Podcasts about strengthsfinder talent themes

Strengths Focus For This Episode In this episode Lisa answers the question, "Is StrengthsFinder a personality test?" She uses proof from both research data and real-life examples. She shows that StrengthsFinder is actually not a personality test, but instead a performance-based tool. Resources of the Episode You'll find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page. To find proof points and stats that can help you make the case for focusing on Strengths at your organization, check out LeadThroughStrengths.com/stats. Strengths Tools One of the best ways leaders can build a strengths based culture is to offer appreciation of strengths in action. If you'll notice what works, you'll get more of what works because people can replicate what they've already done well. On our home page, you can download this awesome tool that offers you 127 easy ideas for recognizing your team. Scroll down and look for the box that says "Great Managers Notice What Works". Here's a Full Transcript of The Show You’re listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you’ll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I’m your host, Lisa Cummings, and I’ve gotta tell ya: using your strengths at work is one of the most energizing things you can do for your workplace. Today, the question is whether StrengthsFinder is a personality test. I get this question often. It comes in many forms. Usually, it comes from managers or strengths champions who are asking me a question because they were trying to get strengths to be implemented in a bigger way in their organization, and they got stymied. It sounds something like this, “Oh, no, not another personality test,” or they take it to get approved and they hear, “Oh, we already had a personality test last year.” Or, somebody says something like, “I’m not sure I’m into these personality tests.” What Is StrengthsFinder? It surprises many people to learn that StrengthsFinder is actually not a personality test at all. So, if you’re making a case for rolling out StrengthsFinder or Strengths-focused culture tools, it is nice to know that it is something totally different. It’s actually a performance-based tool. I’ll give you an explanation of how it’s different from the typical personality test. Then I’ll give you a proof point or two you can use in your workplace. I'll also offer you a way of thinking about this topic to explain the difference between what people do on the job, and how they get it done on the job. I think this is an important thing to explore when you’re rolling out StrengthsFinder because some workplaces are really focused on the knowledge and skills someone needs to do the job – that’s the what part – but they don’t spend very much time focusing on how people can show up at their very best. Focusing On Strengths Every Day Increases Productivity Let’s start with a proof point. If you’re going to do an initiative like StrengthsFinder in your organization, you want proof points like Gallup’s research that shows teams that focus on Strengths every day have 12.5% greater productivity than those who don’t. And, at the end of the show, I’ll give you a bunch more of those, a place where you can find the proof points that are most relevant to your organization and to your situation. Personality Tests (Assessments) Are Usually Based On The 5-Factor Model On the personality test question, the thing I think is most important for you to understand is that most of these personality assessments that exist are actually based on the five-factor model that you can learn about when you study psychology. If you have industrial organizational psychologists in your organization, they’ll know all about the five-factor model. Even if you’re not an I/O psychologist, you probably know about these because you’ve heard of DiSC, or Myers Briggs (MBTI), Insights, or Hogan. These are different assessments that are based on the five-factor model. Those 5 factors are things like Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. Most of those, although not all, throw out the Neuroticism category. Your CliftonStrengths Are Your Areas Of Greatest Potential How is this different from StrengthsFinder? The answer is in the study of performance excellence. StrengthsFinder researchers at Gallup studied performance for decades. They discovered Themes that people use to deliver their best performance. In Gallup’s words, Talent Themes “are the areas in which an individual has the greatest potential for building strength.” There are 34 of these Talent Themes. When you get your Clifton StrengthsFinder results, you’ll actually see that they’re actually called Talent Themes. To put it in layman’s terms, think of them like easy buttons...easy buttons that people use to approach their goals. The "What" Part: Knowledge, Skills, Experience For example, say you lead a marketing department. There’s what you do and then there’s how you do it. In the “what” category, you have things like knowledge and skills and past experiences. Inside of a greater marketing department you have high-level knowledge and skill areas: things like marketing communication, product marketing, demand generation, pricing, etc. Of course, each area can go really deep into sub-level skills. If you take something like a creative team inside of marketing, they’re going to have really specific knowledge and skill areas: graphic design, color, Adobe InDesign, buyer psychology, all sorts of layers like that. In those “what” categories (like the ones mentioned above), people are pretty good at understanding what they need to know. Those are easy enough to identify. You can tell when they are present or when they’re not. And you can figure out how to go get those knowledge and skill areas. The "How" Part: Your Talents - How You Naturally Think, Feel, And Act The trickier part is “how” every unique human being approaches that job at their very best. This is why, of course, we’re humans and not robots, so we’re a little more complicated. Each person can’t just approach the job in the exact same way and get the same results. As a manager, StrengthsFinder can help you tap into each person’s best performance because it tells you what their easy buttons are, or “how” they can uniquely get that job done at their best. If you manage that same team of creative pros, you’ll see they’re reaching their best output when you can get it done through their talents. For example, someone who leads through the Futuristic Talent Theme will want to know where that specific marketing campaign is going to take the company and the customer so that they can align to that. If you contrast that with somebody who has the Maximizer Talent, they’re on the same creative team and they have to get the same job done, but you may find that they’re totally focused on something else. They’re over there trying to reuse some video footage so that you can get more out of something that already exists. Or they’re off creating actions in your Adobe InDesign software to save time on repetitive tasks - to free them up to get more time in their creative headspace. You can see that within this same job, you can have two people who are off in their own worlds doing very different things, but those very different things are the things that put them at their best. This is how your StrengthsFinder Talent Themes, once you know them, can really help you unleash their easy buttons to perform at your best. Of course, as a people manager, this is like magic once you learn each of these things about your team members, because you can understand how to put them in that environment to get them at their very best. StrengthsFinder Is An Assessment Built On Performance and Potential To bring this episode all together, StrengthsFinder, in fact, is not a personality test. It is an assessment that was built on the study of performance and potential. If you want to look up, specifically for you and your organization, proof points that will be most supportive of the objectives you have in your organization, check out LeadThroughStrengths.com/stats. You’ll see a page that has dozens of proof points and stats that can help you make the case for this in your organization. A final note, if you’re listening as a people manager or a strengths champion, one of the reasons I think it’s important to answer this question about personality test is that I also see, when people take personality tests or surveys or assessments, (whatever you choose to call them), on the receiving end of them, your employees are often guarded about the conversations that follow. They are nervous that you’re going to come up with labels for them. They might have had some experiences in the past where they’ve been put into a box about how they are, or who they are as people. Depending on who you have on your team, you might have to do some work in explaining how StrengthsFinder is framed: that it is focused on those areas of their greatest potential. Usually they see it very quickly and they’re super psyched because you’re talking about what makes them great. When I do StrengthsFinder training programs, I don’t find many resistors to the process (like I did when I facilitated programs based on personality assessments). It’s one reason why I love StrengthsFinder so much. But coming into it, many people don’t know this, and they don’t know how it is all going to be framed up or applied on the job. Depending on how they’ve been used in your organization in the past, or if you sense that somebody is a little hesitant about all of this kind of stuff, it’s helpful to share how the point of going through the process with StrengthsFinder is to find their greatest area of potential so that you can unleash their strengths at work. If you do this in a way that shows you, as a leader, are being supportive of them, and putting them at their best and that, in fact, when you’re using your strengths at work you feel more ease and energy and enjoyment on the job, most people pretty quickly go, “Okay. I’ll give this thing a chance.” Luckily, in my experience, the hesitant people have been a very small slice of the population. I would say, anecdotally, more than 95% of people in any given room or organization come in pretty excited about the future when we do StrengthsFinder or Strengths-based process. In fact, one guy recently said, “Oh, my gosh, that StrengthsFinder report was full of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me.” I thought he summed up really well - people’s reaction to it when they first get exposed to StrengthsFinder, and how it can explain what puts you at your very best. With that, I hope this helps you as you make the case to bring a Strengths-focused culture to your organization. From here, I hope you’ll take this information and use it to help people in your company claim their talents and share them with the world. Subscribe To The Lead Through Strengths Podcast To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published.  

