Know Your Strengths in Your Encore 041

Welcome to episode 41 of Your Encore Life. In this episode we will be talking specifically about the CliftonStrengths Assessment and why it has value for those of us entering into or already in our Encore Life.  As you may recall episodes 39 and 40 were both discussing the value of maximizing your strengths, focusing on strengths and building them rather than putting an emphasis on your weaknesses and trying to overcome them.  We also talked a little about how to minimize your weaknesses by maximizing strengths or by methods discussed in an article by Brent O’ Bannon referenced in episode 40 titled “To Manage Your Weakness, PLUG your LEAK”.  Let’s start by reviewing that:

L: Loath - What activity do you absolutely hate to do?

E: Escape - What activity do you avoid at all costs?

A: Average - What activity is a weakness that no matter how much you try, you are only average at it?

K: Kink - What activity no matter how much you improve leaves a kink in your stomach when doing it?

P: Plan - consciously use one or more of your strengths to boost your weakness.

L: Leave - Decrease or eliminate if possible the need to perform that activity.

U: Unite - Find someone to perform that activity that is a weakness in your place.

G: Grow - If you have to continue this activity, find a way to improve such as training in the basics, then let it go.

The book lists five characteristics of a strength and how best to develop them.  Here we go:

1. Listen for Yearnings:  What have you seen or heard that makes you think “I want to do that”?  What makes your heart flutter or sing?  This cannot be confused with what they term as “misyearnings”, which can be driven by a desire for power, glamour, and excitement and can derail us from our true strengths path.
2. Watch for Satisfactions:  “Satisfactions are those experiences where the emotional and psychic rewards are great”.  You really enjoy doing them.
3. Watch for Rapid Learning:  If you are learning something best by jumping in and you feel like you have always known how to do something. Slow and laborious learning is a sign that this may not be an area of strength.
4. Glimpses of Excellence:  Often evident in a finite activity or performance, which isn’t necessarily impressive but a trained eye or you sense a moment where you shine brightly.
5. Total Performance of Excellence: Total performance excellence is defined in the book as not being “a glimpse, but the complete extension of an activity.  It doesn’t happen occasionally, but each time the activity is performed.  It is not subject to circumstances but transcends them.

To become exceptional:

1. Pick a strength and pursue it.
2. Claim it out of fantasy and into action.
3. Do more of it
4. Enjoy it

Again I have included links to the articles and book mentioned in this episode as well as a link to access the CliftonStrengths assessment, which we will talk more specifics about now.

The global strengths movement started six decades ago when Don Clifton posed a simple question:

"What would happen if we studied what was right with people versus what's wrong with people?"

More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies have used CliftonStrengths to bring the power of strengths-based development to their workplace culture.

Every year, more organizations of all sizes give leaders and their teams the chance to become great at what they're naturally good at.

The test itself is an hour-long online assessment, where you'll see 177 paired statements and choose which one best describes you.

The assessment measures your talents -- your natural patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving -- and categorizes them into the 34 CliftonStrengths themes.

Your customized CliftonStrengths reports and guides help you chart your course to accomplish great things using the true north of what you naturally do best.

• You will get a customized dashboard on the Gallup Access platform to find resources and tools that will help you learn how to do more of what you naturally do best.
• Find a Coach to help unlock your potential and succeed in every facet of life.

I would encourage you to look over the Gallup CliftonStrengths website that I have included a link to in the show notes to learn about the extensive research that has gone into making this such a powerful assessment tool.

I want to emphasize the word I used “tool”.  There are many assessments out there that measure all sorts of individual traits and characteristics, some of them excellent like the CliftonStrengths assessment, and some of them mostly useless and poorly researched.  You should never let any assessment define who you are and paint you into a box.  They can be extremely useful in gaining a better understanding of your strengths, values, and personality traits that make you unique.  The better we understand ourselves and what makes us tick, the better we are prepared to be our best selves.

So why would it be important to know our strengths as we enter into our encore life?  Often times we are painted into a box by our careers which can make it difficult to make the best utilization of our strengths.  It is when our passion and strengths meet that we are most successful and most satisfied.  Once you have the freedom of choice with what you do with your time to pursue your calling, your passion, what makes your heart sing, is often in what we call your encore life.

So I encourage you if you haven’t already done so, take the time to discover what the CliftonStrengths assessment can tell you about what talents you have been gifted with so you can maximize those talents and turn them into strengths.

I would love to have the opportunity to talk with you individually about this process.  I encourage you to reach out to me if you have any questions about the process or are thinking about what benefit discussing your assessment once you have taken it with a trained coach such as myself could give you.  Brian will tell you at the end of the episode how to contact me.

1 Peter 4:10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace:

Romans 12:6-8 ESV / 12 helpful votes 

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

• Soar With Your Strengths, Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson
• To Manage Your Weaknesses, Plug The Leaks, Brent O’ Bannon
• Gallup Clifton Strengths Assessment 
• Contact Craig