One of the most important fundamental habits of personal development is recognizing your strengths and weaknesses. Scientifically speaking, knowing your strengths is not enough. Instead of recognition, one should aim to develop a deep understanding of your strengths and build towards learning how to lean into what makes you unique.
Don Clifton, the pioneer of Gallup’s CliftonStrengths, decided to embark on the journey six decades ago by asking a simple question: “What would happen if we studied what was right with people versus what’s wrong?” Mr. Clifton spent his life researching and investing ways to help people maximize their infinite potential. This led him to invent the CliftonStrengths assessment, which has been used by nearly 30 million people across the globe.
As a certified Global Gallup Strengths Coach, I have the privilege of providing clients deep detail into their strengths through teams and individual workshops. This has led me to develop the Blueprint to Maximizing Strengths Workshop’ in which we partner with local nonprofit organizations to create environments to combine volunteerism and strengths coaching, all while serving the greater good.
CliftonStrengths has four domains that cover the natural ways in which people work together to accomplish goals. These four domains include executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. Within each domain are multiple talent themes that work to transform potential into performance.
This means giving you the opportunity to learn how to bring your best self to the table, and play to your strengths whether in your personal or professional endeavors. Another key factor to note is that your top 5 and top 10 strengths can be interchanged, depending on the situation. For instance, there may be time when you naturally lean into your influencing strengths when working in teams that have a lot of strategic thinkers, and also moments when your relationship building strengths kick into high gear when networking.
Knowing which strengths to lean into in a giving moment are important, and can be maximized when working with a coach. Also understanding that your strengths are self-selected is important because when receiving your strengths report, it’s easy to say ‘this doesn’t fit me”.
Well, although that may be true on the exterior, this is where working with a strengths coach is important because you can have an expert walk through the report with you and show you how that particular talent theme could be misinterpreted, and instead truly be a strength for you to lean into and take advantage of as opposed to discarding it.
According to CliftonStrengths data, research shows that people who use their strengths to their advantage are more engaged and productive at work, achieve their goals, are happier and healthier, and have greater confidence and self-awareness. If this sounds like something you’re interested in becoming, or if you’d like to learn how to maximize your strengths, reach out to us today to begin walking down the path to maximize your potential and become your best you.
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Tony Holmes, Certified Professional Diversity Coach