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths This week Lisa speaks with Pete Mockaitis, who joins us in a live example of what it’s like to explore your StrengthsFinder results for the first time. Pete's Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:  Ideation, Strategic, Learner, Activator, Input, Connectedness, Woo, Communication, Positivity, Individualization Lisa’s Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:   Strategic, Maximizer, Positivity, Individualization, Woo, Futuristic, Focus, Learner, Communication, Significance Resources of the Episode You can reach Pete through the Awesome at Your Job website. You can also connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn. And you should because he's awesome! Here's the link to Pete's podcast, and to his interview of Lisa Cummings. Books, terms, and other websites mentioned in this podcast: Book: Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Dr. Robert Cialdini Study: 80/20 Rule, which is also called the Pareto Principle Term: Leadership Domains as explained by my friends at Leadership Vision Consulting. They're another firm who offers Strengths based leadership training. And our favorite resource of the episode: evidence of Pete's wicked-awesome talent of one-handed clapping:   You'll also find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our "https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://leadthroughstrengths.com/resources&source=gmail&ust=1487264698482000&usg=AFQjCNHUtPcayNXycHfGq_r2Crj5sPIU7w">Strengths Resources page.   Subscribe To Lead Through Strengths To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published.   Here's The Full Transcript of the Interview Lisa Cummings: [00:00:08] You’re listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you’ll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I’m your host, Lisa Cummings, and I’ve got to tell you, whether you’re leading a team or leading yourself, it’s hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work. And today you’re going to get a really unique episode on StrengthsFinder. It’s different from our usual guest interview. Today, your guest joins us in a live example of what it’s like to explore your StrengthsFinder results for the first time. So I think a lot of guests are going to identify with his love of learning and his corporate experiences. He’s actually a former consultant for Bain so he has that pedigree company thing on his list that many of you. And today he’s the trainer and chief at Awesome At Your Job, so you’ll hear more about that and his show as we dig in. So, you know, if you’re a regular listener of this show that we’re going to talk about how his differences are his differentiators. So you’ll enjoy hearing a fun fact about him. So, here it goes. This guy has a unique talent of being able to clap with one hand. So, Pete Mockaitis, welcome to the show. Please give yourself a one-handed welcome and demonstrate for us. Pete Mockaitis: [00:01:34] Oh, Lisa, thank you. That’s such a unique welcome and it’s fun to do, and here we go. [one-handed claps] Lisa Cummings: [00:01:40] I can’t believe that is really happening with one hand. It is blowing my mind. You’re going to have to make us a video so we can see what that actually looks like. I can’t believe that’s possible. Pete Mockaitis: [00:01:51] I can do that, yes, and that’s probably my number one strength is one-handed clapping. It opens a lot of doors. Lisa Cummings: [00:01:58] [laughs] Your hand can open a door in a traditional way...but his hand...watch out. Pete Mockaitis: [00:02:01] Oh, well-played. Lisa Cummings: [00:02:05] Watch out. Oh, my gosh. We’re going to totally have this video on the show notes, so if you’re listening click on over to that because that’s a serious talent. I love it. [laughs] Okay, let’s get into the serious side of super powers. That’s one, I tell you, parlor tricks though they could fuel the Woo that you have up in there. I think there’s something tied here. Maybe that’s how you discovered it. Maybe we’ll uncover that today. Pete Mockaitis: [00:02:30] Oh, are folks being won over as we speak, or are they turned off? We’ll see with your emails that come flowing in. Lisa Cummings: [00:02:35] That’s right. Okay. So, you know in this episode, we’re going to do this like a sample of exploring your StrengthsFinder talents for the first time. Well, we’re going to have to start by telling them what your Talent Themes here. So give them your top five. Pete Mockaitis: [00:02:50] Okay, can do. With just the words or the descriptions as well? Lisa Cummings: [00:02:54] Let’s get a little “Meet Pete” moment. So do the word and also the one sentence what this looks like on you. Pete Mockaitis: [00:03:03] Okay. So, first, I’ll give a quick preview – one, Ideation; two, Strategic; three, Learner; four, Activator; and five, Input. In terms of the one sentence: 1) Ideation, it’s true I am fascinated by ideas and how they connect together on my podcast with guests. I eat it up when I see “Oh, wait, there’s one thing someone said” can combine with that other thing they said, so I’m going to focus on prioritizing with the one thing but also building some tiny habits and, boom, there’s this combination synergy goodness, and so that resonates. 2) Strategic. I buy that in terms of if I’m always thinking about sort of what’s the optimal path forward, that’s the name of my company – Optimality, LLC – getting the band for the buck and sort of that 80/20 Rule and action, I’m really after that. 3) For Learner, it’s true. Ever since I was a youngster that’s kind of where my trainer and chief story starts. I was always going to the library reading books about goal-setting, success, teamwork, collaboration, influence. I was just into that stuff, and I remain to this day. 4) Activator, it’s true. I am often impatient. I’m excited to put things into action. Just this week I was thinking it’s just too much trying to manage the guests with merely emails and spreadsheets. I need a CRM, customer relationship management piece of software, and five hours later I had tried nine of them and made my decision. So, yeah, I got after it right away. That’s kind of my nature. I’ll wake up and I’ll have an idea and I just want to like run to the computer and implement it. 5) And then, finally, Input. I do, I love to get perspective from wise folks and learn all that they have to offer and collect multiple opinions to really prove or disprove the sort of key facts or assertions that are going to make or break a given decision. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:59] These are so good. Thanks for adding the Pete color because even for people who don’t understand the basic definition of it and Gallup’s terminology you explained it and then added your individual color. Just seeing as a kid in the library, I’m imagining you going back and training them so it’ll be fun to hear the depth on that. And then Activator, one that just happened the other day. It’s just a really great specific example so we can see what these are like in real life. So, let’s talk about if we really relate this to career, and you think back on one of your proudest accomplishments, tell us about that snapshot in time. Pete Mockaitis: [00:05:40] You know, I’m thinking, the first thing that leaps to mind is just getting the job at Bain & Company itself. I’d say it was very meaningful to me because I had been interested in it for some years before it came about, and it was just a vivid moment. I can recall when I was emceeing a date auction event as a fundraiser in college for a student organization, and when I got the call I just handed the microphone to someone, walked off stage, received the call. It was great news. I was excited. I hugged my friend, Emily, who was wearing a red puffy coat. It’s forever enshrined in my brain as like the moment that this thing I had been after for some years was now mine. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:31] I love how vivid your imagery is and all of these. Take us through the preparation, what it was like for you getting ready for applying for this job, making it a thing. It sounds like it was a long time coming. So how was that playing out in your life, leading up to that phone call? Pete Mockaitis: [00:06:49] Oh, sure thing. Well, I was sort of an odd kid in my sort of freshman year of college. I was sort of determined like, “By golly, I want to work in a top strategy consulting firm when I graduate, and so that’s just what I’m going to do.” And so I began exploring different avenues very early on in terms of student organizations and what were the linkages and how I could have sort of a distinctive profile that I would be intriguing to them. I went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign which is not a hotbed for recruiting into those firms, but there are a few each year who get in, and I wanted to be one. So, I remember I would sort of try to find the right people, and the right organizations, and learn from them and see what I could do. And I remember, talk about vivid experiences, I was chatting guy named Bo who was wearing a Harry Potter wizard hat at a Halloween party. And he said, “Oh, you should join the student organization.” And I was like, “Oh, I was thinking about that, but isn’t that kind of more technology stuff?” And he’s like, “Oh, no. It’s much broader than that. Yeah, and they’re always chatting with so-and-so and they do case interviews,” which is a key step to get a job in these firms, “to get in and, yeah, I think you’d like it.” And so I was excited to discover that opportunity and then go after it. Then once I met a real person named Jeff who had the position, I was just having a real lot of fun chatting with him and seeing, “Hey, what’s it like on the inside? Is it really what I’ve built it up to be?” and sort of receiving that reinforcement that it was good. And then, ultimately, I think the biggest hurdle to get the job is the case interview where you have to sort of solve business problems live before the interviewer’s eyes. And so I did a lot of prep. I got the books, I even recorded myself doing case interviews. I’d listen to them back to see how I was doing and to see how I might tweak it to seem more engaging or succinct and insightful. I remember I was listening to myself doing case interviews while driving up to the interview the day before. So those are things that leap to mind there. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:06] Those are so good. Now, if you look at your talents, and then you try to make some linkages, now I’ve made a bunch of linkages and I’ve even, although the listeners can’t see your list beyond your top five, as you would not be surprised if you know a Learner and Input. Pete immediately goes out and wants more input and grabs the full 34 premium version of assessment so he can see the whole lineup. So I see a bigger lineup and I have some things popping into my head about your number 6, Connectedness, and your number 7, Woo. But when you look at your list and you think back on that experience, what links do you see where you’re using those talents as you’re preparing? Pete Mockaitis: [00:09:47] Oh, sure thing. Well, it’s interesting, in terms of Activator it’s like, “This is the thing I want and so I’m going to start now.” I was a freshman and I was evaluating opportunities. Not only whether they were fun and I would get to meet people, but if they would take me to where I wanted to go, and then jumping in full force for those things I thought could really do it. So, I guess that’s Activator. I’m getting right to it yet Strategic is that I was kind of being selective, and saying, “You know, while that club sounds kind of interesting, I don’t think it’s going to have as much sort of bang for my buck, in terms of taking me where I want to be.” And so the interestingness is not quite enough to offset this. And then with Ideation, I think I did take some novel approaches to having distinctive profile, like I authored a book in college about leadership and student organizations, and I saw the opportunity to be the Secretary General of our model United Nations, which I thought, “Well, that’s a really cool leadership opportunity in terms of managing dozens of people and thousands of dollars to put together an event for hundreds of folks. Ooh, that’ll be a real nice concept to make an impression, as well as having a ton of fun.” So I was a pure career-seeking robot along the lines. But I do see those in learning, yeah, talking to folks, learning what the firms want, how they operate, getting the books. And Input, certainly, talking to numerous people along the way to confirm, “Is this really what I think it is?” and learn, “Well, what needs to be done in order to get there?” Lisa Cummings: [00:11:30] You’re bringing up what happens for a lot of people where if they heard the descriptors in the StrengthsFinder Talent Themes, and they listen to the thing that you just described, they would probably think, “Achiever” because it seems like the easy way to describe what you accomplished. And although Achiever is middle of the road for you, 13, it’s not extraordinarily high but you found extreme achievement at that age. So, you’re demonstrating something that’s really cool which is I always tell people. StrengthsFinder doesn’t tell you what you go do in your career. It’s more about how you can go do it, leaning through the talents you have. So you found achievement through totally different talents and it’s dangerous to try to look at the words on the surface. And I think if I listened to your show, which I do. Pete Mockaitis: [00:12:21] Oh, thank you. Lisa Cummings: [00:12:22] Which is called Awesome At Your Job. So, for those of you listening and you want to check it out, we’ll put the link in the show notes. It’s a great show about being awesome at your job overall. I think if listened to that show I may hypothesize that you have an Analytical talent, for example, because I know that you mention research studies very often, you mention proof points, your favorite hobby is Monopoly. So you have some of these things, right, that some people might think, “Oh, that sounds like an Analytical guy.” And Talent Themes show up more in how you approach what you do not necessarily what those interests are. So, kind of fascinating thing you’re bringing up. So, tell us about yearnings and interests, like Monopoly and research studies and proof points, and things that you talk about in your