Lead Through Strengths

Lead Through Strengths Facilitator Strother Gaines Shares His Thoughts On How To Not Sound Arrogant When You Offer Out Your Strengths

In this episode, Lisa Cummings and co-host Strother Gaines talk about the different ways you can present or offer your strengths at work and how to not sound arrogant in doing so.

How you can be received or appreciated for your contribution at work depends on how you are able to maintain that delicate balance between wanting to be known for your strengths and not coming off as full of yourself.

Customers come to us every day feeling excited about their StrengthsFinder results, yet simultaneously being afraid of turning everyone off. They want to know how to not sound arrogant or bratty or braggadocios when they try to get known for their top talents.

Here's the transcript of the interview with Lisa and Strother Gaines as they explore the topic:

Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and I'm also back with my co-host Strother Gaines, where we are talking about that situation where you want to build a personal brand or a career brand around your strengths, but then you're worried because you don't want to sound like a jerk and you don't want to sound like you're walking around the office saying —

"I am really good at these things. So assign me these things."

So it gets a little precarious because you want to be known for it, but you have to figure out how to talk about it without turning everyone off around you. Basically, you'll want to practice talking about your awesomeness while also balancing how to not sound arrogant when you bring them up. So I won't keep you waiting any longer.

Here's my conversation with Strother, one of our Lead Through Strengths facilitators, talking about how to navigate this tough situation.

Wanting To Toot Your Own Horn? Learn How To Not Sound Arrogant With It

Lisa: Imagine the tall poppy syndrome that you've heard of, or "the nail that stands up gets hammered down." All of the things that say, "No, you need to be humble. You should keep it to yourself and make sure that you're a very humble person."

But then at the same time, how can you make your differences your differentiators if you're not willing to experiment with them and let them out?

So what does it look like to not be tooting your horn in a way that's obnoxious but you're actually offering them out as a contribution? How do you even begin to figure out what is what?

Strother: So in the South, it's called "getting too big for your britches." It's what we would say. And I got a lot of that actually leaving Kentucky when I left because people are like —

"Well, you're abandoning everyone and you're leaving these things and you need to come back and do the thing that everybody does." For some people, that's actually really rewarding to be a part of that.

Consistency is my last strength in my report, and I don't like to repeatedly do the same thing. But for someone, if that's your strength, live in it. Someone needs to be able to do it.

Tooting your own horn, when it comes from a place of, "This is my contribution. This is what I can give, and this is how I'm going to help the situation," as opposed to, if I frame it in, "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me!" — it does come off like, "You're a jerk!"

Definitely, no one wants to work with that guy.

But when I frame it in, "If you'd like to leverage me appropriately, and you'd like to see me do my best work, putting me in this scenario, giving me an opportunity to do this specific thing, which is something that lots of people don't like to do..."

It's when I think about public speaking. So many people are terrified of it. And I would so much... Excel Sheet versus Public Speaking? Throw me up on the stage!

So it's finding where you have those natural fits and just making it accessible to the people that you collaborate with, giving them the option rather than demanding that they do your thing. If you've been fretting about how to not sound arrogant when you talk about your skills and talents at work, the solution is all about offering them as a contribution rather than framing it as a selfish need to let them out.

Lead Through Strengths Facilitator Strother Gaines - Helping You Figure Out What To Do When You Don't Like Your Strengths

This episode is all about the situation when you don't like your strengths — or you don't think you like someone else's strengths.

It's easy to stereotype one of the CliftonStrengths talent themes, good or bad, when you only take a cursory glance at it. It's also easy for your talent to masquerade as a weakness if you have the volume turned up too high for the situation.

Here's the transcript of the interview with Lisa Cummings and Strother Gaines as they explore the nuances:

Lisa: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings.

I'm always saying it's tough to find something more energizing than using your strengths every day at work. And today, the topic of the podcast episode is about those moments when you're asking yourself ⁠—

"Oh, should I not use my strengths at work?"

"Are these not good ones to have for a given job?"

Or, "I don't know that this talent theme is going to be well appreciated in the work culture that I'm in, so maybe I should just bring it down a little bit because I don't think people at work are going to appreciate it." This will help you figure out whether it should go into hiding when you don't like your strengths.

The format is going to be a little bit different in the following series coming up for the podcast here. I actually have Strother Gaines joining as a co-host, he's one of our facilitators here at Lead Through Strengths.

So many times now people are experiencing facilitators other than me when they do training classes on CliftonStrengths, StrengthsFinder, strengths leadership development, etc. And so I thought, wow, our customers and our podcast listeners need to get to know these amazing facilitators. So, coming up over the next weeks and months, you will be getting to meet many of them.

In the next six episodes, you'll meet Strother, where I'm having a conversation with him.

Having A Case of 'Bad' Talents? Don't Like Your Strengths? We Get You

Lisa: We're talking about that thing today, where you get your list, and you're loving a few of them, but one of them is leading you to think ⁠—

"I don't know about that one... I don't think I would call it a strength... I think I want to get that one back."

"Can I see my #6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Can I choose from some other ones?"

So when I jump into this interview with Strother, you'll see that we are cracking up a little bit because I had just been a klutz in the office and caught my pocket on the table in the office.

And so we're busting a gut a few times in these episodes. I'm going to do an intro for each one, I'll do a closing for each one. And if you hear us jump right into some laughter, well, yes, some shenanigans are probably going on me being a klutz, or us goofing around.

If you want to see some of the shenanigans and silliness - things we were doing where we're playing around in the office - then make sure that you go to YouTube and look at the video version. At the end, I'll include some of the outtakes so that you can see them there.

So let's jump right in to talk about what to do when you don't like your strengths.

Shifting Perspective When You Don't Like Your Talent Themes

Lisa: Let's say you take the CliftonStrengths assessment, and four of the five of them you're like ⁠—

"Oh, yeah, these are so me... I love that, but that one -- well, I mean, it's kind of me, but I don't really like one of my strengths…"

Or, "I don't really think that in this workplace they're gonna love it. I don't want to be seen like that... I don't know if that would be valuable here or even accepted here if I let that one out."

So what's your opinion on that? What do you do with it?

Strother: Well, I totally had that happen in mine. I have Significance in my Top 5, and to me when I read Significance, it came across as like, "Tell me I'm pretty… Tell me I did a good job..."

I need everyone else to tell me, like, "This is a good thing." And one of my greatest fears in my work is that I required external validation. Everyone tells you to find that joy, find all of that inside of you. And then my StrengthsFinder came back and it's like, "No, you actually need people to tell you what's good. And I was like, NO.

But then, after I sat with it for a long time ⁠— you encouraged me to, like, "Stay with it for a little bit..."⁠ — I started to find that it influences so much of the types of projects that I take on, and it helps me actually delineate what I would be good at, what I would be excited about, and what I'm not.

I'm not great at something that I'm not passionate about, and I don't like creating something that doesn't have that feedback loop where I get someone else's opinion or other people are collaborating with it. It's re-visualizing how you conceptualize that strength. Find a way that you can tilt that so that it is still you...

Your 'Bad' Strengths Are Good Enough To Make You Stand Out

We've talked a lot about "basements and balconies." Do you have a strength that's in the basement, and that's where you're viewing it from? What does it look like when it's fully actualized, when you're actually taking control and being intentional about it, instead of letting it run the show underneath all of the things, that when you look at it, you go, "That's the thing I want."

Then it's a lot easier to bring it out, even in a culture that might not support it, because that's your unique offer. This is a tricky situation - training participants will often say that you save a talent for your home life because you don't like your strengths for work purposes.

