223: Dean Jones — Harness the Power of Your Natural Talents

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Well, hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach, Bill Gallagher. So we're joined today by Dean Jones from the Gallup organization and he's a senior learning expert at Gallup. He thinks it's too lofty, but he's like the global learning architect and he's responsible for the global learning strategy with the organization, advising clients on learning and their organizational development and the development of their development. Right? That's right. He oversees that whole strategy for, for the company globally and also the development of their public courses and their learning products and is chair of the Diversity Advisory Council. That's a thing that's like suddenly become more urgent for a lot of companies.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Before we get into it, reminder to everyone that we have hundreds of episodes in the world of Scaling up. All the things that you need to develop your company, your team, your leadership. Scaling up is a best of framework that draws on the best ideas and talent from all the thought leaders and really pulls it together in a cohesive way. And we deal with people, strategy, execution and cash. And in particular, we're talking here a lot about people, but we're also getting to some of the execution sides of how you use and engage people. And so that's kind of our world. We've got these hundreds of episodes. You'll find stuff on every topic. We've talked to Dean a couple times before, the world of Gallup's tools and strengths and research. And I'm so glad to have him back. But you'll find all that stuff@scalingcoach.com in addition, right now, more than ever before, we're getting more requests for coaching as people navigate this moment of crisis, this turning time. And we're seeing tremendous success already with clients who are engaging their people Finding the right pivot movements, figuring out how to execute and hone their processes and then produce more cash by focusing in on certain things. So we're getting a lot of those requests and if we can help you. Right. We have coaches working in new ways at extraordinary levels rapidly. So we've got 200 around the world. If I can help you drop us a note or go find us@scalingcoach.com or an email to infocalingcoach.com it's probably not me because I can only talk to so many people, but we have plenty around and I will connect you with someone and then of course, you'll find the downloads to all the tools there@scalingcoach.com as well as registration in our public workshops. Scaling up. And those are being pivoted or adapted for this time. So we're starting to do now 4P's of scaling forward now for people who are kind of in the middle and trying to figure out how to navigate through and find the other side of the current crisis. And then we've got copies of the book for free. So we'll give you Scaling up for free. Just go there, register or just pay the shipping and handling and we'll send you a copy for free. So that's all of that. Welcome to the show, Dean.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here. It's good to see you.

So we're talking in a different way again about strengths based development and how to use that within the organization. Of course, a lot of our coaches use strengths development. A few are even certified in strengths. And I use it in all of our sessions right from the first session when we do discovery. I work with the CEO in particular in depth on theirs. And then we start to push that out of the organization and we get, we start to see the team makeup. We use a lot of that. Where we're looking at where are we heavy as a leadership team and where do we need stuff? And so we think a lot about how that maps to what we do and how we interact with each other like that. So we're going to talk about that globally. So. We were just pulling up mine before we started the conversation. He says, well, you have a lot of energy and you talk a lot.

You lead with a lot of ideation.

Yes, I sure do.

Maybe the way to get into this conversation, I think, Bill, is to take a step back and really talk about what strengths is. Because I think for some people, some people may be familiar with CliftonStrengths, the assessment around strengths Some people may not be as familiar with strengths and what it means to have a strengths based approach. So maybe the way to kind of talk about this a little bit is, is to really have just start with kind of a fundamental level set around what do we mean by strengths and what is strengths? I think that strengths really is about. And it was the person who broke open this whole area is Dr. Don Clifton. Don was a researcher and an academic at University of Nebraska, Lincoln and had a huge influence on positive psychology and really is sort of noted as sort of the father of strengths and what he was doing. The story really, it's very straightforward, but at a time when all of psychology was sort of studying what was wrong with people. Right. I mean, he was working at a time where what was fashionable, if you were a psychologist or a psychological researcher, was to really, to investigate abnormal psychology. What made people deviate?

Right, yeah. And how did you get to business day?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

He was really fascinated by what was right with people. And he really went the opposite direction. He really was fascinated by how, like what, what, what's right with people? What makes someone successful. And literally his whole, all of his work was designed, it was started out to really study success. How do you actually make some. Or how. What is it about somebody that makes them successful? And he started, you know, and this is really a groundbreaking. I mean, we look at it now and we say, gosh, that seems, that seems obvious, but it's only obvious on the side of it. Right. At that time, I think it was obvious in hindsight. It's obvious in hindsight, right? Exactly.

Of course the market collapsed.

