CliftonStrengths

Talent-Job Alignment

Parts of our job align so tightly with our talents that we can effortlessly excel and perform well

Other parts feel like the worst things in the world to work towards. Kind of like picking up dog poop.

What if you took the core competencies of your job (bonus points if you get your leader’s input) then considered how your talents (recommended Top 5 Report from CliftonStrenghts) can feed into those competencies.

This is great if considering a new job or if evaluating your current job. What is required of the job and how could you use strengths to meet (and hopefully exceed) those requirements.

You might notice a job has little alignment to your talents…consider steering clear of that one.

Maybe you see that your talents would have to be honed and refined (raw vs. mature) to meet the needs…do you want the challenge?

Maybe you realize areas you align almost perfectly in some areas…bask in the goodness and consider some gratitude.

I’m considering creating a worksheet to help with this process…pulled some ideas from a few Gallup blogs linked below:

Does a Specific Career Best Match My CliftonStrengths Results?

How to Improve My Career

Talents as Raw or Mature

There is a continuum our talents or strengths lie on.

At one end, they can be Raw…undiscovered, unpolished.

At the other end they can be Mature…invested into, practiced and thoughtfully utilized.

Raw is not necessarily bad. It can be a sign that there is talent available! You might tend to have a gift of gab and be comfortable talking and thinking out loud. This could be seen as a Raw talent. It has potential!

Moving from Raw to Mature is an ongoing journey. We fluctuate along this continuum.

To show up with a more Mature theme, we can grow in our self or other-awareness. We can practice more. We can add more strategy or long term consideration. We can work to make something have shared awareness rather than just live in our own head. We can go beyond considering ourselves and move from ME to WE thinking.

It’s not about perfection but about going. Don’t worry to get it all right, just try to get a little better.

I’ve learned this idea from doing work on Gallup’s CliftonStrengths/StrengthsFinder tool. Specifically their Gallup Theme Thursday Podcast has some great insight on Raw to Mature…specially Season 2 highlights this.

If you’re looking for more on StrengthsFinder or Strengths in general, check out Carnival Group’s Define-Apply-Grow Worksheet and consider dropping us a line.

Post-StrengthsFinder Worksheet: Define-Apply-Grow

When someone is looking to grow or make a change, I often suggest they start with strengths.

You can use a tool like StrengthsFinder/CliftonStrengths just be sure that the assessment doesn’t speak for you. Instead make it your own. Validate, dispute, and add to your results.

This Define-Apply-Grow Worksheet is valuable, putting StrengthsFinder results in your own words and build specific action or goals.

List your Top 5 results.

DEFINE them. Put the theme in your own words. Give real world examples of how you’ve seen it show up.

Next consider how you can APPLY each theme. Where is it within reach to try out right now? Not about growing or expanding it but simply where in your current work, practice, life, can you put it into reality? Think of this like gluing it on the page of your life or paper clipping it to another activity you already do.

Lastly start to clarify how you can GROW each theme. What can you do to take it from Raw to Mature? What can you practice outside of your current scope of work? What new habits can you develop? Is there any knowledge you need to use this theme more?

I usually recommend people work down the page. DEFINE each of your themes. Then move to APPLY, then to GROW. Often there are substantial theme dynamics at play and so two or three themes might have overlap.

Do not feel the pressure to get something written in each box on the worksheet. What is important is to get 1 or two goals out of this and then treat it as a working document. Come back to it and go through it again at some point. Momentum and action is the goal, not filling in all the gaps!

You can download the worksheet HERE

It can be helpful to do this process with a coach…a supporter, question asker, ally who helps you clarify. Carnival Group has coaches trained and ready to help with this. Reach out and we’d love to chat.