If it's something that doesn't show up a lot, if you have a rare strength, you're going to stand out. And standing out can be challenging sometimes, but it's also the thing that's going to get you noticed. Most of the time, anytime you want to move forward, first you have to get noticed. So use it, like leverage that weird thing and make it your strength.

From 'Irrelevant' Strengths To Workplace Impact

Lisa: I love how Strother framed this one out for you, as a way to bring your unique offering to the workplace. We always talk about your differences being your differentiators. So, instead of thinking of a strength as something that you need to squash down and say, "Oh, maybe I have a bad strength..." ⁠— which is an oxymoron ⁠— use your strength fully, figure out how to mature it, and get the most out of it.

Now sometimes people feel like they have skills that aren't relevant on the job. This is definitely a case where you might wonder what to do when you don't like your strengths because they don't feel helpful in your current role.

For talents, we're talking about something different. We're talking about how you naturally think, or feel, or act when you are at your natural best, and you wouldn't want to squash those out ⁠— because it would be squashing down the best of you.

With that, thanks for listening to Lead Through Strengths. You've been getting to meet Strother Gaines, one of our facilitators from DC. In the next episode, you will hear us talking about how to not feel arrogant when you're talking to other people about your strengths. We'll see you there.

Want More Ideas For What To Do When You Don't Like Your Strengths?

A while back, Lisa interviewed Ben Fanning on what to do when you think your job isn't a good fit for your talents. Ben was funny and insightful. He gave lots of ways to reconnect with what you like about work, build a personal brand around strengths, and to mold your job in that direction.

Ben wrote a whole book on the topic called The Quit Alternative. The book is excellent, and it hits on a common situation where people think they might need to quit their job to be content again. If you read Ben's book, you'll almost certainly think that the grass isn't greener on the other side — it's greener around the corner of the same company.

Another episode you might like to explore is the one where Lisa answers the question of what to do when you only have 2 of the colors in the CliftonStrengths lineup. This is another situation that makes a typical training attendee say that you don't like your strengths.

We have now reached the ninth and final core concept in our STRENGTHS series, where we've been discussing the importance of engaging in strengths-focused conversations with your team over time. If you've been following this conversation, congratulations on getting this far! And if you've been applying even just some of our tips and taking on our tiny but impactful challenges, then you're well on your way to becoming experts at finding CliftonStrengths blind spots in your team and building on everyone's natural strengths!

Before we dive into the final topic of this series, here's a quick recap of the core concepts that we have already gone through. Notice the magic word that the initials of these topics spell (STRENGTH).

• S.E.T. (Skills. Experiences. Talents)
• Troublemaker talents
• Regulate by Situation
• Easy Buttons
• Not an Excuse
• Gimme That Escalation
• Takes Time and Intention
• Honored and Insulted

And now, in this episode, we explore the breadth of what we call the Starved and Fed Continuum -- turning our magic word into STRENGTHS. It's just one letter added, but it makes all the difference, especially in the context of teams. The more strengths-focused you and your colleagues are, the stronger your team will be.

In any team or group, your differences are your differentiators — and this is the foundation of this core concept. And when you think of your differentiators, these come to life and look like your strengths when you've been feeding, nurturing, and developing them over time.

Feed Your Talent The Same Way You Feed Your Body

What would it be like if you were starved for food as a human? Physically and even mentally, you would feel weak, which would most likely impact how you feel or think. You're not at your best. Being hungry can cause you to be grumpy and to ill-treat others, which can negatively affect how you relate to other people. In short, you wouldn't be able to show up in your full force.

But on to the other end of the continuum, you're well-fed. On this side, you've been nurturing your body right -- not overfed or stuffed to the max that you need to loosen up a button on your pants. Just well-nourished and well-taken care of.

Let's use that as an analogy for your strengths, particularly your CliftonStrengths blind spots. You can ignore your strengths or starve them out because you don't think they would be valuable in your workplace or you didn't know it was one of your strengths. What happens next? They just shrivel up -- it's not going to look like when it's at its best.

On the other hand, if you've been developing yourself by feeding and nurturing your talents, what you look like at your best keeps getting better and better. When you feel well-fed, well-nurtured, you feel strong, and your STRENGTHS strengthen your performance. That's why this all matters in a workplace context.

Jack-In-The-Box: What Happens When Your Natural Strengths Are Squashed Down

You may remember having or seeing a Jack-in-the-box toy as a kid. It's this little box which has a handle on the side that you can twist. As you keep twisting it, Jack surprisingly jumps from inside of the box. That's half the fun of it all when Jack jumps out suddenly and scares you.

It's the same thing with your strengths. If they have been squashed down, like in that box, you don't know when they're going to come out. They can jump out when you least expect it and scare people who may not find it cool, like when you scare them with your unmatured, talent themes. When that happens, collaboration becomes a challenge and it can lower down the equity of your career brand.

Your CliftonStrengths Blind Spots Want Your Attention And Nourishment

Sometimes, we are driven to hide our strengths because we feel they are not suited in the kind of work environment that we have.

Here are real-life examples from a person who leads through Connectedness and another person who leads through Command.

Scenario 1: Letting Connectedness shine in a 'tough' culture

Someone from a previous Stronger Teams session came forward with a concern on the report about her talent theme, Connectedness. While she liked that the report said she's kind, gentle, and that she can see the ripple effect of her action on people, she found that the descriptions sounded "soft and wimpy". For her, being viewed that way might not sit well within the tough work culture she belongs to if ever she will let that part of her out.

She had valid concerns; however, it may not be enough to starve her talent just to fit into a specific work culture. There's so much more dimension to Connectedness that she can explore, one of which is the fact that she was very well networked.

What Can She Do?: It is common among many who lead through Connectedness to see all of the connections among departments and people and the effect of what they're doing. This person can see the ripple effect of each team's work as though she is watching from a higher place. It will not be a surprise if she notices and says things such as:

"If we make this decision here, it might be a challenge to roll it out to this particular department. Given the potential effect on their work, they're going to put up as much resistance as they can during the implementation."

This ability to make these web-like connections is what you can highlight when you lead through Connectedness. As you're able to really relate well with a vast network of people, you're able to establish where there was going to be a challenge in project implementation. This is quite practical.

So, rather than starving out a talent because it doesn't seem to fit the company culture, direct the development at the part of it that would be most valued by other people.

Scenario 2: The newbie is a strong leader inside

Another real-life example is from another person who leads through Command. He expressed his concern on being conflicted, knowing that he's a natural-born leader but at the same time he's young and in an entry-level position.

Some of the things he said:

"I feel like when I'm decisive here, it feels unwarranted, and people look at me weird."

"I feel like I don't need a bunch of the inputs from other people and expected to go get them."

"I'm not really sure how to wrangle this all in or make it valuable here."

This guy therefore felt that he needed to push down his talent until he's gained a certain status in the organization. Also, he didn't seem to want to show that he was too cool for his entry-level job and therefore needed to skip all other positions just to be in a leadership status.

What Can He Do?: There are other dimensions of the Command talent theme that he can explore. A sample case he was presented with was in the event of big changes happening in the organization where: a) he's behind it and b) other people are complaining about the effects of the change. In this scenario, he can easily leverage on his influence to convince others into embracing the more positive impact of the change.

1. Roll out short and powerful demos. He could be part of the peer group and is giving others a demo about how good and important it is on the other side.
2. Summarize to make it clear. He could also often be in the meeting and summarize into fewer words what someone else would take 10 minutes to get out. He, of course, has to do it in a well-honed and kind of not too overbearing manner, lest he embarrass them. Maybe he could say the following:

"Yeah, that makes me think of the team motto which is _______________," or "This could be our headline. As we roll this out, I see this could be kind of our mantra as we get this going".