show and how your Talent Themes speak to those. Pete Mockaitis: [00:13:14] Oh, that is interesting in terms of just what’s fun. So, on my honeymoon, just a few months ago – Yay. Lisa Cummings: [00:13:23] Yay. Pete Mockaitis: [00:13:24] I was reading this book Pre-Suasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini on the beach. And so it’s funny, it’s non-fiction but that was just fascinating and fun for me, I was like, “Oh, wow. Well, here’s an interesting fact. They did study and here’s what happened.” And so I’ll find that all the more thrilling than most works of fiction because I guess Ideation is fuelling that fascination in terms of I’m thinking, “Oh, look at all these implications for how I could go put that to work and make things happen.” And for Monopoly, it’s so funny. I remember one time I was meeting this guy for the first time, his name is Peter; fine name, fine guy. Lisa Cummings: [00:14:09] Fine name. Pete Mockaitis: [00:14:11] [laughs] And so as we were playing Monopoly he kept asking me some questions about my career journey and how I went into Bain and why I left Bain and started my own business and these things. And I’ll tell you what, I was so focused on the strategic options and decisions I had to make in that game Monopoly to win I actually had in my head the idea that this guy is trying to distract me in order to win at Monopoly. Lisa Cummings: [00:14:40] [laughs] Pete Mockaitis: [00:14:41] I thought, “Pete, that’s crazy. Most people don’t care. They play games to socialize in fun ways.” [laughs] I was being a little rude in retrospect. I kind of apologized to him. I gave him very short answers, I was like, “Well, ultimately, that’s just something I’ve always loved to do.” You know, just one- or two-sentence responses. Lisa Cummings: [00:15:01] Let’s get back to the seriousness of Park Place, buddy. [laughs] Okay. So, now what you’re helping me see and raise is this concept of domains. I don’t know if you know this about StrengthsFinder, but they’ve done some studies on leadership, and these four domains of leadership actually came from quite a large study on followers. So, if I look at your talent lineup, not to get too nerdy and distract from the story of you, I’ll give you the quick version. There are four different domains of leadership that people often find their strength in, and yours, to give you the tell as I lean into it, you come in really hot on the Strategic Thinking Talents, and then second highest your Influencing. So, there are four categories. You have the Relationship Talents. You have the Influencing Talents. You have the Strategic Thinking talents, the thinker guy that you probably are, and then you have Executing Talents. And so, as I listened to your reaction to the Monopoly thing, I could see you being really in your head about what was going on in the situation. The way I look at these four domains is that they’re all valuable, and they’re all useful ways that you can demonstrate leadership, but this is kind of, when you have one that comes in heavy in your top five, it’s often the color of glasses you’re wearing. Like yours would be, if you looked at your StrengthsFinder report, the Strategic Thinking Talents are actually colored red. And you could see, “Okay, look, my first view on things, the lens I’m going to see the world through will, first, likely be thinking about it.” Now you have a lot of fast-thinking talents, so Ideation is fast and Strategic is fast, so it’s not like you’re going to go deep and sit around and ponder things deeply for months. You can boom, boom, boom, react to that guy and have your answer. And I noticed your Influencing Talents are also high on your list. You have Activator, Woo, Communication up in your top 10. It’s interesting to see those two. How does that play into how you’ve seen yourself and your career? Pete Mockaitis: [00:17:12] Well, that is interesting. And what’s funny is I have a little bit of a hard time switching at times in that I really do like people and building relationships, and connecting and laughing and seeing how we’re similar and how we can help each other and collaborate and all those good things. That’s fun for me. But surprising, or I don’t know, just kind of part of how I go, is that when I get deep into the realm of this Ideation, Strategic, Input, Thinking and I’m trying to crack something, or figure it out, it’s just sort of like Peter in that game of Monopoly. It’s like, “I’m not in people mode right now. I am in finding an optimal solution given all of my options and constraints mode right now.” And I feel a bit sort of like I’m being pulled away from that which I’m attached to and I’m into at the moment, or I’m just sort of like I’m not really present or there. I think that does show up in that they are different clusters and I feel them differently in terms of my whole headspace and emotional state. It’s like, “I’m not in people mode right now.” And sometimes my wife will notice and she would like me to enter into people mode as we’re being together, or where she’ll just say, “Okay, you’re in your groove. Go ahead and finish that first.” So that’s the first thing that pops to mind there. Lisa Cummings: [00:18:45] What a deep powerful insight. I love hearing how the thinking stuff is playing out in your head, and then also the relationship part. So, I apply StrengthsFinder to work all the time and find that sometimes the easiest ones to get how you perform relative to other people is through people you’re really close to. So your wife probably knows you about as well as anyone in the world so she’s going to be more comfortable saying it out loud or noticing it or mentioning it. Do you happen to know hers? Has she taken this yet? Pete Mockaitis: [00:19:20] You know, I don’t think she has. Lisa Cummings: [00:19:22] Okay. Would be fun. So this could be one where you say, “Okay, look, your first Relationship Talent is Connectedness. It’s your number six. I hear you relying on it relatively often.” So you could ask a question like how could you lean on your Connectedness talent when you’re trying to consciously switch into a mode that would complement the conversation you two are having? Pete Mockaitis: [00:19:47] That is a great question. And, particularly Connectedness, that’s one of those words for the Strengths Finders that makes me think of, “Oh, like a super network.” But, no, no. Connectedness is more about having sort of like the faith in why things are the way they are or a higher power. And so, for me, that is big. I’m a Catholic Christian. I think tapping into some of those, well, one, I guess is the headspace of worship or sort of loving people and serving them as folks made in the image and likeness of God can be pretty potent in terms of a reminder of, “Hey, what’s really important here?” “Well, how about we give that person the listening ear and respect and attention that they deserve?” Lisa Cummings: [00:20:32] Oh, this is so good. I could take this in 20 directions because, one, I hear the interplay of Talents, how your Connectedness and Strategic gets so wound together because you do have so many Thinking Talents, the connection of ideas and not just people and meaning but pull all those things together – connecting meaning, connecting people, connecting ideas. Those are going to play out for you in a way that might even be difficult to separate, you know, “Which talent thing is talking here?” And then your first Executing Theme is Belief and that, of course, I hear it in what you just said, and so it really helps me see when you say it. Oh, yeah, this would drive how you go about getting things done as well with the perspective of the meaning in your life and what is this all for and how does it play out. I also think this is the direction I’ll ultimately take it, because there are so many ways we could go from that conversation. So a lot of people struggle with this. You look at your lineup, and I’ve told you about these leadership domains, and you see, “Oh, my gosh. My first Executing Talent is number 12. This sounds like a person. Oh, no, I might be doomed. Does it mean I never get anything done?” Well, clearly you get a lot done. You are a machine it seems. So, where do you get your ability to achieve and get the outcomes and results you want? Because you clearly do. Pete Mockaitis: [00:22:00] How does it happen? Well, I think part of is just that I think about it in terms of I have a standard in mind in terms of how things should be or go. I think that’s kind of a vague broad thing to say. But, day after day, what mostly happens is I have kind of a picture in my head for what is done, good, complete, dream, nirvana state look like, and then I have all these ideas for what are the things that I could do that I couldn’t bring it there. And then I just become very excited about those ideas and I just sort of run after them. In terms of the CRMs, I was thinking, “I have a dream” – so dramatic. Lisa Cummings: [00:22:57] [laughs] Martin Luther Pete has a dream of CRM systems. Pete Mockaitis: [00:23:03] In which every guest that comes on my show will be absolutely outstanding, like leaving me and listeners with, “Wow.” Well, what’s it take to get there? Well, probably a fuller pipeline so that I don’t ever have a scramble in terms of, “Oh, I’m a little light on interview appointments. I better get some right away.” That’s like an obstacle to that is like when you have the time to patiently vet candidates as opposed to, “Oh, I’ve got to grab somebody,” then the odds are in your favor in terms of getting great ones. So then, I think, “Well, then what does that system look like? And how can I do that without spending my whole life stuck into analyzing their tweet history?” That’s how I often think about how it gets done, is I feel this tension inside me. It’s like, “I want that to be real and I’ve got these compelling, exciting ideas for what I could do to make that real so let’s go do it.” Lisa Cummings: [00:24:01] It’s really pretty deep what you just said because I could see Strategic helping you sort quickly, “Here’s the outcome. What’s the best way to get there?” Boom, your Activator says, “Go!” and then you create these systems and the insight that listeners won’t have, is that you and I have had some other conversations outside of this. Pete and I are pals. So we’ll talk podcast nerd-talk and he has all these great systems and team members who make things happen, and it actually is one of the great things you can do as Activator. You partner with people who see it through the finish line so that you can get the excitement at the starting line, and then other people can do the execution of the systems you’ve established and the vision you’ve created. So it’s actually a beautiful way you’ve worked through it. Pete Mockaitis: [00:24:43] Oh, thank you. You know, it’s so funny, when you say it like that I think, “Well, of course, isn’t that how everyone does it?” And the answer is I guess clearly, “No, it’s not.” Because I think, “Well, isn’t executing the same thing hundreds of times kind of dull?” But, no, some people are into that. Lisa Cummings: [00:24:59] A-ha. Okay. So, here’s the last topic we’ll bring up only because we’re running out of time because, geez, this would be so much fun to keep going and going and going. So that comment you just made made me think of the Talent Theme of Consistency, doing the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times. Well, it is Pete’s number 33 talent, so we call that a lesser talent, or maybe somebody else’s talent. Meaning somebody else, right? Yes, somebody else might get really excited about doing something the same way consistently over and over every day. But if Pete had to do that every day, what would work feel like for you? Pete Mockaitis: [00:25:37] Oh, it would just be so dull. It’s like I would want sort of some spark of newness to make it come together. Lisa Cummings: [00:25:48] This is a great way to end the show because living in your strengths makes you a stronger performer. Living in your strengths brings you energy and enjoyment about your job. If you’re pulling on your lesser talents, or someone else’s talents, all day every day, you feel drained, you feel burned out, and so many people feel like that and wonder, “You know, gosh, it’s not so hard and people are nice. So why do I feel like this?” And that’s often why, it’s because they’re calling on their weaknesses all day every day but they just don’t quite realize why. So, thanks, in an unexpected way, for illustrating that point because that is so powerful for people to have that insight. Pete Mockaitis: [00:26:25] Oh, thank you. It’s been a blast. Lisa Cummings: [00:26:27] It has been a blast. I’m so excited to have you here to do this. I wish we could triple down on it. Let’s get listeners over to you because you have so many great shows to help people be awesome at their jobs. So, where should they go to dig into your content, your training, your podcasts? Pete Mockaitis: [00:26:42] Oh, sure thing. Thank you. Well, I’d say if you’re already, well, you are a podcast listener, fire up your app and whatever you’re doing and search Awesome Job. That should be enough to pop up the show How To Be Awesome At Your Job. Lisa herself is a guest on an episode. You might check that out to get another flavor for her. Or just my website AwesomeAtYourJob.com. And it’s been fun. I’ve had about 130, wow, conversations with tremendous folks and every one of them is about trying to sharpen the universal skills required to flourish at work. So, whether you’re an executive, or a manager, or an individual contributor in marketing, or finance, or anything, it should be applicable because that’s kind of the primary screen we’re using. Lisa Cummings: [00:27:26] I second that. It is a fantastic show. I met Pete last year, and ever since leaving our meet-up in Chicago, I just have been an avid listener, and it’s just full of great guests and great tips. If you want to go back and listen through the lens of the StrengthsFinder Talents it’ll be really fun to do that. Also, for listeners, if you want some Strengths focus tools to use with your team at work, also check out LeadThroughStrengths/resources and you’ll get a bunch of great free info there. As we close episode, remember using your strengths makes you a stronger performer at work. If you’re putting a lopsided focus on fixing your weaknesses you’re probably choosing the path of most resistance. So claim your talents and share them with the world.  

