be heard when I was younger.
And not only that, you have to strategically plan how to get your way. So for instance. I hated eating this vegetable that my mom made me eat and my sister would eat it, but she wanted to make sure that my mom and dad knew that I wasn't eating it. So it was a matter of sibling rivalry.
But how do I strategically go in that I can either eat it or make it look like it is and get out of an argument and walk away knowing, hey, I either ate my vegetable or they think I did?
See, it's all a hidden talent. So, if you think back, what did you do when you were a child? What did you do when you were younger? Think about playing, you know, running out in the street and playing. Everybody had organized games when you were a little, maybe you were the leader who said, hey, let's play running bases.
And that's going to be 1st base, that's going to be 2nd. Maybe you were born later and you had leadership skills because you organized street hockey.
Anneliese Rhodes: What you're bringing up is great. I remember I don't even know if they do science fair projects anymore, but I hated science projects because I had to make an A and I could not make anything, but my dad, who's, I'm sure you guys have heard me talk about, was an orthopedic surgeon.
And so, of course, he's brilliant and he likes to come up with these crazy ideas. And I'm like, daddies are hard. So he would help me, but then I don't remember what year it was. I want to say it was senior year and we had to have partners. I'm not good with partners because I want to control everything but I am good at being super organized, having an idea, and making sure that I follow through with every single step because I want excellence at the end of that.
That's all I'm searching for, I don't want anything, but that's a straight A. I think that helps me in my professional career because everything I do, I want to do it to the nth degree.
I'm not going to let anything slip, I'm not going to let anything slide by. And if I have a goal in mind, I'm going to get that goal one way or another. I'm going to make sure that I follow it and it doesn't mean that I'm super organized with how my steps are going to look.
Sometimes step four goes first and step eight, then step one. But it all still comes together at the end of the day to make sure that that goal is reached. I think I never really thought about that till just now but it means that I was striving hard. I always wanted to work for excellence.
I think that as a kid, you don't realize that's what it is. You may even get teased for, oh, you're the straight-A student, but it's what's inside of you, it's what's driving you. We're telling you to do something or how you're going to approach a situation. The flip side is maybe you aren't like that, but maybe you're a good listener and listening is a fantastic skill to have in our jobs in sales, because that's how you uncover the issues, because everybody has problems with things. If you listen and you don't jump in, then you're able to uncover things. I'm not a good listener, I'm working on that but I think that's another hidden talent.
Cynthia Ficara: Well, I think that's great because the characteristics were describing whether it's persistent as a middle child, whether you're talking about learning how to be a good listener and understanding who you are, and how you think, and I don't think any of us stops to think about that.
So, if you're getting ready for a job interview, and somebody will say to you, well, tell me that very common question is what are your strengths? When you sit there and go, well, I mean, these are things it's really fun to think about.
So, I gave an example of being a middle child being persistent, and interestingly enough, Lisa and I did something about a little while ago that we're going to share with you at the end a little challenge of taking out a piece of paper and write down what you think your top 3 strengths are and hold on to that.
Because at the end, we're going to tell you one more step to that. So, I write down some of my strengths, which I feel like persistence is something that I kind of knew I always had because I just don't. So, then to take it a step further, I've always been told about how disciplined I've been, and I guess I didn't think about discipline as a hidden talent.
So the example I can give of discipline is this: about 10 years ago, I signed up to do an Ironman triathlon.
Anneliese Rhodes: A full one, not a half. I did the half. She did the whole thing.
Cynthia Ficara: Let's put this in perspective 140.6 miles in 1 day. It is a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike, and then a full marathon 26.2-mile run at the end all in 1 day. Now, that's a very big number to think about, I can't think that far ahead but the plan was, how am I going to do this? I had 6 months to do it and it became, I really want to do this. I realized my discipline helped me strive to see why I wanted to see if I could do it.
Maybe it was just a challenge within myself, but I also was really scared. Why is it so important that I train? Why is it so important that I'm disciplined in this? Because number one, I don't want to die.
You can drown, you can crash, so I don't want to die. So let me just train and make sure I know what I'm doing.
Secondly, I don't want to get injured because that would absolutely suck, and three, I'm paying a lot of money. They just use three letters if you don't finish your race — D N F (Did not finish) Totally not a DNF-er. You're not a DNF-er and you're listening to this podcast because none of you are DNF-ers.