How Conversations Can Help Feed Or Starve CliftonStrengths Blind Spots

It is a natural tendency for people to see something about their talent theme and think it may not be of value to others that they try to stuff it down. Natural talents refer to how you naturally think or feel or act when you're at your default. The thing about them is that they always come out anyway, no matter how much you suppress them. But when they do after so much squashing down, they come out unrefined, which may not look good on you.

The most important thing, before you ever decide to squash down your talent for whatever reason, is you're able to explore some of these nuances of what your talent themes look like when they're at your very best, versus what they look like on the full end of the continuum where you're not at your best, where everything seems to go wrong and these talents have really been starved out.

This kind of introspection can be effectively facilitated if you have consistent strengths-focused conversations within your team – quite another reason why meaningful conversations really, really matter.

I hope that you liked these nine core concepts that spelled out the word STRENGTHS, and that you pulled at least one thing that was an unconsidered angle, something that gave you a new way to apply strengths with your team that you hadn't before. Get in the habit of recognizing what works in other people because when you notice what works, you'll get more of what works.

Finding Energizing Tasks At Work

We're almost at the end of our STRENGTHS series, where we discuss a total of nine concepts that will help you implement strengths with your team at work. In this episode, we'll explore one of the most interesting topics in this series: Honored and Insulted.

This topic always generates the liveliest conversations. Why? Because people generally have this special keenness over what might honor or insult their talent themes. If you're a manager and you assign energizing tasks at work, imagine what it could do for productivity and employee engagement. Win-win!

Read on to learn how to keep your team motivated using the strengths perspective. If you know what honors their talent themes, then you likely know their personal values. When they work on a team where they can see the fit between the work and their values, they feel more motivated and energized.

Imagine a pyramid-like structure, where strengths are at the top, natural talents come next, and values form the base. Strengths are the talent that you've already developed well, while natural talent is how you think or feel or act in your default situation.

At work, there are situations (or entire cultures) that either insult or honor your talent themes at a human level. We don't meet many teams that talk much about personal values.

The thing is, if your values are insulted, work can feel like soul-sucking drudgery. On the flip side, if your experience at work feels totally aligned with your values, you'll feel pumped. It actually acts like a fuel to keep you motivated and performing at your best. Energizing tasks at work - the concept might seem doable, yet it might seem far from your current situation. Hang in there because it is totally possible, regardless of your role.

How To Keep Your Team Motivated: Know What Might Insult And Honor Their Talent Themes

Within a team, there are lots of small moments that can suck the energy from you. You know them: draining tasks, things you procrastinate, or people who wear you out. Worse, these scenarios could make you want leave your job if you're not actively addressing them. These are sneaky de-motivators.

Let's look at these examples. If you're a people manager, definitely look at these examples. Think about your team members and what energy takers might be foiling their plans to show up as a top performer. This is a super practical way to apply CliftonStrengths at the office. In fact, the energizing tasks at work might spill over into energizing responsibilities at home. The more you find these energy makers, the more you can bring them into your life.

1. Leading Through CliftonStrengths Responsibility. Imagine that you lead through Responsibility, and you're working on a team where people are constantly showing up for meetings 5 or 10 minutes late. Because it's part of your DNA that you do what you say you're going to do, these people who disrespect other people's time annoy you big-time. In general, no one likes it when someone misses a commitment, but it's a different (deeper) level of insult to someone's talent of Responsibility.

While you learn to get over it after a while, and rationalize that it's just how the working world seems to be, you also might tag these moments as your "red line" or "red-faced" moments. They lead you to wonder why people can be downright flippant about it. That's an example of an energy taker for those who lead through Responsibility. These are the de-energizing tasks at work, or in this case, the de-energizing moments and interactions that can drain you and make work feel like the hardest of hard work.

2. Leading Through CliftonStrengths Analytical. Imagine leading through this strength and someone regularly pulls random anecdotes out of the air. You would, of course, wonder if this person ever fact-checks or uses reasoning skills. "Do they ever vet their comments to see if they're actually true?"

When you keep encountering moments like this, it can get to your nerves. When people seem to be making decisions that feel highly emotional, this would be insulting your talent theme of Analytical. When teams work on problems that come from things like, "this doesn't feel right" you will expect them to validate that gut feeling before investing gobs of money or time on something that might not be a an actual problem. Maybe it's just that one vocal customer's opinion - not an experience shared by others.

Imagine how helpful it would be to know that your talent theme of Analytical is getting insulted. You can say, "Aha - no wonder this meeting is always so frustrating for me. Maybe I can spin that around by offering to vet or validate the gut feelings that come up so often."

3. Leading Through CliftonStrengths Includer. Imagine you're leading through this talent theme. You're really good at identifying who among the team a) has given a voice, b) has not said anything, and c) might want to comment but hasn't been given the chance.

But when people talk over each other and ignore what one or two other people have to say, it would be an insult to your talent theme. This could feel quite rude to you even if you're not the person that's not being included. Consequently, you develop this dislike and distrust of the people who are excluding those others and their ideas.

These are just some of those "red line" or "red-faced" moments that might happen when your talent (or values) are insulted. These may be small but they can add up over time and lead to feelings of disillusion, until you think, "Ah, I'm not valued here.", or "This culture sucks. I don't want to be a part of this team."

These are the kinds of conversations that can put you in a dilemma of whether to deal with it or leave, as far as your talent theme is concerned.

That's exactly why it's so important to honor your talents, and also learn to honor the talents of teammates. When their strengths and values are honored, they can show up at their best. They can contribute something the team needs, and it may not be easy for others to do that thing. If you're a people manager, you can assign them as their most energizing tasks at work. They literally act like a fuel.

Your Team Challenge: Acknowledge Each Other's Talents

This is where strengths-focused conversations, done consistently, become very useful. It's a practical way to apply StrengthsFinder. Over time you build the trust that allows you to share with the team what honors your themes and what can make the workplace feel ideal or "the best." Your team members will be able to avoid the difficult dilemma that can make them decide to leave their job. When values and strengths are in alignment, the team feels motivated and valued.

Even if this isn't part of your team culture today. You can be the person who helps the team begin to notice (and say aloud) what already works well. These small acknowledgements help every person understand what puts their teammates at their best. With some conscious effort, you can slowly shape your job description toward these energizing tasks at work.

Go Beyond 'Give And Take' When You Apply StrengthsFinder

Lisa, our founder, once shared that her troublemaker talent is Maximizer. At the same time, she also works closely with someone in her team who leads through Activator. So, while being a Maximizer, Lisa would pore over her work and polish things to make them better. Those are energizing tasks at work for her - making things better and better and better.

On one side, the Activator talent would wait on her and prod her to "just move on with it" or "just ship" the product. Lisa understood where the input was coming from. In some cases, where the quality output was high-stakes, she acknowledged the person by saying, "This is going to kill your Activator, but I need one more day on this." In other cases, when good (and done) was better than great, she'd do the hand off. It all depends on the business outcome that the team agrees upon. This is where you can apply CliftonStrengths to get the best business results.

Of course, there are times when give and take is the reality. Although it feels good to live in your personal strengths panacea, you can't let your personal preferences trump the business priorities. You should constantly be looking for ways to get better results by using your strengths.

At the same time, be careful to not let them be an excuse. It would be unhealthy to be so obsessed with finding energizing tasks at work that you refused to do things that drain you. If you did that, you'd appera selfish and not results-oriented. Strengths get more powerful when you think beyond yourself. It makes total sense. Strengths work in relation to other people and other contributions being given on the team.