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths This week Lisa speaks with Alexsys (Lexy) Thompson. They discuss lots of ideas about how to apply strengths to both conflict on your team and gratitude on your team. If you interact with others in your daily life, then this is the episode for you! Lexy’s Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:  Strategic, Connectedness, Futuristic, Intellection, Command, Input, Activator, Ideation, Self-Assurance, Relator Lisa’s Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:   Strategic, Maximizer, Positivity, Individualization, Woo, Futuristic, Focus, Learner, Communication, Significance Resource of the Episode You can reach Lexy through the Trybal Performance website. You can also connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn. A great way to improve your communication skills is to take Lexy's communications course, Conversation Mechanics: How To Talk About It (Strengths-Based Communication) Lexy's website has cool resources, including Gratitude Coupons, 34 Strengths Appreciation E-Cards, and more! Books that are mentioned during this podcast: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) by Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills Strengths Tools You'll also find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page. Subscribe To Lead Through Strengths To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published.   Here's a Full Transcript of the 30 Minute Interview Lisa Cummings: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and I've gotta tell ya, whether you're leading a team or leading yourself, it's hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work. Today, in this episode, we are going to talk about how strengths apply to conflict at work, and how you can apply strengths to gratitude on your team, and why that's important. Your guest today is the founder of a company, Tribal Performance. I left last week, doing several events in New York City, and at those events a bunch of participants said they wished they had more Self-Assurance and more Command, so those are two specific talent themes people were wanting for. Your guest has both of those in her top 10 talents. Even though I always tell participants, "spend your energy working with what you've got instead of worrying about what other people have - you can always get your outcomes through the talents you have," I figure you would still find it very fascinating to know that your guest has both of those talents. Shhhh. Even though she has them she's still totally terrified of snakes. As a gardener, this can be a scary thing, so even if you lead through Command and Self-Assurance, it doesn't make you bulletproof. Besides being super unique, and out there with these unique talents, she's also top notch in strengths-based development. She focuses on delivering StrengthsFinder coaching, performance coaching, and training like I do. She's also planning an epic Airstream RV adventure and has some really awesome communication course content that will dribble into our conversation today. All kinds of great stuff. With that, Lexy Thompson, welcome to the show. Lexy Thompson: Thanks Lisa. Happy to be here. Lisa Cummings: Let's dive right in. I mentioned conflict, and this is one of those items that is tough for teams to master. I'd be curious what your number one thing is that you think creates unproductive conflict in the workplace. Lexy Thompson: Number one I would say is the avoidance of it, the fear of it, the almost aversion to it. Once we can get past that, we can figure out how to actually lean into it. The funny part about this is at the executive level this seems to be the one competency that sets everybody apart. The best of the best at the senior levels are able to manage this day in and day out with some grace and kindness and high level of accountability. You and I do our work at that mid-level management often times, and that's often a really good space for them to start trying to get comfortable with what's uncomfortable for them. Lisa Cummings: I think that's really smart because a lot of people listening are people managers and they want to be in executive roles and I could absolutely agree that that does seem to be a distinguishing factor, someone able to go in and really work in those situations confidently. There are also a lot of listeners who are individual contributors trying to be promoted into manager roles and that is about the number one complaint when I am working with people managers, and they say people have these conflicts on the team and they come into their office like tattle tales saying, "Oh, I'm having this issue with so-and-so ..." and are not addressing it head-on. If you want to be viewed as a high performer, as self-sufficient, as having high emotional intelligence, you start learning your ways of addressing that head-on in a mutually respectful way, in a way that builds trust, you're going to be looked upon as a great candidate, or at least that area of you will make you a much more viable candidate for a leadership position in general. What is the why that finally makes people see that this is important? Lexy Thompson: The self-awareness piece, the strengths journey for somebody, is really eye opening. Inside of that awareness, as much as they're willing to really enter in and do some work, the confidence just builds because you start to ... The wiring's there, you just haven't run down the road long enough to pave it. Once you've got that paved, your ability to run down and come back, you can do it within nanoseconds where it might have taken you minutes before. The more you do that the more confident you become, the stronger runner that you are and then you're willing to enter most races and give it a spin. Conflict really isn't much different than that; it's just knowing that you can take what you've learned here and see how you can apply it in a new situation. Lisa Cummings: If you're a manager, how do you know whether your team is functional or not? Let's start with how it looks. If you walk in a room and you see a functional team contrasted with a meeting with a dysfunctional team, what are the differences in how they appear? Lexy Thompson: There are actual body language cues. There are, like the way people sit, the way people walk in a room, the eye contact that you'll see in the meeting. Whenever I see teams talking to a person in the room but they're looking somewhere else, that tells me there's an avoidance of some type going on, whether it's conflict or self-confidence or whatever, there's something that isn't working amongst at least that two-person group, much less the whole group. Sometimes you walk in a meeting and you feel high-energy and you feel productivity and in other meetings, you'll walk in and you'll feel flat and kind of dull, and that's another cue too. Lisa Cummings: What do you do next? Say you're a manager, you've walked into a team, you're new to the company, you get the vibe of the 'something is wrong here' and you have to figure out how to put your finger on it. What are the steps that you take to start to unravel it and understand what the root of it is? Lexy Thompson: Firstly you check yourself. We all, every single one of us, bring our baggage with us when we go anywhere. What I found helpful when I was learning to be really proficient here was to see what was the story I brought into the scenario I was experiencing called conflict, or avoidance of conflict. Once I could check that, I could either say, "Okay, it is something that's outside of me that I'm going to need to engage with," or "It's a filter and a judgment that I just ran and I called it conflict but it really isn't, there's no data on the other side of this table or this room to help me validate that and I can check myself before I start diving in with someone else." That's the first part. That's the hardest part sometimes because it's called fatal attribution when we think that our faults are about the other person or environment but if it's someone else's faults, it's their character, so we really have to do that homework first. Lisa Cummings: I love that, when it's simplified down to the idea that you judge yourself by your intentions and you judge somebody else by their actions. It's easy to see the actions and say, "Oh, that's a character flaw," because you don't know the thing that's going in behind the scenes in the mind. I also think it's tough to know what you're assuming because you only know what's in your own head. How do you take people through that process? You've been checking yourself, how do you check in on assumptions and what's going on and probe into what's happening in a way that maintains the trust? Lexy Thompson: Probably the next step would be really owning your part of that, and making sure that you use language that shows the other person that you own your part of that. If you and I are in a room and I'm concerned about something in relationship to you, I would say it just like that, "Lisa, this is my story. This is what I'm experiencing. I'm not sure if I'm checking myself or do you feel something, a different version of this or any version of this where you are?" At that point the conversation will evolve and it will go where it needs to go and there may be avoidance on your part, maybe you don't see it or you're not ready. There's going to be a dialog there but at least when I open up and say, "I have something going on over here and I'd really like your help to discover what that is." You have to make sure your intention and your authenticity is just that because what I'll see new people when they're learning this do, is they'll use the language, but they really are just waiting to tell you what's wrong with you. That doesn't build trust because people sniff that out, right? Lisa Cummings: That's funny because the surface reaction is always to go back to the Stephen Covey concept of seek first to understand, and then to be understood and to actually genuinely do that. There's a little deeper level around subtext. That concept about you saying people can sniff that out, I think that's surprising to a lot of managers and I know it's surprising to a lot of people, I see it in my workshop. This just happened last week where someone when I asked them about when you're getting triggered and when you're at your worst, what does that look like? This woman said, "Well, I get really quiet and I kind of shut down, so maybe people would realize I'm not talking as much but I don't think they would know anything is wrong." Several teammates started laughing, and a guy said, "No, no, no you have this eyebrow thing," and he was just being really specific about, "I know exactly when something is wrong." She was totally surprised by all of this. I think people fool themselves into thinking that they can have a poker face, even the people who will beat their chests and say, "I don't bring my feelings into the workplace, it's just about the facts, ma'am." They're still going to show it. This kind of reminds me of your whole concept of a safe place for souls to show up and that you really can't hide how your soul needs to show up because it's there and no matter what words come out of your mouth, people will be able to tell if it's incongruent, or if it doesn't really sound like you feel like you, act like you, at your core. They'll know something's off, even if they can't name it. How do you go through that process to really even understand how you're showing up to you and to other people? Lexy Thompson: Yeah, so this is kind of where that beautiful 360 that everybody enjoys doing comes in. You actually do need mirrors in your life, whether it's a good friend who you trust with everything or it's a work mate that you've just met, really seeking feedback in a space where you're willing to take it in and then do something with it, process it, and that doesn't mean that everybody's feedback is equal and it doesn't mean everybody's feedback you have to wear like a shawl. Inside all of it there's some level of truth, because if you're resonating with one person like that, the odds are that there are more. The biggest ... The funny part, or the odd part of this is most people will say to me, "This happened today in a team meeting." They're learning each other's strengths. One person said something they needed around a belief that they have, and then another person said, "Yeah, now that I know you need that I know you need that ..." and she's like, "Well, are you going to give it to me?" She goes, "Well, I don't know. Why should I have to change how I approach it to meet your need?" There it was, right? There's that concern about having to change who I am, in order to be with you the way you need me to be. That's a really interesting paradigm for someone to venture into, and really have their own internal conversation around, "How can I hold my own authenticity, and still meet the need of someone else in a conversation so that they can hear what I'm saying, I can hear what they're saying, and we can receive each other as we need to in that space?" I have not experienced it. I won't say it never exists because just because I haven't experienced doesn't make it so. I have not experienced in the many, many negotiations and conflict mediations I've done, where someone couldn't show up in an authentic way, and meets someone's need and lost in that scenario. It doesn't mean it wasn't scary, it doesn't mean that it didn't take a lot of guts in some situations, but I've never, ever seen anyone lose. Lisa Cummings: Talk about authenticity at work, and what you see most often people being afraid to show. Lexy Thompson: Most people are not willing to show what they need. When we talk about strengths, going back to that topic, that whole precedence is that we have a needs and contribution piece to strengths. That conversation, when we have that and people are discovering and I'm sure, Lisa, you've had the same fun, amazing transformative times with your clients. When they're able to actually look across the table and do it in a really safe way. My Responsibility needs these things so that I can contribute in this way. When people can communicate that cleanly to each other, people are actually willing to meet the needs so the contribution can be realized. I think it gives them a way to access that that didn't exist before. Lisa Cummings: If one of the biggest obstacles in the way of people not showing up authentically, and they need to be able to express their needs, is one of the solutions for it, how do they really get to know their needs in the workplace? Lexy Thompson: You're right, strengths is one, and it's a really nice, clean way to at least start to explore the possibilities. There are lots of other good assessments, I think, out there. They're as good as we want them to be and master them to be. The journey that I took to get myself there was really, and this is going to sound interesting I think, but it took me six years to get to the place where that was really true for me, and it started with a class we took as a