1. Hello! My Name is: My Five Signature Themes Are:

2. Strengths Based Development

3. Strengths Quest
Discovering and Harnessing Your True Talents
Today’s Workshop is designed to help you learn more about your own top 5 talents, as identified in the Strengths Finder assessment.
We will use this time to more fully appreciate the uniqueness of your combination of talents and how to polish and leverage them at work.

4. Seminar Leader: Susan Thomas
Strategic
Empathy
Individualization
Maximizer
Ideation

5. Focus on YOU! Name? What you get paid to do?
Which Theme fits you like a glove?
(Intro)
Which talent, fit you like a glove?

6. Gallup asked the following question
How many of you
get to do what you
do best everyday at work?

7. Do You Use Your Strengths Every Day?
2 out of 10

8. Human Psychology Strengths Based Approach Deficit Approach
Study what is right with people
Deficit Approach
Study what is wrong with people
Foundation
Don Clifton – 30 years of research
Psychologist

9. Performance Management Strategy

10. Change of Focus

11. What Does Performance Improvement Mean to Most People?
Fixing Weaknesses!

12. Gallup asked the following question
Which would help you be more successful in your life – knowing what your weaknesses are and attempting to improve your weaknesses? or
knowing what your strengths are and attempting to build on your strengths?

13. StrengthsFinder Assessment
Identifies one’s themes of talent
(dominant patterns of thinking, feeling behaving)
These themes are areas where there is the greatest potential to develop strength
Can be developed into strengths when supplemented with relevant knowledge and skills

14. Maximizing Talent
We can maximize the talents of others (and ourselves) by setting them up for success.
Knowing someone’s strengths can tell us a lot about the way they execute, influence, build relationships, and solve problems.
When we know someone’s areas of excellence we can help them use their strengths by positioning them in situations or with others where those strengths can be alive.
Performance Review

15. Five Clues to Talent (Complete work page)
What are you naturally inquisitive about? (Yearning)
What activity are you engaged in when
the time flies by? (Timeless)
What activity gives you a great deal
of satisfaction?
What do you pick up rapidly?
What can you do to near perfection?
(How did I do that)
(Complete work page)
5 clues to talent

16. StrengthsFinder Reflection
After reading your Signature Themes Report, complete the following questions:
Which of your Signature Themes describe you best?
Which of your Signature Themes do you use most frequently?
Were you surprised by anything in the report?

17. Peak Performance
Recall a personal accomplishment (job or personal) – something you feel proud of.
Break down the steps to success, the outcomes achieved, and the skills required.
Now, consider the Strength Finder themes you utilized to achieve this success.
(Exercise)

18. The Strengths Approach: The 34 Talent Themes
Achiever
Analytical
Command
Connectedness
Deliberative
Empathy
Harmony
Individualization
Learner
Relator
Self-Assurance
Woo
Activator
Arranger
Communication
Consistency
Developer
Focus
Ideation
Input
Maximizer
Responsibility
Significance
Adaptability
Belief
Competition
Context
Discipline
Futuristic
Includer
Intellection
Positivity
Restorative
Strategic
One of the most powerful tools to navigate disruptions or changes is our very own strengths. These natural ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving can be a force through the darkness into the light of optimism, hope, and growth.

19. Signature Themes and How You Use Them *
Strengths
Description/ Definition of the Strength
Why It’s a Strength (What does it enable/empower me to do?)
When/Where I Recently Used This Strength
Activator
Move to action quickly
Make quick decisions
Set up a workshop for staff

20. Clarifying the Language
The key to building strength is to first identify your dominant themes or talents (naturally occurring thoughts, feelings and actions)
Strength = talent + knowledge x skill
A strength is the ability to provide consistent,
near-perfect performance in a given activity.
The formula for Strengths Building is this:
Identify your talents—the ways in which you most naturally think, feel, and behave and multiply with that time spent practicing, time spent developing your skills, and time spent building your knowledge base. In so doing, the outcome will be a strength—the ability to consistently provide a near perfect performance in a particular task.
Let’s continue to explore how talents, skills, and knowledge move us into the strengths building zone.