So now we know why, and it's like, how do I do this and ensure I do? And it became about a training plan and I needed to understand the difference between exercising and training. When somebody told me that a light bulb went on, I wrote down my plan, I knew that 6 days a week.
This is what I was going to do and I reverse-engineered. I did everything backward. I looked at Monday, my day off and then I got built. Short days, long days, and over the six months, it was amazing and I did it. I realized that discipline is becoming one of my real strengths that can help me in my job so much. So that in conversations when they realize, you know, people who understand what an Ironman is, knows what it takes.
So don't ever be afraid to think that Ironman travel has absolutely nothing to do.
Anneliese Rhodes: Medical device has everything to do with it actually. I mean, you just talked about things that we do every day in our jobs, right? I mean, we're lucky we get to sit here right now together, but typically we're not, we're by ourselves.
You're in a silo, you are in charge of your day, your week, your month, your year. I mean, you get certain goals set out by your company or your ASPs or whatever, not ASPs, but your quarterly goals of what you want to hit or what you need to hit, but that they don't tell you how to do it. They don't give you a book and say, here's the instruction book on how you're going to hit your goals, Lisa.
No, that's not how they do it. They say, here's your number, good luck and we'll see at the end of the quarter. And the truth is if you're not disciplined like Cindy or I, you can absolutely get off track. You could absolutely have a skip day on your training day, you have a skip day at work and you just stay at home, run errands, go do something that you shouldn't be doing.
I mean, it's not bad to take a day here and there for the things that you need to take care of. She can't do that every day of the week, because then you're not building your business, you're not seeing your customers and you're losing your connection with your company and with your products and truthfully with the procedures, which then in turn, by the way, it takes a long time to catch back up to, right?
So if you take a week off, it's probably going to take you three weeks to get back on track. So the point that Cindy's making is that discipline is key to being successful in medical device sales.
So if you are a D1 athlete or for that matter, even an Ironman or a triathlete or something that took a lot of discipline and training, you absolutely can use that to your benefit when you are interviewing for jobs, when you are talking with customers about things, because people respect discipline. They know that with discipline, that means that you're dedicating something and you're going to be accountable for it. And that's really important in the business world because your customers are counting on you to bring them what they need and they're counting on you to answer the phone, whatever time it is, and they're counting on you to be there for their cases.
Cynthia Ficara: Right? And so a hidden talent. If I were to say to somebody that I was interviewing with, well, I'm disciplined, okay, what does that mean? Well, you know, I get things done. No, my hidden talent is I'm an Iron Man and I can apply that in a conversation where they see that and everyone of you collegiate athletes out there, D2, D3, it doesn't matter.
It's discipline, it's structure and it's being held to a different standard than everybody else in the room. So I would say discipline is one of mine. I think for you, it's just knowing her, she doesn't know I'm going to say this, I see you as very confident. Lisa can walk into a room with real confidence. I'm going to put you on the spot.
I'm going to ask you, how would you describe your hidden talent of competence? Where in your life, your childhood, did you develop that confidence?
Anneliese Rhodes: Thank you, my dear. I do think I'm pretty confident. I truly think that most of it, not most of it, but some of it came from an innate talent that was given to me by God, which is my voice.
And at a very young age, I started singing and it wasn't until I was about 12 that I started taking voice lessons. And those voice lessons, for whatever reason, with the teacher that I had, she studied at Juilliard. So for her, it was opera and this was not something that I wanted. I mean, I was a Broadway Disney, you know, I'm 12 at this point.
So that's what I wanted to sing, well, no, that wasn't what I sang. I learned a different language in Italian and I sang arias. At the age of 12, I started training in opera. And due to that, it brought me, we did many circuits of traveling and competing and getting up on stage, and sometimes the room had three people in it. Sometimes the room had 500 people, a thousand people.
I remember this one time was crazy. I was probably 13 or 14 at the time, I was a freshman in high school and I'll never forget this. We drove to Lakeland, Florida, which is near Lakeland and we went into a school and we were in a room all by ourselves with the pianist who I'd never met before.
My voice teacher and a very mean stern looking lady with glasses that are like right here I mean, she didn't crack a smile. You know me, you know my personality, I'm like, hey, I'm just trying to be sweet and she just was like, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so scary, I'm scared and nervous.
She is legit making me scared and it's like the three of us in this room. Nobody else was watching, but I felt the pressure of that situation and I did fine. I passed with flying colors, they score you on your singing and your performance and the way that you look, the way you hold yourself, your words, your pronunciation, of course, your tone, all the things that, you know, a musician is looking for.