company, and we were supposed to write a paragraph about our mission statement in the world, our purpose kind of thing. Over time, I took another class and boiled it down to two sentences and then I got it down and down and down to the place where I can tell you that it's safe places for souls to show up. Every time that I choose to do anything in the world, personal or professional, if it can't meet that need, I don't do it. When I got that clear about my life, I was willing to show up and when you're willing to show up then you've got to take risks, right? You're not always going to be received in the way that you might like to, and certainly you won't be liked by everybody. That also, I would tell you, would also help people with that Self-confidence piece because it goes through that filter of your main purpose on this planet and everything else just falls to the wayside. Lisa Cummings: This is a great. I think a great pivot point to move into gratefulness as well, because we said we would talk about conflict and gratefulness at work. Some people I see receive this concept really open armed and I've worked with some companies that this has become just baked into their culture, and it's how they operate and they don't even have to think about it consciously. Other people have a reaction about, "Really? At work? This doesn't even sound like something that belongs in the office." Talk about that. Why gratitude? Lexy Thompson: I wish I could remember whose quote it was but I think you'll know it when I refer to it, but there's that thing that someone who's appreciated will fight the last battle with you and that their performance is better and their health is better and all of those good things. There's a lot of science around it. I do a keynote about Tribal Gratitude. I do think there's the personal gratitude. Every morning I'm up in my journal, and I do my stuff there and then at the end of the day I wrap up my day in gratitude, every day for many years. Then there was the, "Then what?" Beyond me, what do I do with that? We've been out exploring some of those things and reading some of the best stuff out there. The reality is when you start to extend it across to another human being, the emotional release in a really positive way is overwhelming. I think that might be the hesitation in the workplace, because for so long we didn't want to think feelings had a place. Even now, I'll hear hiring managers be like, "Oh, that's a feeling group. They cry at everything," or "They're upset at everything." The reality is we don't do much without an emotional jaunt to make us move one way or the other. If you can be in a space where you're expressing gratitude in an appropriate way in your work environment on a pretty regular basis but very sincere and very specific, that's the other part, then that person, those behaviors that that person is sharing with you, are getting anchored over and over again so you're getting more of that good stuff and by default you'll get less of the stuff you don't desire. It also makes it, you know there's that old adage, "You need money in the bank to make a withdrawal." Lisa Cummings: Yeah. Lexy Thompson: We're really clear about that too that there's going to be times where it isn't going to be all happy and it isn't going to be easy. If you've done this other really good work on the front side it doesn't have to be really, really hard either. Lisa Cummings: You're making me think back to a meeting when we were together a couple of months ago, and you suggested that we start off the meeting like that. I thought it was a really cool way that supports your point about understanding other people's needs, as well, and then getting more of, I call it, "Notice what works to get more of what works," because if you're noticing what's working about someone's contributions and then they see, "Oh, someone appreciated that. It's easy to deliver more of that,” because it's repeatable and then I noticed in the meeting where you asked us to kick off that way that the thing that resonated with each person was really different. The thing that the person decided to comment on, they were all over the map and it told me about each person. It told me about what they value. It told me about what they want the meetings to be about. It told me a lot of information that without that conversation I wouldn't have understood their needs and their contributions in the same way. I can only imagine if you do that a daily practice as a team, you get some really deep insights into how the other people in the room are at their performance best. Lexy Thompson: Yeah. It's pretty powerful and at Trybal we're virtual so we meet via the web, but at the end of every meeting we have Sunshine Shout-Outs where we, you know, they're not forced, not everybody has to say anything, it's just if it's showing up for you, we ask each other to share those things. We actually have gratitude coupons that are electronic that we give, they're free, and we just say, "Spread it." There's that, I don't know, it's some meme or something floating around saying that they're, you know, gratitude is one of those currencies you just never go bankrupt with, so why not? Lisa Cummings: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Lexy Thompson: Yeah. Lisa Cummings: If you're talking to a team and whether it's an individual contributor or a manager, and they just want to start doing some of this at work and get a movement going, what are some of the practical tools and habits and things you can do? Give me some examples. Lexy Thompson: There's actually just saying so, right? It doesn't even have to be a big to-do, it could just be at the end of a team meeting. You could just say, "Hey Lisa, I really appreciate that you had my back on that project, and if you hadn't been there it wouldn't have come out anywhere near as good as it, and thank you for that." Then you know, you know what your behavior was and you'll do more of that most likely next time. Too, you can be really formal. You can put pictures or memes or whatever into e-mails and just shoot them whenever someone's knocked it out of the park for whatever reason. It doesn't have to be big stuff. I got a gratitude coupon once, and this is one of my favorite ones, and it was just a, "Hey thanks for saying 'hi' to me this morning. I needed that." We forget about those little things, about eye contact because we all have our heads down in or our phone or we're walking from here to there. In that vacuum people are just missing that human connection at some time or another. It helps us keep that stuff present. Lisa Cummings: I agree. It doesn't have to be big and formal. I like that you leave people with a concept that no one has to ordain this. It doesn't have to be a company movement. It can be as simple as you deciding that when you walk by another human at work you're going to make eye contact and make them feel seen, and that can be a form of it. Just taking the time to give credit. I had a leadership session recently where they were having some issues in the organization where employees were saying their managers were taking credit for the work they did. If you talked to the people managers, they have no idea that this is how that could even be perceived because they weren't intending to do that. People weren't feeling seen or appreciated, or that the credit was getting spread around, so essentially determined that they were all kind of being credit hoarders and takers instead of givers. Once they started shifting that and saying, "Hey, the more generous I am with thanking people, and sharing that, "Oh, they made our team look really successful. They made our team act successful, and so we're going to give as much credit as possible." That it just spins up into more desire to be productive and more desire to do it, not just to say it but also to do more of it. Lexy Thompson: Yeah, it does translate it into action. One of the most interesting phenomenons of it is the actual receiving of the gratitude. Most of us are willing and able to extend it. We may not have a practice of it and we may not be consistent, however when it's given back to us, sometimes it feels really awkward. There's also a learning about Self-awareness and even it could be a strengths conversation with yourself or your coach about what is that. What's going on with you when someone says, "Hey, thanks for a great job," and you feel awkward. Whatever that awkward looks like for you. Lisa Cummings: I think this is a really important topic because it is a gift that you can receive and if you make someone feel like it's less than, "Oh, no, no, no, it's not a big deal. Oh, no, no, no ..." and you're dismissive of the gratitude, it could actually be like you're turning it down. Lexy Thompson: Uh-huh. Lisa Cummings: What does a gracious receiver do? Lexy Thompson: They just smile and say, "Thank you." It's that simple. It's that simple, and it's that hard sometimes. I've had it happen to me. I'll do a keynote and I'm just as nervous every time I do it, and I could have done it a hundred times and someone will come up and say, "Thank you," and if it's more than that and they're trying to expand on that, I feel uncomfortable. I just stand there and I continue to say, "I really appreciate that." I actually let it into my heart. That's part of it, that I've gotten very deliberate with around heartful and mindful practice around receiving, and not just giving. Lisa Cummings: I know you've been talking a lot lately, because I know you, about letting love in and you take a set of talents like Command or Self-assurance or Intellection or some of the talents in your line-up that people might stereotype as to saying your tendencies could be to not lead with a big loving heart. I don't know your full journey. I just know where you are today and really focusing on that. For somebody who is feeling more like, "Hey, I lead with the logic side and it's all just about the facts for me, and I just try to keep emotions out of work." Why would someone consider leading with a big old heart the way that you were just describing? Lexy Thompson: Yeah. Thank you for that question. What comes up for me when you ask that question is my grandfather. He was a pretty savvy entrepreneur in a small town in Vermont, where I grew up, and when he was passing away, his cold, old hands were holding mine and I will never, ever forget this, and he said to me, "I won't ever wish I worked an extra day. I will have wished I loved a lot better." That stuck with me. I was young and I didn't really know what that meant at the time and I will tell you I'm just now starting to be able to manifest it in a way that I feel like I'm honoring that. I will also tell you I work with a lot of people that come out of really bad places in their life, whether it's the death of a loved one, or their near death, or some tragedy. They don't wish that they could do more of the non-emotional work, it is always the relational work. When I look at my lineup of strengths I have Connectedness and Relator in my top ten. They're my only blue lines to humanity because I can spend days and weeks alone, and be quite content but at the end of all of that what matters is the impact that I left and that impact isn't on the bottom line, it's with people. Lisa Cummings: Without them in your life what would your impact be on? It would just be on a thing. Lexy Thompson: I think we're in interesting times, being where technology is leading us and there are so many exciting things to explore with technology. This podcast would be a good example of that, right? This conversation wouldn't have existed. Lisa Cummings: What a great point. It would have only been able to be in a big network environment in a niche like people who are interested in strengths development. I don't think that's going to make it to primetime 20 years ago. Lexy Thompson: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. It's exciting because I think that we also have an opportunity to find the things we need, when we need them, rather than just when they show up. Lisa Cummings: Speaking of things that you need, when you need it, we can make some resources show up for people right now. We've referenced a couple of books and resources. We've mentioned Stephen Covey and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I have a feeling that you do a lot of reading and gathering and researching. I also know you have a class on communications that is darn good. I've flipped through a lot of your content. Maybe since you're going to officially move from Houston, Texas, to Austin, Texas, I can just sit myself down into one. Anyway, tell people about some of your very favorite resources on this concept of communication, on conflict, on gratitude, and be sure to share your course inside of that. Lexy Thompson: Around the communications piece, difficult conversations, crucial conversations, and non-violent communication are my favorites. They're easy to get to. They're usually on the top reader lists. I think they're all on Audible as well, which is my preferred mode right now. Around conflict, interestingly enough, it's not a conflict direct book but it's The Speed of Trust, also a Covey book, that I think answers a lot of the 'why' around 'why bother' and the value of building trust and the void that's there in conflict that is not trust, and how to bridge that gap. Another favorite of mine, a real simple read that made a huge impact when I was going through kind of my mission for my own life, was The Four Agreements. It's a very simple thing and yet so very hard to keep top of mind and in action, but it made a difference. Those would be some recommendations I have. Lisa Cummings: Great ones. Thank you. Lexy Thompson: Yeah, you're welcome. The one we've developed that's on our website, we'll have a link here, it's a communications course and it has some of the best of the ones I mentioned kind of woven in there. The thing that I think sets it apart, is that it has the assessment StrengthsFinders on the front so as you're moving through the model of communication, you actually bring yourself and all your glorious baggage with you. When you come out of the course, you are quite clear, or at least beginning to be clear, where some of your weak points are going to be, and then how to make corrective action when you need to. Lisa Cummings: I love it. I can't way to attend. It has been really cool exploring all of our glorious baggage - yours, mine, the listeners' thinking of their own. We'll make sure that we link up to all the resources that Lexy just mentioned, so that you can get your hands on those books and I'm with you, The Four Agreements, you don't even have to go to Audible because it's just teeny, it's a teeny little thing. Lexy Thompson: Yeah, it is. Lisa Cummings: There you go. It's like a back pocket size. Lexy Thompson: It is. Lisa Cummings: We'll get them all the links to that and to your course. I want to thank you, everyone, for listening again to Lead Through Strengths. Remember, using your strengths at work makes you a stronger performer at work.