Of course the world is right round, right. All breakthroughs are right, obvious after the fact. But at the time he really, what he was looking at was what he could see, that talent was actually that there was a connection between talent and success or talent and excellence. And he started to study what is it, what are people's inherent talents. And at the time, you know, this notion of talent was sort of ephemeral.

Right.

It's like, how do we get our hands on this?

Yeah, yeah.

What he did, which I, which is clearly groundbreaking, was start to be able to say, you know, not only can we identify talent, but we can actually measure it and we can help people understand the manifestation of it. So the kind of working definition that we've had for many years of talent are naturally recurring patterns, a thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. So what are those natural patterns of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied? And as part of his work, he identified essentially 34 different talent themes or sets of patterns that he could say that we could see through research were correlated with success. And so the CliftonStrengths assessment is really designed to help somebody understand, where are those patterns, those innate talents do you possess so that you understand how do I actually harness that talent and use that talent in order to be successful?

Totally get it.

So that's really kind of the foundation. Strengths is really about understanding your own innate talent and then with that understanding, being able to develop those into legitimate strengths that you can apply against the things that are most meaningful for you. And the more somebody knows about their own talent, the more likely they are to be able to use that talent. Talent to be able to really express themselves in meaningful ways.

So we started talking about what are my top five top ten and that kind of thing as we got ready to begin the recording. And as you said this now I'm reminded because in the last couple weeks we've been clearing out an old storeroom and moving the storage room stuff into shed so we can use that room differently. And I've come across all my baby books and things like that.

Yes, right, right.

And, you know, scrapbooks and stuff. My parents saved it and, like, I can see some of them in the very beginning. So, like, my number three is communication. And just like speaking, like, knowing what to say, how to say it is clearly easily a natural tone. I always to show where I talk.

Yeah.

I stand on stage and I talk. I walk to the front of the room and I. It's just. It's not hard for me to find the words for things. And I can see, like, in the earliest things, like, I was verbal long before, like, sentences, simple sentences. By nine months, right. When some babies are barely doing stuff, beginning to articulate at six and seven months, first words. So there I am, like, right at the beginning. And yet I can also think of some of my most humiliating, embarrassing moments are also when my words failed me when I said something in a really terrible way. But, like, it develops over time. I'm a better speaker now today than I was as a teen. It's not like a superpower that I was born with. It had to be learned and honed and. Right, like over time.

Yeah, absolutely.

Understood. Yeah.

One of the things we know about talent is it's innate.

Right.

And it doesn't mean sometimes innate. Sometimes people in term, they. Sometimes that's upsetting for people. First of all, is people want to believe that they can develop talents. Right? But the truth about talent is this sort of, and it's a hard truth, is either got it or you don't. You know, you either have incredible musical talent or you don't. You either have great athletic talent or you don't. And, you know, you either have great mathematical talent or you don't, or entrepreneurial talent or you don't.

Right? Right.

One of the things that we see is that intensity of talent. That, that kind of talent, the manifestation talent to some degree, you're kind of born with it. And it's. It's. You can't really develop a talent. Right. You know, from nothing. Right. You can develop the talents that you have that you possess.

Bingo. Right.

You can't create a new talent.

And this is maybe one of the misreadings of an idea like Gladwell's Outliers, right? Oh, you just go put in 10,000 hours. You could be the Beatles, too, or you could be Bill Gates. No, you cannot.

It really doesn't work that way.

There's a lot more.

It's a hard thing for people to accept is, gosh, you know, what there is to do is to understand the talents that you have rather than through some mystical way, try to acquire a talent that you don't. And it's not, though. And to your point, and I love what you said, to your point, once you identify what your talents are, that's not just because you have a talent that doesn't immediately equate to having a strength. That talent is really potential. You've got to develop that talent in order to have a strength. At Gallup, the way we describe a strength is consistent, near perfect performance in a particular area. So we would say you have a strength if you've got consistent, near perfect performance in a particular area. That doesn't happen when I discover that I've got a talent in a particular area, I've got to acquire knowledge and skills and experience. As I add that to that talent, I'm more likely to end up with a strength. And in fact, the challenge that you see sometimes people have is if they're trying to acquire knowledge, skills and experience in an area where they don't have talent, you may be frustrated forever because you don't have the requisite talent. It really has to start with, do I have talent in that area?

So this is a great contrast. So I did for about 11 years, I took on running triathlons, right?

Yeah.