Practicing "give and take" comes handy within your team because when you become familiar with each other's talent themes, you have a short code language to use. But you can also extend it to your stakeholders, your customers, and your colleagues outside of the team. You may not know what their talent themes are, given your much shorter engagements, but imagine how much stronger your working relationships would be if you start getting a feel for what honors them or what insults them.

Internally on our team, we find a regular flow of #goinput or #thatwasmyrelatortalking type of hashtags to keep it lighthearted and acknowledge the good sides and the dark sides that can come out from a talent.

3 Reasons To Apply CliftonStrengths Conversations Regularly and Informally

This whole concept of exploring what honors or insults talent themes is important for 3 key reasons:

1. To get a well-rounded team. In any given team, there's a clash of perspectives that are not discovered until they are actually talked about. Suppose you brought your whole team of 10 direct reports together to apply StrengthsFinder in a virtual strengths discovery training.

Imagine watching their conversation in the chat box about the things that honor or insult their talent themes.

You'd probably realize that some of the things that drive them crazy, you yourself are doing sometimes. Is it an "Oops, I'm frustrating you and I'll stop" moment? Is it an "Uumph, that really drains you, yet it's a reality of our team's responsibility" moment where you try to mitigate the pain or impact? Regardless of the type of insight, the important part is that you're talking through them so you can address the situation with mutual respect.

You have opposing views of things because, for example, what you would view as common sense may not come as common to how others think. What would come easy for you may not come as easily for others.

It's also the reason why some people don't bother letting their strengths out because they don't think those contributions are a big deal. If you can find those hidden gems and let them out, the whole team is better. With that strategy, you get a well-rounded team and you can stop obsessing over being a well-rounded person who is good at every possible thing under the sun.

2. To get your job matched to strengths. Conversations like these also allow you to discover what aspects of one's job could lead to that person disengaging from that job.

If you apply StrengthsFinder to uncover what honors a person's talents, you'll uncover their easy buttons for performance. You'll find that a job matched to strengths feels easier to perform. A job matched up to talents also brings energy to the person doing it. In fact, if you're using your natural talents, the work can even feel easy. At a minimum, it's easier to get into flow.

Contrasting that, if your job is not matched to strengths, it will likely feel draining. You can usually do the work. You can get the results, yet it will feel effortful. You may procrastinate or feel drained and you can't figure out why. If you've been feeling that way, ask yourself if you've been working out of your weakness zone, or out of your non-talents. Often, it's an unexpected cause of burnout. As our colleague TyAnn often says, when your job is matched to your weaknesses rather than strengths, it can give you "a case of the Sunday nights."

3. To get more energizing tasks and get fewer draining tasks at work. Conversations like these become an opportunity to turn a "Man, this culture is awful" experience into a "So, if this is what other people value, which runs against my values, then here's how I'm going to cope." So, think of what strategies you can come up with to convert a workplace experience into a positive and enriching one.

You can't always pick your responsibilities on the job. Of course, you want a job matched to your strengths. And you want energizing tasks at work, but sometimes the role is the role. Even if you can't to a lot to shape the job description, you can adjust the way you approach the work. At a minimum, you can adjust the meaning you make out of it. This might sound like a Jedi Mind Trick (and maybe it is), yet it's effective at bringing your energy and motivation back.

Key Things If You're A People Manager Applying CliftonStrengths

Here are key pointers to note before conducting a conversation with your team on what might honor or insult their talent themes.

• Make sure the conversations are well-facilitated as you apply CliftonStrengths. Sometimes, these team chats can result in a venting session about all of the "other annoying departments" or issues at your company. We're not saying you should squash or hide issues, yet it does take some skill to keep the conversations aimed at specific performance - and the things you can actually control or influence. Aim it right and lead the team to productive conversations.

  One useful tip is to ask them to list 3 energizing tasks at work and 3 draining tasks at work. We call it the "yucks and yays" list. That makes things specific, and it helps you cover both the Honored and Insulted. In this case, because you're trying to uncover their deeper values and reactions, focus the yucks and yays on situations rather than job duties. For example, someone might feel honored (or insulted) by the situation of an urgent interruption. But if they said "customer calls" you wouldn't understand why it's a yuck or a yay.

• Be specific as you work toward the goal of getting their job matched to strengths. Get to the in-depth scenarios and situations that happen in an average work day. Apply StrengthsFinder using some of the tools and language behind them, as modeled by our examples involving the Responsibility, Analytical, and Includer talent themes. For example, the difference between, "I hate all of the emotion in our ops meeting" and "I'd love to help us pinpoint the depth of the problem we identified in the ops meeting" is night and day. The first one is venting. The second one is getting the job matched to strengths. It's action-taking for Analytical. It's volunteering and contributing the talent to a team who needs it. It's practical application of CliftonStrengths at work.

Ready For The Final Concept?

Now that you're loaded with energizing tasks at work, let's get to the next topic. Up next is the last in this series of nine core concepts: the Starved And Fed Continuum. See you there!

Our seventh core concept in this STRENGTHS series, "Takes Time and Intention," may sound like a lame title compared with our previous topics ("Troublemaker Talents," "Easy Buttons," "Gimme That Escalation," etc.), but as we go along you'll find that there's a lot more nuance to it than that. You'll get a deeper sense of why strengths take time, and hence calls for intention along with consistency.

As in any process or situation, patience is a virtue. Something good always awaits, so stay with us!

Let's break this core concept down to its two components.

1. Strengths Take Time

Between the two components, time is generally the easier one to commit to. It may mean a little bit of being patient, but the concept is more about asking:

"Now what?"

"How do we keep this going?"

After all the strengths blitz you go through with your team -- for example, going through the motion of reading "StrengthsFinder 2.0," or preparing a budget for a team offsite and then getting together for some retreat or teambuilding activities -- ultimately, what do you do with all of that? How do you connect them to your natural strengths once you're back to the grind?

While team activities like these open to a number of realizations, the questions remain: what's next? How do we go about what we've learned?

It all boils down to having the patience to take consistent effort towards building a strengths-based culture or thinking on the team. This includes breaking old thinking patterns in order to adopt new and better ones. For example, if many in your team are oriented lopsidedly towards weaknesses, it will take consistent effort in order to correct that.

The best thing we can recommend is to have meaningful conversations with your team over time. And to achieve meaningful conversations, that takes a lot of trust between a manager and the team members.

Patience As A Way Of Thinking

Here at Lead Through Strengths, the way we help patience come into effect is by making it a way of thinking rather than just generic words of encouragement. Instead of telling teams to "just keep waiting, it will happen," we prefer for them to think of strengths as the way they can get any results more easily.

To illustrate this concept further, if you're using your natural talents and you've been developing them into strengths, you should be able to apply them to the work you're already doing. It shouldn't feel like strengths is so much of an initiative or an event or an extra thing on your plate that's already full, but rather something like —

"I'm gonna lend my strengths to the work I already have to do."

When you are constantly busy and overworked, you would not want to view strengths as an extra task to have to manage. You would have less resistance when you are able to successfully lend your strengths to the work that's currently on your plate.

When you see this from your own perspective, it opens things up and paves way for patience that will allow these meaningful conversations to happen over time. It is over time that you discover more about your team. Ultimately, when your understanding about each other deepens, trust is built and you collaborate better. That's how you can honor their talents so that they can be effectively applied at work.

Remember: Think of patience more like how you do the work you're already doing to easily achieve results versus seeing it as another item on your plate. That helps make patience more effective.

2. Strengths Demand Intention

If time is the easier component in this concept, intention is the bigger one. As human beings, we have a number of cognitive biases, including negative cognitive biases. Let's skip Google search and the psychology language by looking at this term this way -- if we are naturally oriented to spot what's negative, that is usually because we are trying to figure out what's gonna hurt us.

