Part 2: CliftonStrengths
—
Click on the links below to view and download this month’s worksheets to utilize on your own or with a Group and/or Team.
—
“The secret to great teams is casting by individual strengths.”
Discover Your CliftonStrengths
From Gallup and Tom Rath
Have you noticed in life how we’ve trained our brains to focus on fixing what’s wrong? Our education systems, workplaces, and society fixate on improving ourselves at every turn. Each one includes its own unique scoring process that focuses on what’s wrong with us and what should be improved. In the workplace, we have seen this to the point of assigning adults scores, scales, and rankings linked to our worth and value.
The human brain is naturally wired to look for and identify dangers as a form of protection and preservation. Without conscious effort, we inform our brains to disregard areas where we are strong and instead, we seek to overcome weakness and “what’s wrong with me” as a form of protection and self-preservation. The well-worn thought patterns we’ve developed in our brains are roads of certainty and we have become addicted to traveling and walking them. These pathways can be demoralizing, humiliating, and destructive to say the least.
The tools we are exploring in 2023 are invaluable and instrumental. They provide a platform for discussion, developing self-awareness, validating and affirming the way an individual on your team is uniquely wired, and creating an environment where you as the coach can confidently focus on the unique gifts and abilities an individual brings to the team.
Without implementing and institutionalizing the organizational discipline of a development process, we will rely on the traditional annual performance evaluation process linked to performance outcomes. The 1-1 coaching process and tools provides a forum for reorienting our brains. Now is the time to re-train our brains and re-wire our thinking! We need to create new pathways, shift our focus, and “tell our brain what to think.” Many subject matter experts find their confidence is rooted in their competence because we tell ourselves we are not competent unless we have mastered our weaknesses. Coaches, also known as leader managers, can help team members shift the tendency away from focusing on inadequacies and instead focus on embracing each day from a place of adequacy.
Helping team members recognize “they are wired the way they are wired for a good purpose” creates an environment where we capitalize on strengths, motivate individuals, and give the energy we need to achieve shared objectives. Effective leader managers use tools to help identify and honor strengths thus maximizing strengths and minimizing blind spots and barriers.
Think of strengths and talents as finding your superpower. Even heroes only have one superpower. They know you can’t be good at everything, and you need other superheroes to help get the job done. The CliftonStrengths tool is tremendously valuable in that it serves as a forum and mechanism for the coach and team member to provide the language and format for identifying and applying strengths. From a practical application standpoint, the CliftonStrengths tool identifies your Top Talents from among 34 Talents. The 34 Talents are classified into 4 Domains to help an individual glean more insight into the areas that give them the most energy.
The domains are:
Executing – help you and your team perform, make things happen
Influence – take charge, speak up, make sure others are heard and communicate effectively
Relationship Building – consider others and how they are affected and hold a team together
Strategic Thinking – absorb and think about information that informs better decisions
The Gallup organization illustrates the value of investing in one’s talents with this equation. Practically speaking the tool can help multiply effectiveness levels:
As a leader manager using the CliftonStrengths tool helps us develop our coaching skills and allows us:
To help a team member discover their talents and develop them into strengths
To help a team member use their strengths to overcome their challenges and accomplish their goals
To help a team member capitalize on their potential and perform their best
Gallup recommends the Name, Claim, Aim approach to using the tool. First, name your talents, then claim your talents through understanding and acceptance, and finally aim your talents in the right direction to achieve the highest results.
In our practice, we focus on synthesizing the Top 10 talents which provides a comprehensive overview of a team member’s strengths. “A talent is a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.” Examples of talent include:
Effortlessly and instinctively starting conversations
Thinking in an orderly or timely manner
Easily and naturally influencing others
Seeing patterns in data
Consistently having a positive outlook in life
This month we are providing two Gallup worksheets to help leader managers begin the conversation toward finding strengths and creating a development path and plan to “tell our brains what to think”. They are:
When used effectively, a focus on developing strengths can unleash the unique talents of every individual on your team, including yourself. Donald Clifton asked the question, “what will happen when we think about what is right with people rather than fixating on what is wrong with them?” Wishing you all the best as you retrain your brain, rewire your thinking, and unleash the potential in yourself and others!
-LS
This Month’s Worksheet
Click on the links below to view and download this month’s worksheets to utilize on your own or with a Group and/or Team.
Recommended Quarterly Reading
StrengthsFinder 2.0
By Tom Rath
2023
Managing From The Inside Out
Winter 2023
February 1, 8, 15, 22
March 1, 8, 15
AM Classes: 8:30-11:30 A.M.
PM Classes: 1:30-4:30 P.M.
Spring 2023
May 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
June 7, 14
AM Classes: 8:30-11:30 A.M.
PM Classes: 1:30-4:30 P.M.
Fall 2023
October 4, 11, 18, 25
November 1, 8, 15
AM Classes: 8:30-11:30 A.M.
PM Classes: 1:30-4:30 P.M.
Register today to engage in professional growth and development as a Leader Manager and join us for Managing From The Inside Out! Simply email Kelly Martin at kelly@lauraschanz.com to reserve a seat for yourself or a Team Member. The 2023 Registration Fee is $1,295.