And I did about 45 triathlons and marathons in that time period. And I've got A whole stack of medals and things like all of them brilliant finisher medals. Right. Never once did I have any shot at being a top 10 or podium finisher. Right. There's nothing like in my DNA or whatever. I got a lot out of pursuing it and doing it. It benefited me greatly in terms of rigor, engagement, like health, that kind of thing. I lost weight, I looked better, but I wasn't ever going to be the best in the world at that. Now I used it in other parts. It was beneficial. I'm glad I did it, but I didn't ever have that, nor did I think if I just did more of these, like, I'd be top 10. It just like, wasn't really there now aspects of it. I focused a lot on looking good, coming in and out of the transition areas. So I can get really, like, sharp in those key moments. And as long as you didn't think about how much longer that was from everybody else moving through those areas, how much later it was, we're in good shape. Right. And I have some fantastic photos, but it's a great example of, you know, that's just not core to my area. Yeah.

And it's one of those things, Bill, where it doesn't does that necessarily. Sometimes people do things for reasons other than I want to be excellent at it. Right, right. Sometimes it's fulfilling. Sometimes it's interesting like that we satisfy in some way. You may be doing it for health benefits, but we know ultimately when people are working in the area of their strengths, they are more likely to be fulfilled. When people are working in the area of their strengths, they are more likely to one experience success. Right. There's just a greater likelihood you're going to be successful, but you're also likely to have kind of that deep sense of fulfillment that you don't get anywhere else. When you're working in your areas of strength, you're more likely to learn more quickly and pick up things more quickly. It's more likely to feel intuitive for you. We know that, you know, like one of the things we know is that just looking at somebody, what somebody yearns to do, is a good barometer. It's like, what is it about that thing that you keep wanting to go back and do that thing? Yearnings are a good way of helping people to start to identify those areas where there may be a strength. The most reliable way to do that is to take the CliftonStrengths assessment. So it's a psychometric assessment. It's the assessment if you go to gallup.com, you can read all about it. But it's the assessment that the whole design of the assessment, and we've had something like, I want to say 21, 22 million people at this point have taken CliftonStrengths. And the design of the assessment is to be able to tell you what are those talent themes that you lead with? What are those areas that you would want to invest in in order to be able to yield the best benefit?

Yeah. So you said you don't really care about the bottom ones, but I always think, here's what I find really great. I love to look at the bottom ones because I want to know I should just let go of that stuff and stop trying to be that.

Right.

Like, so I hire somebody and I give it away, and I honor that work in those areas, but I don't try to be it myself anymore.

Yeah, I think, you know, so one of the things that thing you're referring to is when you get your CliftonStrengths report, you get a forced ranking of your talent themes from the one that's most intense to one that's least intense.

Right.

And typically, we would tell people that we can explain about 90% of your behavior through your top 10 or 12 themes. Right. Those are the ones that we see kind of fire all the time. And we can really get. Those are. You know, we used to. Your top five themes, we used to call your signature themes. Those are the themes that like. Like your signature or like your fingerprint. Those are the ones that. That signify who you are. And the bottom themes, it's interesting. I think people have this. This. There's a little bit of mischief around it. The ones that are at the bottom of the list, those are not your weaknesses. Those are just the themes that just don't fire ever. You know, it sounds funny. The theme that is very clear.

They just don't see them in other people. I see them in my assistant. I see them in my wife. I see them in others.

They're wonderful. Yeah. I mean, for me, the theme that is number 34, the bottom of the list is a theme called harmony. And that's that talent for being able to walk into a room and create consensus immediately. You have sort of sense of who's on board, who's not on board, like that. I like to attribute that to the fact that I grew up in a big family, so I had lots of siblings, so, you know, like. And I was not interested in consensus. 31.

That's 31 for me.

Oh, There you go.

See?

But I will tell you, like you, I mean, some of my best partners in my career, our chief marketing officer at Gallup is one of my dearest friends, and she leads with a ton of harmony. Right. My admin partner, who is this guy James, who's my admin partner, who is probably one of the most talented cats I've ever run into. I mean, this guy's unbelievable.

Leads with harmony.

And so it's not something I don't. It's not that it's a weakness necessarily. I just don't walk into a room ever and say, hey, is there consensus here? That's not the first thought for me.

Yes. So that's a great point, because my number 27 is empathy. Now, I. So I don't lead with it, but I have developed and can access reliably deep, deep empathy. But it's something that I have to consciously bring forward when I need to. I use strategic to remember when to do it. Maybe, but. And I can be very powerful at it. But it isn't. It's not like, you know, I have to think about it.