"What weakness do I need to shore up with?"

"What do I need to improve at so that I don't get fired for it?"

"Where do I need to shut up in a meeting because otherwise, a) it might endanger my job, and b) I might disappoint my teammates who might think I'm not being a good collaborator."

These are just some of the reasons we are drawn towards this negative cognitive bias. The problem arises when we become too focused on it to the point of overdone or overblown. That's where the idea of leading through strengths becomes powerful, because it gives you a totally different result when you're working within your strengths zone.

What Happens When We Lead Through Strengths Instead?

When we think of strengths as a tool that we could use, like the "Easy Buttons" we talked about in Concept #4, that can unlock some real performance gains that people are missing out on.

Have you ever tried to pull a nail out with the back of the hammer and you don't have the lever in the right place because you can't get it up in there all the way? Because you're not pulling against the strong lever, you exert more effort to get the nail out so it bends it all sideways and messes up the material you're pulling it out of. That's what it's like when you're working in your weakness zone.

But when you're working in your strengths zone, you get the full leverage and you exert less effort to get better results. You get that kind of satisfying feeling when it happens.

Time And Intention As A Factor In Realizing Strengths

Setting time and intention means that you stay consistent as you go through the process of fully realizing your strengths, from spotting talent to developing it.

• Spot the potential talent when it's happening. You have to spot it when it's happening. If you're an individual who is trying to spot your own talents, you may want to focus on your unique abilities, or those things that are easy for you to do but not for other people.

• Experiment with the talent. This is the stage where you test the potential talent. Here, you must be able to realize that it can work well for you when you try it out and work on your potential. You have to give it credence and check what impact it can create for others. For example, see and check for yourself that the thing you thought was easy and that no one would care about, actually seemed to help the team out.

"Oh look, people actually care about that."

"That actually helped the team out."

"Now that actually helped me get good results that people like."

• Apply the talent. Look for places and opportunities where you could offer your talents and be seen as a valued contribution.
• Develop the talent. When developing your talent, have the mindset that if you can achieve much with less effort, imagine how much more you can get if you will try harder. Then you would be inspired to double down on it and develop further so you can offer an even bigger contribution.

This whole process of seeing the talent, experimenting with it, applying it, and then developing it further may sound like an easy cycle to do, but it takes time, intention and thought. You'll find that it's not that easy to do when you don't set aside time from your busy schedule, or if you're not stopping to give it some thought. It takes all that in order to succeed in this personal exercise for growth. As a personal exercise

Your Team Challenge: Create A Strengths-Based Subculture

At the introduction of this series, we mentioned a 3-coin challenge that can help get you in the habit of noticing what works in each of your team members so that you get more of what works.

The beauty about doing that as a team, especially if you do it consistently with time and intention and it works well, is that you get to start a culture in your company. That would be the culture where,

• You are oriented to each other in a way that favors strengths, you call it out and notice it in each other
• You are mindful enough to recognize what the person is trying to contribute so that when they do and you see it, you're like,

"Oh, yeah, that really was effective, but I wouldn't have noticed it otherwise because I would have been too busy in my computer and did not care to look up."

A tiny subculture of 10 people (or whatever size of direct reports you have) is powerful enough to start the snowball effect of what the whole team is doing. It is even more powerful than the company culture overall, as the different departments, founders and variations that come at play can get pretty complex. But if you are a team where you all work closely and learn about each other day in and day out, that is going to be a force in the company.

So, Now What?

The concept of taking time and intention is a very important that we're giving it its own term and airtime. It allows patience or some breathing room for the strengths to fully develop instead of cramming them all in at once.

Have meaningful conversations with your team over time, and you'll find that it is much more effective and less expensive than constantly going on offsites.

Ready For The Next Concept?

Up next, we're going to talk about a concept that you surely wouldn't want to miss: "Honored and Insulted." Stay tuned!

Our sixth core concept is a perfect build-on to the "Plus One, Minus One" activity mentioned in our previous episode, Concept #5: "Not an Excuse."

Plus one, in particular, is about mining your team of the things they want to have more of. Then, as you dig deeper into this challenge, it's amazing what you'll discover from each of the team member's responses.

The Story Behind 'Gimme That Escalation'

In one of the recent training sessions, a guy came forward and expressed what he has written on his wish list.

"I would love to have more escalation calls."

This statement set off these confused looks and reactions among others in the room.

"Did he just say that right? 'I want more escalation calls?"

"What is he talking about?"

These people were shocked that the guy was wanting more escalation calls. So of course, they had to ask him for further explanation.

According to the guy, he's the "deepest subject-matter expert in the whole organization on this matter. He's quite confident that he can very well handle when a customer turns utterly irate.

"I know that they can be so frustrated and can give up any time, but I know I'm gonna resolve it. If anyone can, it's me."

His awareness and certainty that he has the resolution and knowledge to turn things around fires up his love for doing escalations. And for that, we have named this concept in his honor.

Open Up To Meaningful Conversations

The guy's gimme that escalation statement opened up a whole conversation with others in the room. If you guessed that his teammates instantly offered him their own escalation calls, that's not far-fetched at all. But expecting him to accept all escalations may not be realistic since of course, he actually has to get some other stuff done.

While the guy got more escalations after such conversation, he also freed up his plate with tasks that were on his "minus one" list. Obviously, he was able to achieve the "plus one, minus one" balance, thanks to some good thinking and meaningful conversation.

Opening up about what you want more of — though oftentimes surprising many in the room — can create a shift in the tasks. This proves that indeed one person's trash is another person's treasure.

Expanding The Concept

How can we expand this concept further so it's easier to apply? Consider the following as fun exercises for you as an individual or as a manager.

1. As an individual: Discover other people's "trash" tasks

• Gather information. Consider walking around the office and listen for what people are kvetching, complaining or procrastinating about. This is not to suggest that you join in the watercooler talk or random office conversations. Your goal is to capture as much information as you can for this little internal research project.
• Look out for "magic" moments. Most likely as you listen, you'll find some "aha" moments. You discover that certain things people complain about are not bad at all. They could be stuff you actually like doing. You'll find that what others consider as an area of weakness or difficulty might be an area of expertise for you. As you look out for these moments, compare and take notes.

2. As a manager: Discover your team's "loathe" list and shift tasks when possible

Imagine if you knew what each of your team members' trash tasks were, especially their top list. Just knowing this could be really important because you are able to spot whether the "loathe" list includes tasks they have to do every day. You get an insight into the team's demotivation points.

In reality, it might not be that outright and easy to shift things around, as tasks that people hate still need to get accomplished. But in a lot of workplaces, the assignments are not homogenous, so you might have some power to be able to switch things around. Perhaps you could take something off the plate of a top performer in your team who may be losing interest in their job as they have to do what they loathe on a daily basis.

Time And Trust Are Key

Opening up a conversation with your team members about the tasks they hate require a lot of trust. That's why you can't do strengths just as a one-time offsite team building and expect it to create all the magic things in the world. It takes meaningful conversation over time, up to that point they are comfortable enough to say, "Sure, I'm gonna give it my number one best, but I actually hate this job duty."

The 'Gimme That ________' Exercise

On the flip side, this exercise can prove powerful for the whole team, as it opens some cool opportunities. When assigning projects to your team members, consider these:

• Their strengths. For each team member, find and assign to them that thing that lives in their strengths zone, especially if it's not in the strengths zone of everyone else. What is it that they love and makes them come alive?
• Their expertise. Think about the projects that tend to get assigned at work. Those who are good at certain skills or knowledge areas related to those projects can be the go-to persons.
• Their development plan. If you're the type of manager who puts considerable thought on what a person wishes to develop, as expressed in their individual development plan, be on the lookout for a relevant opportunity or project for them.

