Strengths: Measuring What’s Best About You
Have you ever taken Gallup’s CliftonStrengths® assessment?
If not, skim the first part of this blog until you see the section called “Why Strengths?”
If you HAVE taken the assessment already, have you downloaded your new “Top 5” report yet?
In January, Gallup released its new “Top 5” report for the CliftonStrengths assessment. As your friendly neighborhood Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, I thought I should let you know about it!
If you’ve taken this assessment in the past, you should definitely login to your Gallup account and get your new report. There’s no fee to do this – you’ve already taken the assessment; you’re just accessing a newly formatted report of your results.
If it’s been a little while since you last looked over the result of your assessment, consider this a golden invitation to remind yourself about what’s unique about you and what you naturally do best!
To clarify: You’re not retaking the assessment or getting new strengths. Instead, when you access your account, you’ll see the Top 5 Report available for download. That report is based on the results from your previous assessment and presents those results to you in a new format.
Why is this important?
For starters, the new report is more streamlined than the previous reports and reduces confusion. In the past, you had to download two reports: a Signature Themes Report (that shared Gallup’s “standard definition” of each talent theme), and a Strengths Insight Guide (which provided personalized content for you, based on your unique strengths profile). Now, you’ll get both the standard definition and your personalized strengths insights in one easy-to-digest report.
More importantly, Gallup’s included some helpful content that was not previously included in their Top 5 reports.
Domains: The new Top 5 report briefly describes the four domains and identifies which themes comprise each domain. While this report does not identify which domain is your primary domain (you’d have to upgrade to the “Full 34 Report” to see that), it’s helpful to understand these categories and to begin to think about your strengths within these domains.
Applications: This new report provides two suggestions of ways to apply each of your strengths to succeed. The previous Top 5 Reports only described your strengths but didn’t include any tips for your next steps. These suggestions for application can help you get started in developing your strengths.
Pairs / Theme Dynamics: My favorite part of the new report is the section (provided for each of your top 5 strengths) entitled, “How ______ Blends With Your Other Top Five Strengths.” I like to call this section “Paired Up” for short. It provides short statements that describe the combination of each possible pairing of your top five strengths.
For example, two of my top five strengths are Belief® and Achiever®. In my report, I see:
Belief + Achiever: When your diligence is directed toward an important cause or mission, your efforts have greater intensity and meaning.
YES! If you know me, you know how true this is!
This section introduces the concept of theme dynamics: how two or more talent themes work together and impact each other. Our strengths rarely work alone. Most of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are actually the result of two or more talent themes working together within us.
Until now, the “paired up” content had only been published in a resource available exclusively to those who’d gone through Gallup strengths coach training (and in an older book that’s only available in Kindle edition now).
These short statements get to the essence of our own personal theme dynamics, and they bring a new level of insight to us about how we’re wired.
Next Steps: The newly formatted report also provides QR codes and links for some next steps you can take to develop your strengths. I’ll particularly encourage you to use the link to a free activity that you can use to name, claim, and aim each of your strengths. This is a worksheet I frequently use when I facilitate CliftonStrengths sessions with groups. It's a great resource for exploring your strengths more deeply.
Why Strengths?
If you’re new to CliftonStrengths (or if you’ve taken the assessment but never quite knew why it was powerful), I’d like to introduce you to the concept of strengths-based development.
Strengths-based development comes from the field of positive psychology, which in short is the arm of psychology that studies what’s right with people instead of what’s wrong with them. Instead of focusing on neurosis, psychosis, and dysfunction, and studying people who struggle to function, positive psychologists study those who achieve success, happiness, and fulfillment, and trace the factors that led to those outcomes.
One of the pioneers in the field of positive psychology was Dr. Donald Clifton, who believed that people can achieve more by focusing on their strengths than on their weaknesses. This approach is known as strengths-based development, and it stands in contrast to the conventional approach to personal development.
The conventional approach to development pushes a person to focus on their weaknesses, identify improvement areas, and develop an improvement plan. However, this approach is based on several faulty assumptions. It assumes that:
most, if not all, behaviors can be learned,
the best performers in a role display the same behaviors, and
weakness fixing leads to success and better performance.
However, the conventional approach to development typically results in mediocrity and a sense of “surviving” in a particular area of lack.
A strengths-based approach begins with different assumptions. It assumes that:
only some behaviors can be learned,
the best performers in a role deliver the same outcomes using different behaviors,
weakness fixing at its best only prevents failure; strengths building leads to success and better performance.
A strengths-based approach to development invites a person to focus on their talents – the things they naturally do well – and identify opportunities to develop those talents into well-honed strengths in which they exhibit near-perfect performance. Whereas the results of the conventional approach are mediocrity and surviving, the results of a strengths-based approach are excellence and thriving.
When we focus on our strengths, we are more likely to achieve goals, have more energy, be happy, learn something interesting, be treated with respect, feel more confident, and be more creative.
Who wouldn’t want those outcomes??
The CliftonStrengths® Assessment
The CliftonStrengths assessment isn’t the only way to learn your strengths, but it’s one of the most powerful. If you haven’t yet taken the assessment, I encourage you to dive in. If you’ve already been initiated, it’s time to remind yourself of what’s best about yourself and take some steps to develop those strengths.
Available Reports
Gallup has come a long way since they debuted the assessment in 1999. The assessment has been revised and updated, and the tool has been renamed (from StrengthsFinder® to CliftonStrengths® in honor of Don Clifton’s ground-breaking work).
More importantly for us as “end-users,” we now have a suite of reports available to choose from. Note: The same assessment powers all of these reports; the results are just “packaged” differently depending on the report that you choose.
CliftonStrengths Top Five: The introductory report, newly revised. (See above for details about what’s new and great about this report.)
CliftonStrengths Full 34: Considered the gold standard, this report provides your full profile of 34 talent themes in order, identifies your dominant domain, includes suggestions for action, and helps you manage weaknesses.
There are also three “role-based” reports (available as stand-alone reports, or as part of a bundle) which provide insights about your top TEN talent themes. If you have a role in leadership, management, or sales, these reports can help you apply your strengths to your specific role.
CliftonStrengths for Leaders
CliftonStrengths for Managers
CliftonStrengths for Sales
And last, but not least, there is a distinct CliftonStrengths for Students report. Designed for older high school and college students, this report helps students better understand their talents so they can thrive academically, socially, and in their future career. This report provides your top five themes, a guide for using the report, notes about how your strengths contribute to and get in the way of your success, action items, and a practical outline for achieving your goals.
The Report is Just the Beginning
Once you have your report, what’s most important is what you do with it. Read it. Mark it up. Use the action items. Get the free worksheet and put it to use. Talk with others who know you well about your results. Hire a coach.
Even just one meeting to debrief your report can have meaningful impact in your life. A few coaching sessions to help you begin to activate your strengths can be life-changing.
My very first paid coaching client sought me out for coaching around her strengths. She was working through some challenges in her leadership role and was curious about how she could lean into her strengths to improve her overall leadership style.
The result?
She made connections between her strengths and current challenges. I helped her gain a fresh view and interpretation of what each strength meant for her. Knowing that the way each strength played out was unique to her was liberating for her and allowed her to think creatively about where and how to use her strengths and passion.
I’ve walked similar journeys with others since then. Each one is unique, and each one is exciting and powerful. If you’re interested in taking the next steps on your journey to live your strengths, contact me.
In the meantime, if you’ve got an old report, go login to your Gallup account and get your new report!
Then email me back to tell me what you like about it!
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