Yeah. Here's the thing I would tell you, and you're gonna. You may hate me for saying this, so you could use. You could practice that empathy, but probably what you're talking about is the talent. Empathy, but just compassion, right? And there's a difference, right? So my husband, Lee. My husband has empathy in his top five strengths. Empathy is that talent where you can actually walk in and you feel other people's feelings, Right. Just by looking at you. I can feel their feelings. And again, it's one kind of like musical talent. You either got it or you don't. Right? And I think sometimes people just. With the name, I think people get it confused. It's like, well, I'm a compassionate person. Doesn't that mean I have high empathy? Well, it's different, right? It's different. You can. And to your point, you can hear you're summoning up that compassion through your thinking. So it's almost like a cerebral kind of like, hey, I'm going to think my way through there. Which is no less valid. But it's different than having the talent where you can just. You look at somebody, you can just feel what they're feeling. You can tell exactly what they're feeling.

Oh, yeah. So I'll be like. So like a good person, my wife, right? And I'll be like. And I'll pass her or say something or. No. And like, 20 seconds later occurred to me that Something's. Wait, that something's not right.

Right.

Then I'll go back and I'll look at her and I'll get it. Like, I don't necessarily have to ask what's going on, but then I can go, oh, you're a little upset, aren't you? And I can pick it up now. We've been married for 25 years. But. But I don't walk past and instantly go, oh, she's off. But I do see other people do that who go, wow, she's angry. And I'm like, well, I had to stop. Give it a second look. Think about it for a second. Try to feel it, Right. Like, it takes a whole other kind of effort on my part.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you said that strategic is your number two talent, right? And your. And it's more likely that what you're describing is kind of your strategic talent at work, thinking your way there than it is necessarily your, you know, having that natural sort of empathy, right. That natural sort of relating theme. It's interesting. Like, when I look at your top 10, right, you don't have a ton of upfront. You have a lot of influencing themes. You've got some execution themes, right? You don't have a lot of natural relating themes, which, by the way, I'm.

Almost like, you know, and when I hire somebody, I look for that. That I don't have.

I hear you. I. In my top, I tell people, you know, my top 14 themes, I have one lonely relationship theme, right? And all the rest, I'm, you know, I'm all influenced in thinking and execution, right? And so, you know, it's this interesting thing. I lean into my, by the way, my relationship. My relationship theme a lot. That one relationship theme I have is called rel, which is that ability to create close relationships with people. And I tend to lean into that a bunch. But I also. And to your point, some of my best partners lead with a lot of relationship themes to help me for that area that I just. I don't have natural talent, right?

So if you and I are at a party and I've been there for an hour and a half, it's long since time for me to leave. And as the conversation becomes circular or I'm bored with it, I will say goodbye and how great it is to see you, and I will turn around and I will make my way towards the door, nodding at people, smiling at them as I go, but definitely not starting any new conversations. I will get to the door, I'll look back to the room one more time and we'll say more likely in my head than out loud, adios and I won't be gone. Right. And my wife will take a minute carefully to wrap up her conversation and making sure that she hasn't left the other person in a deficit of conversation like that they got what they needed to say and were heard and like that kind of thing. And then she'll go say goodbye to everyone else that she's close to and that'll start a new 10 or 15 minute conversation with each and every person as she works her way back out the door. And an hour later she's out the door. Right. So when I went to hire my assistant, knowing this sort of relationship management is an area of profound weakness or an area that I just, I don't like to attend to. Right. Harmony includer restorative. Those are all in my bottom four.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

I just, I'm like I love you all. You could call me at three in the morning if you need something and I'm there for you. But like I'm done talking and it's, and it's kind of like, like it's definitely an introvert leaning thing. Like I don't mind talking but I need kind of some personal space and I just want to get the fuck out of there. Right. Pardon the language. I'm just done energetically talking. So when I go to hire somebody like my primary counterpart, my assistant, I, that's one of the questions I. What does it look like when you leave a party? Yeah.

I will tell you that there's more scientifically val assessments probably then that works really well. I would also tell you, I think this is the point you're illustrating in some ways kind of the point of strengths and particular point of strengths for leaders is I think the value of CliftonStrengths. The value of understanding your own strengths is self awareness, is that you know who you are and you know who you're not.

Yes.

And you have much better, much deeper self awareness around how to express yourself and then how to look for those complimentary relationships, those complimentary partnerships that are out there.

Yes.