I remember walking out of there so proud of myself and my music teacher, of course, my voice teacher gave me props for it, but now, that was probably the very first time I was ever put on a spot in the middle of a situation in an eerily quiet room with somebody who I didn't know and was quite frankly scared of.
And I performed, I just looked past it. And you know what this is reminding me of? The O.R., that sales call when you're calling on that doctor that either he is scary and you've never called on him and you've only heard bad things and he doesn't talk to reps and you're lucky to even get in here or even bigger deal.
He's like the whale that you got to land and it's like all the pressure on you and it's this one meeting and if I think about it, I fail at this meeting. I'll never get another chance, but it reminds me of that pressure cookie cooker setting where it's eerily quiet in the room and all eyes are on you.
And it may just be one set of eyes, but that set of eyes carries the weight of a million people, that's what it reminds me of. I think in that situation, I thrive because I got used to being in those situations and it's funny until just like talking about it right now, I didn't even realize that. So maybe it is a hidden talent.
Cynthia Ficara: By the way, I've known Lisa has been a singer and opera singer, but don't ever be afraid to ask a question. Cause I just learned something more about her that I didn't know. I think that if you're going into a job interview, don't think that singing isn't a hidden talent of yours that can be transferred into what you just said, it's a great high-pressure situation being in a room where sometimes it's quiet and the owner or a doctor looks to you to answer something, but you have life experiences that get to excel and show who you are.
Anneliese Rhodes: And don't discount them. You know, it's funny that you say that because I never tell anybody. I was texting a doctor the other night that I was singing at church this weekend and I couldn't make a meeting late at night. He's like, what are you saying? And I'm like, dude, I thought I told you that.
He's like, no, because what kind of songs are you saying? I told him opera and he's like, that's sick.
It's so funny because I never even talk about it. It's not something that I think about now because I don't sing anymore. But Man, when you tell people they're super excited and kind of impressed, and then that makes you feel confident. Like, I do have a good quality inside of me.
I do have a talent inside of me that I can call upon and you're right. I never actually thought about that.
Cynthia Ficara: I hope that when you're listening, you're thinking about, what are my hidden talents? Yes, in some simple things we talked about, you know, even just being persistent in your birth order, maybe you're the firstborn, it's leadership but back it up. Think about why that is, what have you done? You know, we talked a little about discipline.
I kind of related it to doing an Ironman triathlon and then her confidence in singing. So we said earlier that she and I did this exercise and we wrote it down like, here are three strengths that I think I have.
So then here's a little drum roll, pull out your piece of paper. What's the second part of this?
Anneliese Rhodes: You need to ask five people, preferably close to you who know you well, like family members, husband, wife, partners, maybe even your kids.
You need to ask them to tell you what they think your three hidden talents are and you will be amazed at what they say.
Cynthia Ficara: Just asked them their strengths, you know, like everybody says, Lisa, she's so confident or maybe somebody says Lisa's the best listener. She doesn't think she is, I'm just saying it's amazing because what you think is maybe different than the way you come across.
And so, if you're getting ready to go to an interview, if you're getting ready to go pitch this amazing idea you have, if you're getting ready to go make this huge decision and you're like, how am I going to do this? What strengths do I pull to identify those strengths? Because let me tell you, it can take you leaps and bounds.
I really think it needs to be family and call on your childhood best friend because Who are you best? Who knew you when you were young? And that's who you were, that was the core of who you were. How did they perceive you all those years ago when you were a kid and your family? And then how do they perceive you now?
Anneliese Rhodes: It's amazing what you're gonna learn about yourself and you'll discover things and you'll hear things that you'll be surprised that they say about you. But I think what Cindy said we should mention that again. When you're struggling with a situation, you're struggling with looking for a new job or that dream job that you want to land, or the interview that you're about to walk into, or the case that you're going to walk into for the very first time with a big doctor.
Call upon those inner strengths, call upon those inner talents, and remind yourself of who you are, the value that you bring to the situation, to the company, and whatever you're looking at, remind yourself of who you are because that's the authentic you and authenticity. We talk about this a lot.
It's really important to be aware of who you are authentically because people can smell from a mile away when you're not.
Cynthia Ficara:The biggest hidden strength is nobody has your strengths. So poppy cheers. Thank you for joining this fun. Well, till next time, have a wonderful day everybody, and go find your hidden strength.
