strengths

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

Values Over Talents

When looking ahead, planning a shift, crafting a career, deciding about the future, we ought to focus more attention on our values instead of our talents.

Talents or gifts are reflective. They look backwards at where we have been. This contextual perspective brings loads of insight but we must ensure to also look ahead.

The rear view mirror on a car is much smaller than the windshield.

Values help us look ahead while also connect with a core of who we are.

Talent/Gift: A unique function or ability we possess or have proven to be successful.

Value: A guiding principle or ideal which we prioritize.

If you are looking ahead, of course consider where you’ve been and what are your talents or gifts but ensure you focus more towards what you value. If we continue to respond to our environment with our talents alone, we are shaped more by our environment than our true selves. Focusing on values brings a proactive approach, helping us shape the environment with ourselves.

Values lead ahead while talents look back.

Brene Brown has a great values clarification process where you take this list of values and cross out words until you’re left with 2-3 of your top values.

Building a practice of mindfulness or journaling can also help you clarify and identify your values while reflecting on the talents you possess.

I love focusing on talents and have found huge value in it myself. Strengths or talents or gifts are important to consider. But they only go so far. This StrengthsFinder worksheet can be a great launching point if values feel too daunting.

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.

Is that you or the assessment speaking?

I’ve found this question a valuable one in coaching and just talking over personality assessments with friends…”Is that you or the enneagram/StrengthsFinder/(insert your favorite assessment here) speaking?

When someone says something that is a little too spot on to be true, it’s a good question to ask.

When we ourselves are assuming a lot about ourselves or someone else based on an archetype we should ask this.

The assessment should serve us, not we serve the assessment.

We do this when we don’t recognize the assessment as a shortcut. It’s a shortcut to quicker understanding or quicker connection.

That can be massively useful! But it cannot be used as a crutch to avoid experiencing another person as they are or doing work to understand our own motivations and personality.

What’s better than an assessment is a walk and talk with someone else or a phone call.

What’s better than an assessment is creating a rhythm of journaling or another reflective practice.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good assessment. I’m a big advocate for the enneagram, the StrengthsFinder, and the DiSC but they are shortcuts. Useful shortcuts at certain times but still shortcuts which bypass the real work often needed. A little knowledge can be dangerous.

Initially inspired by Seth Godin from his Akimbo podcast episode “Spirit of Ecstasy” (Go to minute 28:00). He points out that personality tests can be used as a shortcut to actually get to know someone and build intimacy.

Per an academic paper in International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, strengths assessments can lead us down a path that is not congruent with our true selves, especially when we may learn something not totally true, it can be tough to unlearn it. In order to ethically use these assessments, we must create a space for ourselves and others to “dispute, validate and add to their test results.”

Strengths Over Weaknesses

Focusing on our weaknesses or liabilities is like tightening a ratchet. It is effective to a point. At some point we get so tight, we break or we can’t go any tighter.

Focusing on our strengths is like using a machete to create a new trail. It is endlessly fulfilling and possible. We can continue to go down the path we are on and start creating a new path on a whim. We have momentum and power here.

We have to use both to grow. Sometimes its about a little ratchet tighter and hopefully more often it’s about the endless possibility of cutting out a new path.

Integral

Integral is the goal of development of SELF in coaching.

Integral: Essential to completeness; lacking nothing essential; composed of constituent parts

(Constituent: an essential part)

As you understand your strengths, weaknesses, and life theme, you work towards bringing the essential, important parts of yourself together to be united and applied around you.

Start with Strengths

What was the last new habit you formed? Or the last time you got a lot of work accomplished?

How did it start?

You decided to vacuuming the living room and ended up cleaning your whole house, even started unpacking those boxes in that closet you never open…

You took a simple jog through your favorite part of the city and now you’re about to run your first 5K…

You read a short and funny book over the weekend and now are checking if your library has books more like it…

Momentum is fundamental to change. 

That’s why our coaching framework starts with strengths. What are you most talented in? Where is the room for greatest potential?

It’s like choosing your favorite chore around the house, doing an exercise you enjoy, finding an approachable book.

Starting with strengths builds momentum into the change you see to make.