Also and you had talked about this before we started here today, but one of the incredible values I think for leaders is we all know leaders that have blind spots and they may be the leader in the mirror. Right.

It may be the person for sure.

Maybe the person sitting in your chair.

If you don't think it's the person in your chair, then you have lots.

Yes, exactly. And I think you're right. One of the key things that leaders need to have is good self awareness and particularly to be able to walk that line between full self expression and full self regulation.

Right.

How do I know how to express myself fully express my talents in a way that are really meaningful and also to be able to regulate those same talents. Your weaknesses are not necessarily found at the bottom of your list of strengths themes. Your weaknesses typically are found at the top your top 10 or 15 of your talents. Those talents, when expressed in ways that are wrong or unhealthy or infringe on other people's self expression or commitments, are the things that are more likely to impede your success.

So I wake up in the morning with five or ten noticeable ideas. I'm sure I have more ideas than I have, but they're the ones that I'm sort of conscious of 5 or 10. And then I start to strategize in between the ideation about ways to get what I want to bring them to life. And then I actually began to think about the words that I'm going to give to them. Like they occur as language in my thinking, in my mind. And sometimes I even talk to myself like if I'm driving or biking or something like that. And then I start gravitating to the first steps. But then the moment I walk into the work workplace or like that, I am in action and I'm going to begin going without a plan. And if somebody isn't doing what I want in the way that I want, I will give them orders.

You just describe your top five talents. Right? Talents, exactly.

And I won't necessarily, I won't necessarily say please or thank you. Yeah, it's not that I don't mean well, it's just I'm just very direct in not noticing the relationship side of things. And I think that I'm smarter enough to important things in life and I'm willing to work really hard. I am definitely thinking about how to build a better world and a big future. And I'm curious about what's going on around me and I want to be the best. And I'm noticing. Am I winning?

Yeah, right. You just said you're top 10 now. Right. And just so everyone's clear that's listening, your top five are Ideation, Strategic Communication Activator and Command. Those are your top five CliftonStrengths talent themes.

Right? Yes.

And then your next five are Significance, Achiever, Futuristic Learner and competition. And I think what you've illustrated in a humorous way, I Think is what's so powerful. Right. Is it's not only the talent that you bring. I mean, starting with the first, you know, the fact that you wake up and you've got four or five ideas. That is ideation in action. Right?

Yeah.

The downside of that, which is that we know that oftentimes people that lead with a ton of ideation need somebody who leads with a lot of focus so they can help prioritize those.

Right.

And so you have also strategic is your number two. So thinking about how do I bring those ideas to fruition is probably natural for you, but for a lot of people that lead with ideation, it's not. And they need a strategic partner that can help them with that.

Well, and sometimes when I'm being super strategic, people think of me as conniving, manipulative, you know, like. Yeah.

It's sort of the downside of that when you're not used in the right way, it can feel mercenary, unfeeling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the communication, like you're still talking. Yeah. Put a pause in. Or added a question.

But to your point, Bill, it's really all about that self awareness. And this is where one is. I always laugh because if you don't have that fundamental self awareness, and this is where Cliftonstrengths is very useful for people, is it helps with that fundamental self awareness. One of the things that's powerful about cliftonstrengths is the likelihood of you having the same top five cliftonstrengths in the same order is 1 in 33 million. So you're not like some other assessments. You're not one of 16 types. Right, right. It really does capture the diversity of the population. You really see uniquely who you are.

But get that again, one of 33 million. A unique kind of fingerprint. Not you're a seven.

No. Right, right.

Or you're a blue. Or you're like Jesus.

Yeah, yeah. And that's not to denigrate. I mean, I will tell you, they.

All have a little bit of use. Right.

They all have a window. Right. But you know, I'm telling you, you show up to coach a team and everybody, every single person on the team is ENTJ's. And you got. No, you can't. It looks like everybody.

That's my right.

Exactly. And mine too. Right. You know, and yet we're not the same. Right.

Yeah.

And that illust it perfectly is that it's useful. It's useful and it provides a certain window. But at the same time, you want to capture the diversity of the population so you can start to really understand some of those dynamics between people and between people on teams, between people inside of an organization.

So there's richness to it, but there's also kind of. So there's detail, right? More granular detail. But then there's also richness to the language. It's not overly coded. So entj disc like these are overly coded kinds of things that require more interpretation and looking at patterns and that kind of thing. Whereas we can dive in fairly quickly on the top 34 talent themes in their order and start to be self aware. And I think like until recently, hiring the last few years has been the major challenge. Recruiting and hiring and every especially young people early in their career. First part of your career, everybody is a communicating, self starting team player who you know with great attention to detail and if pressed their, their weaknesses, they just care too much. Right?