Sometimes, however, it can be pretty difficult when you're finding an opportunity for them based on expertise and career goals. Let's say a team member wants a very specific project, and you happen to have just one project like that and it's already assigned to another person. This leaves you with very little choice as a leader.

As a team leader, what do you do?

Gimme That Challenge

Here's your challenge: get cool with limiting or difficult situations like that and then approach the conversation in terms of talent themes.

As we know, talent themes are about how they get things done. You can just imagine what strengths and talent themes can come up. So, here's what you can do.

1. Ask each person to think about their talent themes.
2. Let them come to you with 3 examples of projects that call on how they think/feel/operate in the world.

Check out these "gimme that ________" scenarios:

1) Gimme that situation. (Includer talent):

"Okay, next time you're assigning projects and it's important for you to find someone who will thoroughly listen to all of the requirements of each stakeholder, really cares what each person has to say, and want every voice of every department to be represented -- call on me."

2) Gimme that dilemma. (Deliberative talent):

"Hey, next time you're assigning a project and you need someone to look at the downstream risks of a decision, or someone who can think seven or eight steps ahead about all the things that could go wrong so that we don't step in the potholes -- I'd love it if you consider me."

3) Gimme that complex problem. (Restorative talent):

"Next time you're assigning projects and you have one that just seems like a big, hairy problem, I hope you'd think of me. I love to roll up my sleeves and just really get into all of the ways to solve a complicated problem."

With this approach, what they provide could allow you more space and flexibility in assigning projects.

You'll find that there are actually a lot more opportunities for each individual than if their "gimme that _____" was too specific and narrow.

This becomes awesome to you as a manager, especially that some people in your team don't want to deal with such kinds of problems.

Key Takeaway

It's important that you get your team to communicate their wish list of work and projects that align with their strengths. This will help you look for opportunities and assignments where they can apply those easy buttons every day on the job and give their best.

Ready For The Next Concept?

Up next: "T" for "takes time and intention." Stay tuned!

If you've been following this series, you'll know we've been spelling the word STRENGTHS with nine core competencies that pop out as the most elusive, interesting, or unconsidered when implementing strengths at work. So far, we've had:

1. S.E.T. (Skills, Experience, and Talents) 2. Troublemaker Talents 3. Regulate by Situation 4. Easy Buttons

Now we are midway through as we explore our fifth core concept: "Not an Excuse."

Avoiding Responsibilities?

Once in a while, people want to use their strengths like an excuse. Here are a few examples:

"I'm an Activator and I don't like to wait. I only work on things where I don't have to wait."

"I lead through a bunch of Executing talent themes and I like to get things done. And now you're asking me to do some deep thinking and research, and that sounds boring to me. So I don't want to do it."

"That just doesn't sound like fun to me. I lead through Positivity and I can't do anything that is just way too serious for too long."

But in the world of work, this is not how we can operate. We have to do certain responsibilities that we don't like.

When those kinds of thoughts come up, make sure you're assessing that you can't use those as a reason to have bad performance or low accountability—just because of something you don't like doing.

Understanding The Strengths Spectrum

As it seems, there are two ends of the spectrum that people end up raising around this concept of excuse:

1. Team members making up their own excuses in their minds
2. Team leaders having some resistance in implementing strengths. They think they're giving people the wrong idea, that they're just going to turn lazy.

When it all comes down to it, revenue still has to keep coming in. As a team you still have to get results, or else none of you will have a job.

Remember: if you're really living out strengths as tools, you believe in high accountability and in getting results.

We all know that it's better to get more time in our strengths zone and fewer minutes in our weakness zone over time. It's always a great idea to shape your job toward that, but it's not instant. It would be foolish to believe that you're going to live 100% of every moment in your strengths zone, and that all weakness moments will now be gone forever.

Your Team Challenge: Plus One, Minus One

Here's a great exercise to do if you're leading a team. (You can also do this as an exercise for yourself.)

+1

Ask every member of your team to think of one thing that they would want to get -- either something they don't have or something they want to get more of.

A few guide questions:

• What would you like to add to your work?
  • Is there something that you already do but you want to get more of it because you just love it?

• Is there a kind of work you'd like to experiment with?

• What do you wish I would assign to you?
  • Is there a project that somebody else has been assigned over the years and you've never been the go-to for this kind of work?
  • Is there something that you think is really in your strengths zone but which you've never been able to do or get a lot of?

• What would you love to add in your ideal world?

-1

Ask them to think of what they would want to subtract. It could be:

• Something they don't like
• Something that drains them
• Something they procrastinate with
• Something they wish they could get rid of

Share-out

Once all members are ready with their answers, you can do a round-robin as a team where you go around the room and every person shares one thing they want to add more of and one thing they would like to get less of.

Sometimes, however, the answers aren't as useful. For example, eight out of ten people might say, "I would like fewer emails." As a manager, you want to get way more information than that. Prior to a round-robin, another approach could help.

Brainstorm First

Give the members of the team two to five minutes to write as many things as they can and as specific as possible under the + side and the - side of their list:

Tips:

• Encourage them to keep their pens moving. If they forget about what they could be adding to the list for their current work, they can start going into the personal zone and write things about their hobbies, for example, just to keep their pen moving. This keeps their mind focused on the stuff that they love.

• Give them some extra prompts. Put prompts on a whiteboard or a flip chart. Examples:
  • + category prompts
    • At the beginning of a project, what do you love working on?
    • When you're working with customers, what would you put in the + category?
    • When you're doing hobbies on the weekend, what would be a + for you?
  • - category prompts
    • What are all of the things you wish you could have less of
    • Things you wish to get rid of entirely
    • Things that drive you crazy
    • Things that you procrastinate on

As this is a brainstorming activity, emphasize to them that the objective is just to get as many things written down as possible.

Too Many Common Answers?

Whenever this happens, as it typically does, immediately acknowledge it. For example, if a lot of the team members say "too many meetings" --

• Encourage them to pick the one that's top for each of them.
• Or: Ask them to give one more that's specific.

That way, they won't feel like they're getting dismissed, but at the same time you're getting some more unique and useful information.

Still, if you hear the same answer many times, then take it as an opportunity to address it like it's a team scenario.

Then you can do the share-out in a much more insightful way. As the leader, you may throw these questions:

What would be useful for other people to know about you? Maybe you have something that others in the room could call on you for?

This would be useful information to your team members. They (or you) would be able to recommend situations where each other's pluses could be called on for. Opportunities to swap tasks or to be honoring each other's talents would surface. Ultimately, they would be tapping one another for something they want to be leaned on for.

Follow-Through On Your Team

As the leader, set a follow-up 1:1. As soon as your share-out is done, tell your members you'd like to keep their lists so you can dig into them. Doing this will also guide and prompt you to begin assigning them projects that align with their strengths as much as possible.

Remember: not an excuse to shirk performance is not an excuse to get rid of accountabilities. It is an opportunity to start talking about the things that either feel like drudgery or really life-giving. If you can know these things about each of your team members, imagine how powerful that would be! As you help them align with their internal motivation, your team will also grow and do more wonders.

A lot of high performers are rarely whiners regardless of what's assigned to them--even if it's draining for them. The "plus one, minus one" practice can give them a vehicle for talking about what tends to be less fulfilling for them and what really lights them up.

Excitement and energy for the job are the internal drives that you want on your team. Those can be had over time if you've been having these meaningful conversations where you learn more about them and align with their natural values.