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths This week Lisa speaks with Adam Seaman. They chat about the difference between strengths and talents, as well as practical applications for your top strengths. This interview is a great introduction to what you can do with Clifton StrengthsFinder. Adam’s Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:  Strategic, Individualization, Ideation, Intellection, Input, Adaptability, Command, Activator, Empathy, Futuristic Lisa’s Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:   Strategic, Maximizer, Positivity, Individualization, Woo, Futuristic, Focus, Learner, Communication, Significance Resource of the Episode You can reach Adam through the Talent2Strength website. He also posts helpful thought leadership on Twitter. You'll definitely see his Intellection in action. Strengths Tools You'll also find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page. Subscribe To Lead Through Strengths To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published. < Here's a Full Transcript of the 30 Minute Interview Lisa Cummings: This episode is about stepping back and understanding: what the tool of StrengthsFinder is, and what is it like for a team. Let's start with your opinion on why it is so awesome. Adam Seaman: Great. My goal is to get other people as excited about it as I am. I don't always reach that goal of course, but it's the striving for it, and sometimes I succeed, and I call it "green lit" when I get somebody as excited about it as I am. StrengthsFinder stands out to me; one of the reasons is that it really gives that language that people can describe themselves with. I hear this all the time. It's like, "oh I always knew I had that quality, but I didn't know there was a name for it." Then they'll say, "and I didn't know other people had it or didn't have it, I just assumed everybody was like me." Those are some of the reasons why I really like this tool. The other is that it really dials into the individual, so instead of it being "I'm one of four colors", or "I'm one of 16 letter combinations", you have one in 278,000 chance of somebody having the same top five themes as you have. Those are just some of the reasons I really, really like this tool. Lisa Cummings: That's so crazy. Any time I cite that number or the chances that someone else will have the same top five talent themes in the same order as you is 1 in 33 million. That just blows people's minds, and they think, "Okay, so this isn't going to be a training where you come into my team and talk to people about the four boxes you can put them in." It makes people so receptive to StrengthsFinder compared to other tools. Adam Seaman: Yeah, I think it really makes them go, "Alright, this is serious, serious, stuff here. It really does dial into the individual." But then, it does create a little bit of a barrier because there are 34 themes that it measures you on, and learning all 34 is more daunting than learning four colors or something like that. That's definitely one of the challenges for people - to really access this tool deeply. But once you do...and this gets into another thing I really love about this...is most assessments you read it and you're like, "Alright, I guess that's accurate, I guess that describes me, and then what do I do with it?" You file it away because you don't want to throw it away, but what do you do with it? So you just file it away, and that's the real shame that I try to correct with StrengthsFinder. Lisa Cummings: [laughing] You give them strength shamings. Adam Seaman: [playing along] I do. I just shame them. If I'm in a grocery store and somebody is like, "Hey, I just took the StrengthsFinder" you know, as people do when they're in the grocery store. Lisa Cummings: [jokingly] Definitely. When you're picking out butter. That's when I do it. Adam Seaman: Yes, it's in the butter aisle. Lisa Cummings: So to get back to serious stuff for a second, you said something about a personality assessment kind of notion, and so for people less familiar with StrengthsFinder, they often assume this is a personality assessment. I know that you view it in a different way, that you look at StrengthsFinder as so much more than that, as do I. So tell us about how you get people beyond that basic view of it. Adam Seaman: For me what this captures is this idea that we all live in our own self-world. Lisa, right now you're in your office in Austin, Texas, your side of the world. You have your experiences going on, the things that are happening inside of you. Then I'm over here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have my own concerns or issues or things I'm thinking of. So we're kind of in our own self-world. That's actually the term for this, it's a German word, and a German biologist came up with this word. It's called umwelt, which is kind of a cool word. Lisa Cummings: Umwelt. Adam Seaman: It's U-M-W-E-L-T. So it kind of roughly translates to this idea of self-world. For me what I love about StrengthsFinder is it helps describe what's happening in your own self-world. In my head, and in your head, we both share the Strategic Talent Theme, so we're always playing through if-then scenarios. We do it so fast, that we don't even know we're doing it. What would be really interesting if this were possible, is if somebody else who didn't have Strategic very high at all were to somehow transplant into our heads, kind of like a Freaky Friday kind of thing, then they were to have to get into our heads, or just take your head with Strategic and Maximizer. They're going to have this flurry of thoughts coming at them at such a high rate of speed; it's just going to be overwhelming for them. It's cool to realize that within each person, there's a whole lot more going on than what we ever could tell, or even just ask them about. It's like if I know your top five themes, and I know your number three is Positivity, which it is, I know that your knee-jerk reaction is going to be to look for the upside of things. It's what shows up when you show up. Lisa Cummings: That's so true. I love the Freaky Friday thought where if you as a teammate...if you said, "Alright I'm going to do this at work, and I'm going to try to get into Freaky Friday mode as much as I can, where I'm imagining what is it like in that person's head and how can I relate to the world the way that they are so that I can understand what would be relevant for them, or what they care about, or how they make decisions, or how they think about the world." So it's kind of cool as you were talking about the power StrengthsFinder brings, I was thinking man you could almost turn that into an application exercise where you're trying to do it as if you had Adam's invention. Now that you're telling us this with Futuristic number 10 and Ideation number 3, why don't we get you to share with the listeners what your top 10 talents are, or at least the ones that you resonate with most. Then they can get a feel for, if they're new to StrengthsFinder, what these words even sound like...and how do people resonate with them before they even know the definitions. Adam Seaman: Before I do that, I just wanted to riff on a point that you made. I'm using musical terms, because I know you're a musician, and I have like two musical brain cells and they don't even talk to each other, so I'm not a musician but I speak your language because I have Individualization number two, just as you have. Lisa Cummings: So you can riff with me; I like it. Adam Seaman: Before moving onto that, I just wanted to delve a little deeper into this idea of knowing what's going on inside of somebody, that umwelt or that Freaky Friday thing is. I don't have Achiever very high at all; it's way, way down in the 20's or 30's even. So when I'm around somebody that has Achiever, I now am able to do something I wasn't able to do before StrengthsFinder. I am able to say, “Hey, I think I might be a speed bump in the middle of your day, trying to get things done, so you just feel free to tell me if you need to move on.” I'm this ideas guy (Ideation), I like to talk and brainstorm and be philosophical. People with Achiever, unless it's balanced with some other themes... they don't really have time for that, and it's that awkward moment that I just now know to be able to say, "Hey, if this isn't of interest to you, I'm not going to try to slow you down,” because I know inside of their head is this need to get things done, to rack up points by crossing things off their to do list, and I don't take offense to that and I'm trying to tailor myself to their need. It amplifies that point you were making about when you work with people and you understand not only your themes, but you understand their themes, then you're able to really get the relationship to be optimized better. Lisa Cummings: Yeah, I totally agree and I think it's one of the most useful things. When you have that person at work who frustrates you, it's that moment where you can go, "Alright, I know their talents now. Their talent themes are this, this, this, and what are they likely thinking about right now?" You're making up a hypothesis but by knowing the talent themes and by knowing the definitions you can really start to make some good guesses about what they care about and how they process the world, and then instead of seeing them as annoying teammate, they can become the, "Well that person's bringing a perspective that is actually really useful to the team, and although it's not my favorite place to spend my head, and it would be painful for me to live there, that's where they live." I think it helps people. Sometimes it's just tolerating each other when they didn't before. Sometimes it's appreciating and partnering way more than they ever thought they would or could do. Then when you get really deep, you start to get an eye for what's working in the world. I always call it, notice what works to get more of what works, and you start to see, "Oh yeah, that must be what it's like for them, that really works in this situation." Then you can leverage it more and actually get more productivity out of it for the team. Adam Seaman: All of that is great. If you get an appliance and it comes with a user's manual, and it describes here's how you use this appliance, and here's what you don't do with this appliance, and here's how you get the most life out of it. We as individuals have user's manuals, except they're not written. We have to work with somebody or marry them or live with them for years to just even get a glimpse of this is how their user's manual works. But if I know someone's top five StrengthsFinder themes, I'm going to have a really good sense of what's in that instruction manual. The idea is, understand your user's manual and understand the people around you's user's manual, and you can find ways to best work together. Lisa Cummings: I love that you raise the idea that these are patterns of thoughts and behaviors and feelings that come naturally to us. Sometimes they're going to serve us, and sometimes they're not. I know my Maximizer gets me in trouble all the time, and when I over commit and I start to see my calendar get so overloaded, I realize there is a drive in me, and I feel that it comes from my Maximizer talent, because it wants to keep making everything better, so there's always something else I'm adding to the list or trying to tweak or trying to create this new thing or develop a new product or whatever it is, it's unending. Once you can name it and say, hey that's the one that's talking, you can narrow it down and strategize more easily than when you feel spazzy and out of control. Adam Seaman: There's so much to talk about here, this is where I geek out on this stuff. I want to make sure at some point we talk about why your top five themes or why your StrengthsFinder results are not actually your strengths. You definitely touched on it there with what you just said, so I want to circle back. I'm also mindful that you asked me a question that I haven't answered yet, which are what are my top themes. I'm happy to skip it, but I don't want your audience to think that I was just ignoring you and I'm a rude guest. Lisa Cummings: You're such a kind guest. What are yours? Adam Seaman: My number one is Strategic, as you mentioned earlier. I already talked a little bit about that one. My second one is Individualization, now is that your number four? Do I have that right? Lisa Cummings: Yup. Adam Seaman: Okay. So Individualization is this quality of looking to tailor things to the person, so I don't like doing things en masse, and your Maximizer theme is more likes to do things in block operations and very efficient, whereas the Individualization theme is one-by-one, case-by-case, what's unique about this person. My number three is Ideation. This is a quality of always wanting to think outside the box, so sometimes in my mind ideas start flowing and I call it popcorning because when I get in this mode, when you're making popcorn that point where the kernels start popping really fast. That's kind of what it's like in my head, it's like an explosion of ideas, and I get really excited by it, things are really best for me when I can be creative and original, and I don't like doing things by the book. So that's my creativity theme there. My number four is Intellection, and Intellection is about going deep, looking for insight. Several themes look for truth, Intellection looks for wisdom, whereas maybe Connectedness theme looks for spiritual truth. Or the Analytical theme looks for factual truth. So my Intellection is looking for wisdom and insight. Cool story about this one because when you learn your themes, you get the names of your themes and you don't quite know what they mean. When I was learning about Intellection, I read it, and it seemed like it fit, but when I went back and re-read it, something stood out to me that didn't before. What it was, was a description about how I can be in a social situation, but be checked out to the point where somebody would come up to me and say, "Adam, are you okay? Is something wrong?" I would say, "Yeah, everything's fine, and in fact more than fine." I'm in my lab, I call it, when I'm intellectualizing. I'm just thinking about something, but the thinking face doesn't really look like a happy face, so to somebody outside of my head, which is everybody, it doesn't look like I'm really having fun, but inside of my head there's a party going on. They just weren't invited. Then they might say "Hey what's wrong" and I might say "You just crashed my party. Everything was going good and now..." Lisa Cummings: Womp womp. Adam Seaman: Yeah, one of those. Lisa Cummings: This is one of my favorite ones when teams are together and they talk about some of these things that their talent themes might lead them to do or think or say or look like, I love asking that question. Focus is a good one, that's my number six, where people talk about the mode they get into when they're in their Intellection mode or they're in their Focus mode, then I ask people, "What does that look like on you? How will your teammates know?" Just hearing the story you said, is exactly what it sounds like in the trainings, where people go "Oh, that's what he's doing. Now I get it, and now I know when he made the crash-your-party-face, that's what that means" and it's so insightful to know that about people that you actually need to be productive with every day. It's like having magic secrets to the universe.  