That's right. But if you ask me today, there's.

A couple things I'm really good at and then there's a whole lot of stuff I don't really want to be bothered with anymore. And that self awareness comes pretty late in life for a lot of people. Right. And then there's a certain amount of satisfaction and liberation that comes from it. But it took a lot of work looking in the mirror and embracing things like cliftonstrengths for me to sort of get clear. Yeah, I just don't love consistent operations. Like somebody else should do that because I don't want to do the same thing all the time. I don't want to follow the rules like that's somebody else's job and so I shouldn't manage ops anymore.

Yeah, I think that's right on. And I think your point, I think part of the value is it accelerates that process of self awareness. You see people and you see particularly young people who are in college. My niece went to the University of Minnesota. All incoming freshmen at the University of Minnesota do cliftonstrengths, right?

Yeah.

So at an early stage in her professional life she knows what her talents are. So she can say to your point, without buzzwords or cliches, she can say this is who I am and this is who I'm not. Now to be clear, we would tell you don't use cliftonstrengths as a hiring tool or a selection instrument. It's not validated.

It's not for that.

But on the other side, on the candidate side, for you to know what your talents are and to be able to articulate them in a meaningful way. Whether you're looking for your first job or whether you're a leader in a large enterprise organization. It's incredibly powerful. And just to your point earlier is this notion about language that is really a critical notion that. But we know right now in organizations that in order to that feedback is so important. We talked about that before. But oftentimes managers and organizations and leaders in organizations don't have the language to provide feedback in a way that's positive, constructive, inclusive, nonjudgmental. And CliftonStrengths really gives people that shared language. So that is inclusive and that is positive. So that we can talk about individual differences in a way that we understand and that it doesn't feel like we're denigrating anyone.

Yeah. Because it's all being spoken of from that place of strengths. And we caution people it's not validated, even though we know folks will use it in some aspects of their recruiting sometimes. And, and there are other tools that are more validated for that. But when we look at a team makeup, especially in the beginning with scaling teams. Right. One of my teams in the last two years has gone from 35 to 280 employees. That's not unusual. Right. So we add lots and lots of people in fast growing companies. And when we look at those teams initially, sometimes we see, okay, this team is like, I'm sort of heavy in influence talent themes and strategic ones and less in relationship and executing ones. And if I look at those kinds of things, then I can see that I might want to surround myself or fill in people. And when I look at teams as a whole, I'll see, wow, this team, it's interesting, you don't have any people with any influence in the top five in the leadership team. So your next person that you might want to hire is probably like an evangelist or salesperson. And you've been selling but from a different place now as you go into this next thing. So we can kind of see gaps and areas of emphasis. And the areas of emphasis we can say, great, these probably relate to core company values and that kind of thing that we want to keep and probably even tie into. There's probably a relationship between brand promises of the company and where you come from.

And this is where I will tell you, I would caution you around it. You know, Bill, I love what you're saying. The piece is, it's really knowing what your strengths are and thinking about how are we using the strengths that we've got. Sometimes you see, and you do see this you see people saying, gosh, you know, like we're all influenced. And so I'm going to hire some relationship people. I worked one time with the executive team for a big engineering company, big architectural engineering firm, and we were looking at the team grid. That's the grid that shows all the strengths for all the. It was interesting because one of the things they were concerned about is nearly every one of the partners in the firm led with a lot of responsibility, which is primarily like an execution theme. Right. They had one gentleman in the firm that they had hired intentionally with a lot of influencing themes because they were worried that they were worried that they didn't have anybody with any influencing themes. Right?

Yeah.

And the thing that was so funny was that sort of came out in the conversation was one is the one guy that they hired for because he had different themes was the one that created the most friction with the rest of the partners. Right. And that always constructive friction. Right. Now, part of that was lack of self awareness, but part of that is, is they had created a particular kind of culture in the organization and they were hiring to sort of moderate that culture, but they weren't doing a great job helping everyone understand this. This gentleman or helping him understand the rest of the culture. The other thing is, it's interesting, sometimes people will say, gosh, I have no relationship themes. Does that mean I don't relate to people? Or I have no influencing themes? Does that mean I can't influence anybody? No, no, no, it doesn't. That doesn't mean that at all. All. And in fact, what's interesting is with this firm, almost, as I said, almost everybody led with high responsibility. The reason that they, the way they acquired customers, the way they retained customers for the firm was because they were so responsive. And it's. So it's really not, do I have themes of a particular type? It's do I know what my themes are and do I know what those talent themes are and do I know how to use them in the way that's most productive?