The more you do things with your team using the lens of strengths, the better their collaborative strengths will work toward your business results.

Ready For The Next Concept?

Up next: "G" for "gimme that escalation." Don't miss it!

We notice it all the time: when we point out to people their natural talents through meaningful conversations, their success comes more easily. In this episode, we refer to this phenomenon as "easy buttons" — our fourth core concept in this series.

Here at Lead Through Strengths, we love seeing people's potentials. It's always an amazing experience to help others realize something special about them and saying it aloud to them. This is because people often find it difficult to notice their very own potential. And so the more we hear responses like "Really? That's a special thing?" or "Oh, I'm good at that?" — the more we find fulfillment that we are into strengths development.

Embrace What Feels Easy

A lot of people still hold this default assumption that if something feels easy to them, it's probably easy for anyone else. They think it's nothing special. They dismiss it as they wouldn't want to offer a bunch of work that's ordinary or easy. In effect, they are actually depriving their team of their gifts or potentials.

"Why bother? Anybody could have done it anyway."

If you're a manager, you have to mine for these potentials and spot them. Make your particular team members aware that what they've got is something special until they themselves acknowledge it.

Once they are convinced that what may be easy for them may actually be a challenge for others, they'll cease to think that their talent is "unspecial." They will be more inspired to do more of that.

The more you consistently notice your team members' strengths, the more they will develop the eagerness to cultivate them. Eventually, they will let their easy buttons get pushed. Those little but meaningful conversations mean that much.

Pushing The Button

The CliftonStrengths talent themes show how you naturally think or feel or act at your default. Your reports provide you some words that may serve as clues to make it a little easier to spot your easy buttons for success. Again, while this is a very simple concept, it's strangely way overlooked in the office.

How exactly do easy buttons work?

What comes easily and enjoyable to you puts you in the strengths zone. And if you're in your strengths zone, your performance gets strengthened even more.

When we talk about implementing strengths, we normally ask people what comes easily to them. What do they find most enjoyable? They would list them down for sure, but as previously mentioned, they also tend to think that they're easy, that there's nothing special about that. "Anybody could do that," as they would add.

Nevertheless, as we listen to the conversations, we find that the things that are easy and enjoyable to a person tend to be in their strengths zone. But given their default assumptions, they tend to go for what's challenging or difficult. In their effort to be top performers, they labor through their weaknesses rather than shine in their strengths.

But then again — as your strengths strengthen your performance, your weaknesses weaken your performance.

Easy Buttons When Turned OFF

Most of the time, working on stuff that's really hard for you is like banging your head against the wall. You keep working hard and fighting the struggle that comes with dealing with things that are:

• not enjoyable
• doesn't come naturally
• not intuitive

In other words, these are not the things you typically excel at.

Easy Buttons When Turned ON

In order to stand out without draining yourself, you need to be aware of this lever of strengths which when pulled leads to:

• better performance
• people acknowledging you like you're a top performer
• getting your desired outcomes at work

That is equivalent to simply pressing those easy buttons.

Your CliftonStrengths talent themes also represent how you get things done, not what you're choosing to do. So regardless of the job you're in, your easy buttons will tell you how you can approach any outcome to get better results.

Easy Buttons in Teams

Easy buttons vary among people. In sales teams, for example, a benchmark personality type is usually set for the ideal salesperson. Desired types may include:

• A challenger – one who challenges the current beliefs that are embedded in the organization today
• Presentation-savvy – someone who is the best at presenting case studies

The truth is, all these will depend on the easy buttons for each person.

Maybe there's Person 1 for whom it's natural to challenge current thinking, so that's what he is inclined to do. But the person who's best at it is the one who's developed that in a way to make it a palatable conversation for another person.

Maybe there's Person 2 who's really great at collecting data, case studies, and analytics. In a sales engineer capacity, he can brilliantly present data that support how the product has worked for other similar companies. This can lead a client to make a buying decision.

Maybe there's Person 3 who's highly effective at building relationships with people by breaking the ice and making them laugh and have a good time. He may say, "I'm a relational person, therefore that helps me sell because once the relationship is built, then we gain mutual trust that works out for us."

These are very different easy buttons and you could take any of those three people and they could all learn the other model. They could memorize sales tactics, scripts, and whatnots.

But for them to achieve their best performance, as a manager you have to help them figure out their easy buttons. By pushing these buttons, you help them towards great outcomes.

Hearing Excuses?

As you explore this fun concept with your team, you still might feel some resistance or hear excuses like:

"Nope, I'm not doing it your way because that's in my weakness."

"Nope, not in my strengths zone."

When you face this scenario, hang in there because that will be tackled in one of the upcoming core competencies.

Key Takeaways

1. What you need to accomplish at work is dictated by the job description, but how you do that will largely benefit from talent themes tools. Think of them like easy buttons to help you deliver your responsibility with much better results.
2. Keep a list of your talent themes somewhere readily visible or accessible. Some ideas include:
   • A frame of your Top 5 talent themes on your desk
   • As magnets
   • As your phone's lock screen display
3. Examples of moments when the "easy buttons" concept comes in handy:
   • When you're feeling a little bit stuck and you need something to help you maneuver the situation
   • When your default reaction hasn't been working for you and you're looking for a new way out

Your natural strengths are easy for you for a reason. Why choose another way?

Ready For The Next Concept?

Up next: "N" for "not an excuse." See you in the next episode!

If you want others to experience the best of your StrengthsFinder talent themes, you'll love our third core concept -- regulate by situation.

A Simple Concept?

Imagine you're in front of a mixing board wherein you're looking at your Top 5 or Top 10 from your CliftonStrengths reports. Each of your talent themes is assigned a fader so that each of them could have its own volume.

To regulate by situation is to adjust your talent theme's "volume" based on the following:

• the person you're interacting with
• the project and what it calls for

It's much like setting the quantities of your musical instrument or tool based on the song you wrote or the genre you're in.

From Simple To Complex

While that seems like a fairly simple concept, it gets a bit more interesting when we apply it to a team context.

Having to fiddle five to ten faders in order to manage your own talent themes can already be overwhelming. Imagine how much tougher that would be when aside from watching over your own set of five or ten, you will now have to consider that every person you interact with -- whether within or outside of the team -- could receive the varying quantities of your strengths in different ways! For example, in certain projects, they may call for a little bit more or a little bit less of that given strength.

If you think about working on this for the rest of your life, it can get really complicated!

The Experiment Mindset

The most effective way to not get overwhelmed with regulating your strengths is to think about it as just an ongoing experiment. In particular:

• Assess how much every situation calls for.
• Get a feel for what is received well by other people in your collaborations.

Scenario 1: Communication as a troublemaker talent

In one StrengthsFinder event, a client had five cards representing her Top 5 CliftonStrengths talent themes spread on her desk. Out of the five, there was one card that was pushed off to the side. It read: "Communication."

Apparently, she could not view Communication as her talent or strength. She had just gone through a series of performance reviews with her manager who elaborated to her what she described as bad feedback on her communication, including:

• "I talk too much in meetings."
• "I'm just too much to handle."

She resisted when we offered the notion that Communication could be her greatest asset. But coming into the event might as well be her opportunity to apply the core concepts of both troublemaker talents (core concept #2) and regulate by situation (core concept #3), as follows:

Core Concept #2 (Troublemaker Talents) - She needs to recognize that her love for words -- how she values them as important -- are strong points to her communication theme. The reason Communication was coming out as a troublemaker talent for her was that she was talking to think instead of thinking before talking.

Core Concept #3 (Regulate By Situation) - By turning her Communication volume high up all the time and not checking how it is being received by others, she's clearly not regulating it. She has to start adjusting it accordingly.