Adam Seaman: Right, it's kind of like that self-world concept I was talking about. To somebody looking at me it might look like, Adam's not having fun, maybe somebody has Includer, and they want to make sure that I feel part of the group. To them I don't look very engaged, but what they can't see is that I'm at my most engaged when I'm in that space. Now if somebody knows I have Intellection, they won't be as off-put by it or as concerned about it. I know time's ticking here, so I'll go onto my number five which is Input, and this was the hardest one for me to understand. We use the word Input like let me have my Input or let me give my Input, as something you put out into the world. This is one of the reasons why you really have to understand Gallup's standard definitions for the themes, because sometimes the label doesn't fully describe what the word is about. In fact, most of the time they don't. They don't give you enough context just looking at the word, you really have to understand the description. What Input is, is it's not about what I put out into the world and give my Input, it's what I Input into myself, it's what I collect. One of the things I learned that was very useful from the master StrengthsFinder coach, Curt Liesveld, is he said, "What you collect are things you deem to be useful or that have utility." It was really cool because what I collect, and it varies person to person. I collect quotes and I collect theories and models and tools and concepts; I love that stuff. I've developed a really good sense for what's a useful quote or what's not, or what's a useful model or concept and what's not. I've learned how to use my Input theme a lot better, because I understand it a lot more. There's a lot more to say about each one of these themes, but those are my top five. That's all I stayed with for the longest time, but I'm starting to really appreciate the value of looking into your top 10, your number 6-10 themes, because it's kind of like a basketball team and your main players fall out, they're either injured or they're not the right player for the situation. You can go to your bench and bring in a specialist when you need it. You can start to see traces of someone's themes and how they communicate and that's when you really start to feel like you're getting to know this tool so well is when you can hear vespers of the different themes. So Command is my number seven, Activate is my number eight, Empathy is my number nine, Futuristic is my number ten, and we just hit 30 minutes in six seconds. Lisa Cummings: Look at that, you are so precise. I'm still standing back thinking, I've never heard the word vespers, it sounds like a funny pronunciation of a Vespa scooter, and that's a clue of Intellection right there, or my lack of. Let's end this show with your view on talent and strengths. Adam Seaman: So good. Here's the big secret about StrengthsFinder, or one of them, because there are several secrets. Lisa Cummings: [dramatically] Ooooh. Adam Seaman: Did you just say "Ooh"? Lisa Cummings: Yeah. The more you listen, the more you learn. Adam Seaman: [laughing] That's great. When you take the StrengthsFinder, one of the most powerful insights is to realize that your top five, these 34 themes of talent that StrengthsFinder measures, are not strengths. It gets into the definition of a strength, and the definition of a talent. A strength is an activity in which you have consistent, near perfect performance. So you do an activity regularly with high quality. That's when you know you have a strength, and this is Gallup's definition for a strength. I'll come back to that, because we're going to break it down. Lisa Cummings: Break it down. Adam Seaman: [preparing to beatbox] We're going to break it down. Lisa Cummings: I think you have some other talent themes in there. [referring to beatboxing] Adam Seaman: Well, beatboxing would be, if I could do it consistently and near perfectly would be a strength, but it's not. It's less than a strength. So a talent, and these themes of talent, the definition for those is this: a recurring pattern of how you think, how you feel, and how you behave that “can” be productively applied. I put the can in quotes because it can be productively applied, this pattern of thinking and feeling and behaving, but it can also counter productively be applied. It's not always productive. Anybody listening could look at one of their themes and say, "Yeah that theme sometimes gets me into trouble." Sometimes it's not productive, it's counter productive. Let's take a theme like Positivity, your number three. What could possibly not be great about Positivity? I'll just ask you Lisa, are there times where Positivity is not acting in your best interest? Lisa Cummings: I'll tell you the most trouble I had with my Positivity talent theme was, early in my career as a manager, I realized that people started responding in a way that led me to believe that they thought I didn't think through issues, that I was giving the Pollyanna view of what we were going to do and that naively I was leading my team forward through some decision without any thinking behind it, the [rah rah voice] "Oh yay we're going to do it, let's go". I realized I needed to actually say the decision factors out loud, because maybe my excitement, maybe my energy level about a change, and I'm always thinking about messaging something and how to get people to a new future...so I see how that could all get really blurry and lead people to think that the substance is lacking behind it. With my Strategic talent theme, I'm thinking so quickly through those things, I might need to catch people up to "Oh, okay, look here was my thought process, there were a lot of factors in the decision, I considered X Y and Z, I realize there are a couple of risks associated, and this is the decision and then back to the yay-part." Even though it doesn't really sound like that, I realized I needed to actually acknowledge either the thought process or the risks that had been considered, or the facts behind things so that people didn't assume I was trying to play team cheerleader with no substance. Adam Seaman: Yeah, see it's that kind of insight that I think StrengthsFinder can help reveal, that you might not have ever had in any other way. You have this pattern called Positivity that allows you to take any situation and identify, almost like a reflex, whatever the situation is, your immediate reflex is to say, "Well what's the upside?" or "This is a good thing, because of this…" That pattern is going to play out, it's going to do what it's going to do, and then sometimes that pattern is going to be the perfect match for the situation. Positivity is my number 32. I know that for me, there are many occasions where I wish I had that ability to see the upside; it would have helped me persevere more. So there are times where that theme of Positivity is the perfect match for the situation. The point is that, this is true for any of the 34 themes, that they are patterns that play out in us, they're patterns for how we think, how we feel and behave, but our situations that we're in are always changing. That pattern in one situation may be a huge benefit, but in another situation it would be the last thing you want to have happen. That's one reason why our themes of talent, our top five that we get from StrengthsFinder, they are not strengths yet. There's a lot more to say on this, but I want to pause and see if you have any thoughts on that. Lisa Cummings: Yeah, I love the way that you describe it. The part that you said that really got me there, that I thought was cool was, "Look it would be kind of sad, if you got your report and you had nowhere to go, because you've arrived. You have your strengths. Voila. You're done." But instead, if you realize, "Okay these are your talents, it's telling you about your natural patterns, there's an infinite amount of stuff to go do to nurture them, to feed them, to make them get applied in a work situation in a way that really serves you." That's the growth part that's really fun that allows them to turn into strengths so they can be productively applied. What do you think a world would look like if everyone knew his or her talent themes? Adam Seaman: If I'm in a place where I'm being fed, where I'm known for what I'm good at and my teammates are setting me up for success and I'm able to do as much as possible, even though you can't get it perfectly, but as much as possible I'm able to do the things I love doing, that I'm good at, that I produce good results, that when I'm doing them I feel that flow state where I don't notice time passing, that that's what a situation like that would look like. Lisa Cummings: I love that you're talking about the food element, because when I do StrengthsFinder training, I'm always using the terms starved and fed, because I think the talent themes act different ways, they show up on you differently. If you are feeding them, and you're nurturing them and you're working on them, compared with when you're starving them out or you're squashing them down because you don't think they'd be valued in that environment, or it isn't valued in that environment, so it's not getting any attention and it's starved. I think that would be a cool way to end also, to talk about what that looks like on the job, when strengths, when someone's talent themes are consistently getting squashed or offended or not valued or not used, and how you've seen that show up. Adam Seaman: The first thing is, you have to recognize in yourself what is your state of happiness or satisfaction? Then realize a couple things. One is something I heard called the law of two feet. The law of two feet says if you don't like something, if you're not in a good place, relocate. Walk away, go somewhere else. That's the promise that I see in StrengthsFinder, is that if people really embraced it as more than an assessment then they could really help each other find that better fit. Like as a manager, I could see that hey, this person is struggling here, what can I do to shape their job a little bit more so it plays more to what they're like. It's not like you totally have this complete makeover, but a little bit at a time, you could shift your environment so you can free yourself up from the things you hate a little bit at a time to spend more time doing those things that you really enjoy. As that happens, you increase your value. Lisa Cummings: As a people manager, there's a lot you can do to shape and continually shape the job of people on the team by individualizing a little bit at a time. It's not to say that this is a custom job for everyone, and I can afford to make yours exactly what you'd like it to be. We know that the business world isn't like that; you have a corporate strategy, you have business objectives to meet, and inside of that there's a lot you can do to shape the rule to match the person on the team. As a person, I love that you are highly accountable with the law of two feet because it's up to you, this is your career, your life, and you get to shape it a little bit at a time until it is what you want it to be. People have a lot more leeway to do that than they often give credit for. I love to quiz people when they push back on that, and I ask them about the job description when they got hired and say "Okay, remember back to the job description, now how many people in the room have the exact same tasks and responsibilities as when you were first hired into that role?" Even though many people have only been in that role for 18 months or some short time, they laugh and say "Oh, no, it's significantly different." There you go, proof positive. Rules shift and change all the time, so why not be actively shaping it towards the activities you enjoy, the way you want your personal brand to show up in the world and at work, and if you're consciously going after, and even sharing with your manager, "Hey, I'd love more opportunities in this area. If a project comes up, please consider me." It's making them aware, because managers aren't mind readers. They don't know that person's interested in it. So having StrengthsFinder as a language for describing an aspirational work place they'd like to live in, things they'd like to see more of, it can be hugely powerful in the way that tasks are assigned and projects are given out person to person. Adam Seaman: [Emphatically] Truth. You want to find, what is the highest best use for the qualities that you possess. Lisa Cummings: And if you help your teammates produce at their best, obviously you're going to meet your goals in a bigger way, your business is going to be more successful overall. Also day to day, you're around people for, if you're physically around each other, you're around them for eight hours a day or more, so wouldn't it be better if you helped people and supported them, if you knew their talents, if you did the Freaky Friday, to call back to that. Then you could support your teammates in becoming their best, and that would also help them, help the business, and help you not be around grumpy people all day at work. Adam Seaman: That sounds like a great final note to end on. That's a drop-your-mic moment right there. Lisa Cummings: It's a good thought for bringing it all around. Adam Seaman: [rapping tone] So you need people to check themselves before they wreck themselves. Lisa Cummings: Yes, back to a rap as well. That's where we're going to drop the mic. It's been such a blast rhyming with you Adam. Adam Seaman: This flew by so fast, and it's because we're playing to our strengths. We're both talking about something we love and we're passionate about, and so I hope that as a result, some other people are getting green lit about StrengthsFinder. Lisa Cummings: Yeah, that's the ultimate call back as well. So getting green lit, I don't know what they're getting bit by, but they're getting green lit. Adam Seaman: They're getting bit by the strengths bug. Lisa Cummings: Yeah, bit by the strengths bug. We'll link to Adam's company, Talent2Strength, so that you can look him up and see more. With that, remember, using your strengths makes you a stronger performer at work. If you're putting a lopsided focus on fixing weaknesses, you're probably choosing the path of most resistance. Instead, claim your talents and share them with the world.