Yeah, absolutely. Right. And what are the areas and who's got them and how do we approach the world with that self awareness, knowing that? Yeah. So. And I think that's where you get in trouble. Like if you, if you go out and try to be someone you're not or that's a real struggle for you. Right. As a team, as a company, as an individual, you get in trouble with it. Like, yeah, you probably need to come from that place that you've always come from. That's sort of core to your DNA.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so it's really all about, you know, and we talked. We've talked about this before. It's really all about knowing what your talent themes are and then working on developing them in a way that feels like you're investing in those and growing those so you can do the things that you do best. Right. Regardless of your position in the organization or your level in the organization, do you know what those talent themes are? And are you investing in them in a way that is going to help you to be able to develop in a meaningful way?

So there's two questions that we coach our leaders to coach from when they're doing coaching sessions with their team or in a few organizations where they're doing peer coaching. The first one is to whatever the challenge is at hand. So I'm coaching the person and you say, I'm having a problem in this area and whatever. And so one of the first questions we'll ask in exploration is, which of the core values of the company you think is at play here is threatened? Is like working. They'll talk, what do you see about that? What would that look like in action? Where's the crisis? And then the other one is, which of your core. Which of your top five or ten strengths do you think most can make a difference here? And how do you see using that in this situation? So we'll ask which of the company values, then which of their personal talent themes apply? And those are both super useful. They're like, oh, well, I need to use my strategic. And then from those two things, they start to think of new approaches. Right?

That's right. That's right. It's an interesting. I love the approach because one is understanding. Understanding the organization's values and understanding your own values and how your own values connect with that are so incredibly powerful. And then, you know, it's an interesting thing, and it feels like the most obvious thing in the world to say, but conventional development, the sort of conventional approach to developing people or addressing a problem is figuring out where are your weaknesses or where are the gaps and trying to fix those things.

So.

And yes, exactly.

It sounds exhausting.

It is exhausting.

You just beat your hat against it and you don't get that much better.

Yeah. The implicit message is be who you're not. Right. And we know that to be successful, you have to tap into that reservoir of talent that you naturally possess if you want to be successful.

It's really.

That's why I love that second question, Bill Is how are you tapping into that natural reservoir of talent that you possess to bring yourself to bear on this? And we know that's going to be different than anybody else. We know that's going to be unique to you. And sometimes I will tell you, it's this funny thing. People think there are foregone conclusions. People think there are certain answers, or I need to be competitive or I need to be more strategic. Gosh, you know, every leader wants to be strategic. Right. You know, it's I need to be this. But it's really understanding who are you and how are you going to bring your unique talents to bear on that problem or on that situation or on that opportunity.

Yeah. Because each of us is going to approach the same job like from a different place. Right.

Completely. Completely. And your success will rely on not are you approaching it the quote unquote right way, but are you. Do you understand your own talents well enough that you can bring yourself to bear on the situation in a way that sets you up for success? People that are very successful at using their strengths of knowing their strengths and using their strengths are people that know how to set themselves up for success. They know what their own talents are. They know how to set up their talents for success so that. And they have strategies for being able to do that. So they can say, look, I work best when or you get the best of me when, or the situations where I shine are they, you know, and they sound like simple questions. But it's critical that people at all levels, from executive leaders to frontline employees can answer those questions.

I had a CEO recently. Thousand person, half a billion dollar company. And he's like, well, this guy over here is just drives me crazy because he won't give me an answer. I'm like, just give me an answer. And then we go through this, they start to learn about each other, themselves and each other. And then he sees the guy's got deliberative and he's like, oh, that means he just needs time to think about it. So what's a question that you could ask him that would. He's like, oh, I'll just ask him how long he needs. So now every time he finds himself getting tripped up by like, this guy won't give me a damn answer. He'll just say, when can you get back to me? And the guy very naturally says, oh, tomorrow or Friday or like, you know, whatever the thing is. And like. And now they have to remember a little bit of that dynamic because it's not yet automatic. But already things Shifted. And then they started calling each other out. There he goes deliberative again. Oh, that's activator. And they start to call each other out by their strengths is outstanding. They loved it so much they hired a full time certified strengths coach. I stopped doing that work with him.