In the end, it's how she operates that can transform her troublemaker talent into a great asset.

Scenario 2: Volume wars

In a band, the drummer plays a loud instrument, which tends to make the guitar player, the keys player, and other members to start turning up so they can hear their part and not miss a note. This kicks off what is called volume wars.

When this results in a big wall of sound, not every person in the audience will receive it well. Loud is not for everyone.

The same thing happens at work if we think of our talent themes as a collection of variations, nuances, and colors and can be received differently by people. But many of us haven't recognized those variations and the value of regulating that we turn our talents all the way up to all situations.

Tip: Get a feel of each situation to determine whether you should turn up your strength or pull back a little bit.

Let's Regulate By Situation

Using the strengths volume dial in a team context, how can you regulate all your talent themes?

As you play with your own Top 5 or 10 knobs, you also face an almost infinite number of rattling and twisting as you try to find the right mix based on all of the people on your team. That's how complex and layered it is. But that's why we have our third core concept to remind us that it's all just a matter of adjusting according to the situation!

• Regulate based on the person you interact with

If, for example, you lead through Individualization, you're most likely interested in every person and what makes them unique. You'd like to learn everything you can about them so that you can customize your communication in a way that is palatable to them.

If you don't mind to regulate in your first meeting and turn your talent theme volume right up to a 10, it might catch others off-guard and they might perceive your probing questions as intrusive.

• Regulate based on the project or company

Similarly, if you get into a company that's focused on standard operating procedures in a highly regulated environment, trying to customize everything might not be well-received. It's not going to fly. You will have to take that tendency down a notch.

Bottom line: Think of regulating by situation as a general concept. Then, start playing with it like experiments.

Your Team Challenge: Reflect On Your Dials

To make this core concept an even more conscious practice yet still a fun experiment to do for your team, encourage these guide questions:

• "How were my strengths? Were they dialed in?"
• "Were they all operating in the right place?"
• "Were there any that I should have pulled back a little bit?"
• "Were there some I could have pulled up more to add more to the results in that situation?"

Taking the time to "play it by ear" with your team will make all the difference and will bring out your unique harmony.

Ready For The Next Concept?

Up next: "E" for easy buttons. See you in the next episode!

From the S.E.T and "Aspirational You" concepts in the previous episode, we now move towards a seemingly favorite topic for discussion: troublemaker talents!

When talking about strengths, curiosity about the other side -- the so-called "shadow side" or "blind spots" -- tends to surface. And that's exactly why our next core concept is worth discussing.

Troublemaker talents are natural talents that have the potential to make you great yet may be causing pain or trouble to you, or to others within the team, due to misapplication, talent overuse, or squashing down of talent.

Note that you may be squashing down a talent or not developing it because you don't see the necessity. But when it does come out inevitably, it doesn't come out looking good.

Join us explore these "T" talents, and towards the end you will get these takeaways:

1. Some workplace scenarios where troublemaker talents can show up
2. How these scenarios may affect teams and team projects
3. What you can do as a team in order to address the possible impact on timelines and results caused by the misapplication, overuse, or squashing down of talent

Are These 'Troublemaker' Scenarios Familiar To You?

• Scenario 1: Love For Learning

Let's say a member of your team leads through Learner and Input. Coming out of such strength is her love for learning, such as data gathering. As she's bent on really getting to know the stakeholders and the end-users before beginning a project, she spends time on the front end of the projects not only collecting stakeholder specifications, the end-user information, and the end-user preferences but really digging into these items.

What makes it a troublemaker talent?

This is showing up as a troublemaker talent for her because in the process of thorough and in-depth learning, you would see her as being too slow-paced or a "deadline-misser." This is rooted in the following:

1) Her non-communication of how her workflow looks (70% of the time on front end then hastened towards completion)

2) Her lack of awareness that would make someone else nervous

What can you do as a team?

As you are following a more sensible timeline, and it's clear that the troublemaker talent is going to make her miss the deadline, you have no choice but to step in. In this scenario, she'll keep getting her projects pulled as she's getting them started because you think she's not going to complete them on time.

• Scenario 2: Digging In Or Intruding?

For this same person who loves gathering information, it also comes out as a talent overuse when she spends most of a meeting with a colleague, asking too many questions -- to the point that she causes skepticism and guardedness on her colleague.

What makes it a troublemaker talent?

While the main point of the meeting is to explore and learn as much as she can, "too much curiosity kills a cat" as they say, and may spell trouble by way of perceived intrusion.

• "Why the 20 questions?"
• "Why are you digging into my business?"
• "What's the deal here?"

In the end, when the colleague senses that she's prying into their business, she might not obtain the information she was driving for.

What can you do as a team?

• Self-awareness - It's important that this particular "troublemaker" be made aware of where she is not being well-received by others, and where her supposed talent seems to be getting in the way of her desired results. The ability to reflect on this starts the active process of addressing the "trouble" or pain.

Maximizers also want to think about things longer and improve on them through constant reworks. However, they tend to get stuck on that phase rather than just jumping in and executing it. Naturally they go for the highest quality output, which requires that everything must be thought through. In effect, it keeps them from getting ahead along the timeline. But if high stakes are involved, Maximizers must not let themselves be okay with a B+ work.

The Yin-Yang Complex

Another concept to watch out for in troublemaker talents is the "yin-yang complex' where within a team, we often find talents that look the opposite of someone else's.

Consider the previous example of the leader through Learner and Input. As her boss, you happen to lead through Activator. That means you want to get things moving, and in contrast to her Learner-Input themes, you are really fast on the front end of projects.

Now due to self-awareness or team awareness about each other's talent themes, you will know in advance how to handle and address potential "trouble" brought about by varying cadence and preferences in approach. Action steps may look like the following:

1. The Learner-Input team member effectively communicates and aligns with you where she's at in the milestone 1-10 through regular updates, providing
   • explanation where there may be gaps
   • assurances of how she will strategize to meet the deadline
2. You determine the types of projects you can (or cannot) assign to her, depending on where her thoroughness may be best utilized.

Your Team Challenge: Identify A Troublemaker Talent And Develop It

This challenge may take a little thinking through or maybe backtracking.

1. Think of someone right now that you know, or someone that you've worked with in the past whom you think you've often butted heads or clashed with because you were always coming from totally opposite directions. Recognize that these people are a great case study for troublemaker talents.
2. Assume both their positive intent and your positive intent. See how they're both trying to achieve results for which you may have a very different approach.
3. Develop a troublemaker talent into a value-adding talent.

Suppose you're a visionary, and while you're passionately presenting about the vision of a project, you feel that your team or a team member is dragging it down into something that's irrelevant at present. It can be quite maddening.

If you recognize the troublemaker talents in your team, you can avoid the frustrations of being derailed in your vision presentation by talking to that person in advance. Example:

"Hey, I'm going to give you the high level in the meeting, and then let's book an hour after because I know you're gonna have a lot of detailed questions."

This short and direct approach will most likely provide the win-win situation where you can cast an inspirational vision for the team. At the same time, these "troublemakers" are given the opportunity to raise questions, be heard, and add value to company-wide results.

So rather than merely point out to them what's wrong that needs fixing, it's far more constructive to focus on the team member's potential, to inspire them to further develop their strength and express confidence that they can be among your top talents in the world. As you both commit support towards this person's development, imagine the fulfillment for you both if they transform from a "troublemaker" to a superstar!

Bottomline: It's so much more inspirational to craft and develop something that is already strong in you or others than to feel like you need to squash something and stamp it out.

Ready For The Next Concept?

Up next: Learn how to regulate by situation. Stay tuned!