21. Integration of Strengths
Workplace: increases in employee engagement and productivity (do what I do best)
Education: improved attendance, grades, enthusiasm, options
Relationships: optimize team relationships and importance
strengths.ning.com

22. Talent Line-Up

23. Investing in Strengths Drives Engagement
Improvement %
Weakness fixing – 9% improvement
Strengths development – 73% improvement

24. Got Engagement? Engaged Not Engaged Actively Disengaged
These employees are loyal and productive. They are likely to stay with their company for at least a year. They are less likely to have accidents on the job and to steal.
Not Engaged
These employees may be productive, but are not psychologically connected to their company. They are more likely to miss work days and to leave.
Actively Disengaged
These employees are physically present but psychologically absent. They are unhappy with their work situation and insist on sharing this unhappiness with colleagues.
Define Terms
Companies would be better off to pay the Actively Disengaged to stay home – loss of productivity!

25. Disengaged?

26. Workplace Teams
Staff participating in strengths based development programs widely report an increased understanding and respect for their co-workers, and that they work together better as a result of knowing, accepting, and working to develop the strengths that their peers bring to the table

27. Treasure Hunt
Name
Name of Theme
Benefit of the Theme
Talent Search

28. Relationship Building
The Four Domains
Executing
Influencing
Relationship Building
Strategic Thinking
Achiever
Arranger
Belief
Consistency
Deliberative
Discipline
Focus
Responsibility
Restorative
Activator
Command
Communication
Competition
Maximizer
Self-Assurance
Significance
Woo
Adaptability
Connectedness
Developer
Empathy
Harmony
Includer
Individualization
Positivity
Relator
Analytical
Context
Futuristic
Ideation
Input
Intellection
Learner
Strategic
Here is how the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder themes cluster within each domain.
What I’d like to invite you to do is to quickly find your top five themes and see if you have a dominant domain using your top five. Sometimes it takes a person’s top 10 to clearly identify a dominant domain, but we’ll try it with five.
Executing – make things happen
Influencing – selling the teams ideas inside and out
Relationship Building – the glue that holds the team together
Strategic – Focus on what cold be
(give time)
Would you each be willing to share your dominant domain?
In addition to telling us each where we have strength, there’s also the application of this information to the team setting and classroom setting that I’d us to explore further.

29. Mapping your team

31. Team Grid
Understanding the theme dynamics of your team helps you to be a more successful and productive team.
Acknowledge team's strengths
Consider assignments/roles based on strengths
Opportunities that your team may have for partnerships within the team

32. Complementary Partnerships
Partnerships are forming all around us every day. They are formed for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include:
To “make up” for a lesser talent
To “take over” where one person leaves off
To “enhance” what one person already possesses
For instance, if a person has a lesser pattern in the Ideation theme, he or she may want to partner with someone with intense talent in this area when it comes time to create unique and engaging activities to support a new unit. In this way, one person leverages the talents of another to accomplish the objective
For instance, in a car dealership, one person might help you decide which car to buy, and another person will write up the purchase agreement. Both people contribute something unique and important to the purchase of your car.
For example, a person high in Focus might partner with someone high in Achiever when it is crunch time on a specific project. In doing so, both people bring the best of who they are and the results can be extraordinary

33. The (Very Different)Strengths of Leaders
Wendy Kopp
Founder and CEO
Teach for America
Brad Anderson
CEO
Best Buy
Simon Cooper
President
The Ritz Carlton
Mervyn Davies
Chairman
Standard Chartered
Achiever
Competition
Responsibility
Relator
Strategic
Context
Ideation
Input
Learner
Connectedness
Maximizer
Woo
Arranger
Activator
Significance
Futuristic
Positivity

34. Here is what Gallup knows about top achievers:
fully recognize their talents and build on them to develop strengths
apply their greatest talents in roles that best suit them.
invent ways to apply their greatest talents to their achievement tasks. (StrengthsQuest, p.8)

35. The Potential
What might happen if departments developed strengths to build everyone’s potential in becoming the “best of the best” in the process of learning, working and living?
Camel video

36. Managing Challenges Strengths conversation
Get the right education and training
Leverage your strengths to manage a weakness
Partner with someone
Just do it!
Don’t do it

37. www.strengthsquest.com On the Purchase tab
Resources
On the Purchase tab

38. What’s Next? Share your results with a friend/colleague
One idea you will take with you
Visit
Events
Educator Resources
Purchasing Information
Strengths School:
Strengths Network:
What questions do you have? Make a list of them and post them on the discussion board.
Now it’s time to review the weekly homework assignment. Some of these assignments will be postings to the discussion board and we’ll highlight that when we get to them.