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths Today's episode features Steven Beck, one of the top Gallup StrengthsFinder experts. In fact, he trained Lisa back in the day! This interview focuses on the concepts of peak experience, how to use your Top 5 to bring out the best in others, and great information on how to make a practical connection between your core strengths and the values that are most important to you. Listen in...you'll learn a lot today. Steven's Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes: Communication, Woo, Maximizer, Strategic, Activator, Self-Assurance, Individualization, Ideation, Futuristic, Focus Lisa's Top 10 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes (looks pretty similar, huh?):   Strategic, Maximizer, Positivity, Individualization, Woo, Futuristic, Focus, Learner, Communication, Significance   What You’ll Learn In This Episode Learn what your peak experiences are. Steven talks about the yearning he had to really do something different, yet he wasn't sure what that was. And he didn't know where to start with a career change. After reading the book, Never Buy a Hat If Your Feet Are Cold: Taking Charge of Your Career and Your Life, by Ken Felderstein, Steven asked the author to meet for lunch so he could ask him questions. Ken asked Steven this key question: What are the peak moments you've had in your life? These moments will give you a glimpse of excellence, and should show you what you really yearn to do. Once Steven answered this question, and figured out what his peak experiences were (clues to natural talent), he knew he wanted to be a speaker. Over time, he kept pushing himself out of his comfort zone, until he became a strong speaker and trainer. This was the first step that led him to connect with the Gallup team and the Clifton StrengthsFinder tool. Use your Top 5 to bring out the strengths in others. Steven uses himself as an example of how to use your own strengths to get projects done, while bringing out the best in others. He figured out that, for him, his Communication talent theme is really a story telling strength. His Woo strength is his ability to find common ground within a group, and his natural Maximizer talent is his ability to figure out how he can use a thing in many situations - an efficiency strength. This helps him to pull others' stories out. It also creates his unique version of Woo, which helps him shape how a group interacts with each other. Then, once the group has been strengthened, his Activator strength kicks in, and stuff gets done. You can apply the same method to your own strengths, by figuring out how one strength affects the other, thereby bringing out the strengths in others. Make a connection between your strengths and your values. Pick the values that are most important to you, not the ones that you think are correct, or that others expect. For instance, the values most important to Steven are passion, family, health, autonomy, and emotional well-being. Once Steven understood what his core values were, he used this to guide him toward establishing Steven Beck Consulting, and still helps him determine which projects he wants to work on, and whom he wants to work with. As a reminder to always consider his values, Steven has a sheet of plexiglass over his desk, and underneath it are things that remind him of each value. One values reminder is a postcard his daughter sent him of a food trailer in Austin, TX (because he loves his daughter and Austin, even though he lives in Irvine, CA). Another values reminder is the phrase "Learn, Love, & Live Toward Strengths," which was mentioned by the late Gallup StrengthsFinder coach, Curt Liesveld. He includes other items they discuss in the audio, and each one reflects important elements from his life. During the interview, Steven mentions this quote by Curt, which sums up this idea, "You live out your strengths through the foundations of your values." According to social scientist, Daniel Kahneman, there are 20,000 moments in every day - pay attention to particular ones, to know how you are influencing your team members. Each time you interact with a team member, ask yourself, "Was I fully present and mindful of the other person? Did I focus on that person and the value she brings?" Look back, and determine whether a particular moment engaged the person or not. Steven lists three outcomes: Red: Was the person devalued, disengaged? Neutral: Do I even remember what happened during the interaction? Green: Was the person more engaged, and left feeling valued? Lighten someone else's load for better teamwork and productivity. By this, we don't mean to take on that person's tasks, we mean to take away some of the emotional burden people feel toward their team members. When you listen to this interview, you'll hear a great example of how one team went from wanting to kill each other, to a place of acceptance of each other. The team learned to come from a place of fascination about each individual person, instead of from a place of frustration.   Resources of the EpisodeYou can reach Steven through his website, Steven Beck Consulting, or via LinkedIn. Read this article on Gallup's website, about how the Peak Moment Question changed Steven's life. Subscribe To Lead Through StrengthsTo subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published.   StrengthsFinder Monthly Training For ManagersIf you’re a people-manager and you want to sharpen your strengths based support, come join our monthly virtual training. We don’t charge for this because we want to help you keep the StrengthsFinder momentum going. Teams who receive strengths feedback have 8.9% greater profitability. Yowza! Sounds like a great reason to join. Source:  Asplund, J., & Blacksmith, N. “Strengthening Your Company’s Performance.” Gallup Business Journal.   Go Live Your TalentsRemember, using your strengths every day at work makes you a stronger performer. If you place a lopsided focused on fixing your team’s weaknesses, you’re choosing the path of most resistance. Go claim your talents and share them with the world! 

This Episode's Focus on Strengths This month’s episode features Matt Swenson, who is another StrengthsFinder all-star. He helps his clients use their Strengths to improve the well being of the whole person. Lisa’s interview with Matt provides cool tools to help you apply your natural talents to your wellbeing. If you are ready to create some healthy strengths habits, then this is the interview for you. Matt has a background in international business, sales, coaching, sales management, marketing, product development, and athletics. Those unique experiences roll up to offer you a unique perspective on wellbeing that you can apply to all areas of your life. In fact, Matt brings strengths based development to five key areas of life. They are: career, social, physical, financial, and community. As you listen to the interview, you'll hear about how to apply these in his Wellbeing Wheel Activity. You'll also hear his ties to the concepts of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose from one of our favorite books, Drive by Daniel Pink. Matt’s top 10 Strengths are: Strategic, Learner, Achiever, Responsibility, Deliberative, Relator, Activator, Individualization, Focus, Analytical Fun facts: Matt busts out a Vanilla Ice rhyme in our interview. Despite how you might stereotype someone who leads with Deliberative and Analytical, Matt shows that you can't assume you know how people will act based on their external or assumed traits. It's worth a listen! Also, Matt is the artist behind Djonk, an Americana art business. Lisa bought one of his pieces. This robot is made of upcycled "junk" and now lives in her guest bedroom to greet friends. You'll find more about his "Swedish for Junk" name in the interview.   What You’ll Learn In This Episode How to deal with people who frustrate you. Matt used to think that the people who annoyed him at work were doing it on purpose (which didn’t help with his work relationships). With an understanding of each person’s unique strengths, he now knows that’s just who they were and how they operated. Once you understand that, you can then adjust your lens to see things from the other person’s point of view. Matt shares this great quote, “Always assume positive intent and when in doubt, ask.” View others through the Strengths lens, rather than based on attitude, demeanor, or clothing. When dealing with people (whether at home or on the job) try to understand their strengths, and where they are coming from, rather than what is most obvious. You'll often be surprised when you look a little deeper. It's also a great exercise in listening to understand. After you’ve taken the StrengthsFinder assessment, complete Matt’s practice guide, “Raw and Refined.” This book will help you activate your inherent talents and wellbeing. Here are a few ways you can use his guide to put your natural talents to work: Before you meet with someone, spend 60 seconds reviewing their talents so you can customize your conversation to resonate better with them. Look up one of your StrengthsFinder Talent Themes and consider how you can use it to full effect that day. Flip through your Top 5 strengths and come up with one new habit to implement. Focus on the five essential elements of wellbeing. Matt recommends the book, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, by Tom Rath and Jim Harter, which takes your Strengths and helps you to apply them to you whole life. Their five essential elements of wellbeing are: career, social, financial, physical, and social. If things are out of alignment, it's likely one is zapping the life out of you because it is not getting positive attention in your life. Use Matt's wellbeing wheel to identify when you are at your absolute best. Once you identify when you are at your best, make sure to do the most important things during that time. This provides the most efficient utilization of your energy, and takes pressure off of the rest of the day. Matt also gives a great example in the interview about a guy who was draining his own energy on the way home from work - all based on his habits. As he used the Wellbeing Wheel, he figured out where he was sucking his energy away and found a rejuvenating fix for his drive home from work. Realize that habits are things that can help or hurt you. For example, if we meet a new person who seems similar to a good person in our lives, then our minds tend to compartmentalize them together (to make things simpler). However, if we meet a new person who seems similar to a person who has hurt us, it is very unfair to lump them together. This is not fair to the new person, and undermines their uniqueness.   Remember this quote from Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood): “Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words—like 'aggression' and even 'violence'. Real strength is neither male nor female; but it is, quite simply, one of the finest characteristics that a human being can possess.”   Resources of the Episode Matt’s StrengthsFinder and wellness practice is called Metamorfos. His Americana art site (pronounced Yonk, which is Swedish for junk), is Djonk. Matt’s StrengthsFinder practice guide is Raw & Refined. Check out the Wellbeing Wheel on pages 81-86 to see the tool we referenced in the interview. Many of the concepts that Matt Swenson uses are found in the book Wellbeing: The five essential elements by Tom Rath and Jim Harter.   Subscribe To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from the website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published.   StrengthsFinder Mini-Course For Managers If you’re a people-manager and you want to sharpen your strengths based support, come join our monthly mini-course. We don’t charge for this because we want to help you keep the StrengthsFinder momentum going. Teams who receive strengths feedback have 8.9% greater profitability. Yowza! Sounds like a great reason to join. Source:  Asplund, J., & Blacksmith, N. “Strengthening Your Company’s Performance.” Gallup Business Journal.   Go Live Your Talents Remember, using your strengths every day at work makes you a stronger performer. If you’re always focused on fixing your team’s weaknesses, you’re choosing the path of most resistance. Go claim your talents and share them with the world!

On this Q&A day, I answer a question I hear quite often after someone sees their StrengthsFinder Talent Themes for the first time. Sometimes our Talents have gotten us in trouble in the past, and we've been told to tone them down. This can be confusing when now we're being told they can be used as Strengths.