But, you know, so the one thing is that you know that about each other. Right. The next level of that is you can actually lean into those talents.

Yeah.

So, you know, gosh, if I'm leading with a lot of activator, which is one of the talent themes, which is about that, that talent theme is about having an ease and moving into action.

Right? Right.

So if I lead with a lot of activator and by the way, I have activator number one. But if, and I know you have a pretty high too. Right. So if, if you lead with it, you know, being able to lean into somebody that's got high deliberative, it's not just, hey, I'm going to need time to think this through. It's also that unique gift of somebody who leads with that deliberative talent theme is somebody that can actually see the areas where we need to be cautious. Right?

Yeah.

And so to be able to say, hey, look, it's not just, hey, I've got to give you time to give me the answer. It's also tell me where we should be concerned. Tell me where we need to be cautious. Because you're going to think about this in a way and you're immediately going to see all those areas which are cause for concern. And we need to know that. And that's going to contribute. Particularly for those of us who lead with a lot of activator, we're hard charging. Right.

But you know, when I was young and an executive in a much larger company and starting a new group, I was leading with activator and ideation strategic and all those things all the time. They can really see it in hindsight. And I would go, but I didn't recognize them. I just knew ENTJ because that was the tool they used. Briggs. And I'm like, well, I'm like the others here, I'm executive material, Right? Right. But I'm like button heads of these people and driving them crazy. Also in a culture that was very mixed, at least half of it was not very entrepreneur. And we'd get in these battles and I'd be like, no, we're going forward and we're going to figure it out on the way. And they'd be like, no, we need to think about the cost of this. This is a hundreds of millions of dollars thing you're working on here. And we're not just screwing around with that. We're going to run the numbers and do some scenarios. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm calling it. And we're doing this right. And. And I was under 30, so that kind of thing got. But knowing this, kind of. Knowing my CliftonStrengths results, my sequence of talent themes. I know.

Oh, yeah.

I'm kind of like that and need that and we need to work together and it really helps me. And it's a lot easier to navigate these things if I have some of these people on my side and their perspective is really helpful and they'll think about all the way this could go wrong. And that thinking about how it could go wrong isn't actually hurting me or shooting me down. It's crazy. Creating contingency plans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And I think this is the value of that. Then when everybody in the culture has done strengths, right. So you can look at all the strengths on a team or all the strengths in an organization, you start to see the kind of the dominant culture of the organization. You start to be able to see that. And you can see where your talents, themes, where your strengths are a fit for that culture. You can also see those areas where there's gaps where you could say, hey, our culture is more this and that's not necessarily who I am.

Right.

And I think that's incredibly helpful. Again, that kind of awareness, the other thing that it gives you, and I think this is not to be underestimated, but when that stuff comes up, it's just like the example you gave with the two executives. We've got a language to navigate it so we could talk about it in a way that's respectful and we've got a way of talking about our differences that isn't about somebody's personality or somebody's identity or what's wrong with them. It's really about who they are and the contribution that they are.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

What they have to offer, what they have to offer, what they might actually enjoy. Well, so if you're new to strengths and you're going to want to head over to Gallup and find the CliftonStrengths assessment and take that and get to know it and maybe engage a coach or someone to train you and to work with you both in the personal discovery and then start to bring it into the organization. We do that, work with our leadership teams. When we're coaching and scaling up as part of the people tools that we bring to bear and we've talked about this and some related things before. If the show helped you like it, subscribe, share it with somebody else right now you can give us feedback or ask us a follow on question if you want infocalingcoach.com is the email info scalingcoach.com you'll find these and 200 others@scalingcoach.com we've got public workshops we can do, private workshops for teams and getting you started. Kind of down the path of scaling up and getting your team organized and working better and giving you back like sustaining that growth or regaining it if you lost it in this recent crisis, getting things working together better, more smoothly, optimizing the cash in the business, that whole kind of world. Find all that@scalingcoach.com with the downloads, the tools, the free book offer, all that kind of stuff. Thanks to Dean Jones for joining us and gallup.com, gallup organization. Special thanks also to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework and the original Rockefeller Habits. This show is produced by Lucy Summers who spent time getting us our schedules lined and organized our notes for us for the show. As always, the audio was edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions and our show notes are written by Ein Kodina proofread by Tim McGowan so if you got them right, you just call Tim up if he made it. Thanks again for listening. Keep scaling up everyone. We'll talk to you next time.

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