So we’re gonna talk about, coaching for a strength based culture.

In particular, what we’re gonna have a look at is just a conversation about what do we mean by strengths, really.

What is a strength based culture? Some of the personal strength, concepts and and the business advantage of that. Really then looking at kind of the role of personality in that whole process, the concept of conscious flexibility when we understand ourselves and how do we flex into and develop ourselves in particular circumstances.

And then looking at some of the myths around those strengths based cultures as well.

And then we’ve got a handout that we’ll send out to you, an ebook on some of the strategies on how you can implement that and strategies for leaders as well.

So a lot to get through. We’ll see how we go. Please just ask questions, pop your hand up, or call out as you go along. Really happy just for you to, to engage as much as you like.

My first question, though, I suppose, just as a group, is what do we mean by strengths?

And and then, therefore, what do we mean by strength based culture?

So interested in your, point of view. And maybe I’ll stop sharing and put people back on to gallery, and we can have a quick conversation.

I think there’s that broad sweep of strengths around the behavioral aspect right through to the technical. So I think sometimes people get mixed up about what, you know, what are we talk what kind of strengths are we talking about? I think that’s an important point to make. Mhmm. So you can think about somebody’s experiences, somebody’s skills, somebody’s expertise.

They can be considered strengths. But I think in our realm, it’s more about how do you demonstrate those? How do you bring those to the fore? How do you, you know, use those to your advantage and how prominent are they?

I think that that that’s the kind of landscape I try to, make sure that we, you you know, we clarify and get get that clear about what kind of strength are we talking about is is important.

Yep. Yeah. Great. What about others? What’s your view on strengths?

I would, add that, Rob, I completely agree and apologies. I would have my be here if I, if it was working.

But I’m finding my clients at the moment are, really pushing back on this concept of soft skills that that that terminology has been around for a long time.

And I think the realization is if they’re soft, are they are they easier? And we’re learning actually, these are the most difficult, skills compared to that technical piece, Rob, as you, as you mentioned. We can we can send you off on a course, so we can teach you technical skills and you’ll pick those up. But behavioral change and and learning, particularly understanding where your starting point is, in that whole self awareness, space is is much harder than people, had thought. And that that’s where we fit. That’s where we step in.

And it’s interesting. We do call them soft skills. I would probably call them more essential skills than soft skills, or just human skills, as opposed to the the type of skill that we typically build, filling a gap or that development gap that we often associate with, building skill more generally in organisations.

Richard or David, Elizabeth, Monica, what’s your experience?

Something that’s coming up a fair bit for us, Grant, is, around psychological safety.

So just having an organization where people feel comfortable that they can share and talk about culture and what it means to them and, that they’re not withholding stuff. People seem to be a little bit more scared about, contributing and sharing sharing things unless they feel, that they’re in a safe environment in which to do so.

Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. David?

Typically, if you ask me about, strength based coaching, I’d probably go reach into the shells for my Martin Seligman on positive psychology. Yeah. And that’s the association I have with strength based coaching is that, you know, it came out of positive coaching, positive psychology, but I’m not sure about that. It’s not something I have expertise in.

I think it yeah. I think you’re right. I think the concept of strengths I mean, I I think the concept more generally around development has always been, filling a gap or fixing an issue that we’ve got. You know, we grew up in that professional environment where, you know, leveraging your strengths was often sometimes or talking about your strengths was kind of bragging.

And it’s like, you know, making yourself out to be bigger than you actually are because development has always been about that negative state or that dysfunctional disease state, which is fixing the gap that we’ve got. We’re not doing something that we need, to do or we need to do something better. I think, really, what we’re talking about from a strength based perspective, and, yes, it is influenced certainly from the PERMA model out of Seligman and the positive psychology movement, is talking about understanding ourselves, where we flex from, creating that conscious flexibility, looking at development from a strength based perspective.

And that could just be challenging ourselves to use our strengths and skills in a different way, than we’re already using them. And to really understand then the gap between where we’re at and what’s required maybe in our role or in our relationship. And then how do we fill that gap as well? How do we leverage what we already do well?

But also understanding that sometimes that doing well, maybe not just quite enough, but it’s a bit more conscious in the approach that we’re taking.

Monica or Elizabeth, what would you would you like to do?

Well, we mostly use motivational interviewing in our area of work. So that’s, like, basically the strength that we have is, like, we basically let them express themselves and talk, you know, and we do what is the eighty twenty, where they speak eighty percent and we speak just answer twenty percent of the time.

Yeah.

So I don’t know.

Yeah. Very good.

Thank you.

Okay. Let me go back to sharing some, my slides.

So when we’re talking about strengths, we’re talking about in in our context, our passive five context, we’re talking about those inherent traits or behaviours and patterns that, positively influence our actions and our interactions. The things that kind of motivate us and energise us and drive us. But things are probably a bit more easily accessible, to us, and we would say probably a little bit more effortless than effortful.

We would say that they’re rooted in the stable aspects of our personality and provide a a solid foundation for helping us achieve our goals, build better relationships and, and overcome challenges.

We would, you know, the, the work that we’re doing more, we’re talking about more about self efficacy and those micro moments, that allow individuals to demonstrate that, and that builds self confidence, and self worth through that process. And that we’re also kind of in recognizing our, our personality strengths, that they can enhance both our preferred, in our personal and professional, effectiveness.

And we always talk about in our bylines, you know, the way of helping people realize their true potential. So we’re starting with ourself. We’re starting with what drives us, what motivates us, as Elizabeth said, what also, what we do and where we come from naturally. Doesn’t mean that we’re always turning up well or that we’ve got a natural, skill around that. We still have to polish some of those. They don’t always turn up in the best way, but it’s a way of us understanding where we are and how we can flex our style in order to be more effective, as we say, both personally and professionally.

So when we have a look then, what does a a a strength based culture start to emphasize?

It really starts to look at, taking a more empowering approach for individuals. So creating that level of self awareness, helping people understand and identify their key traits that really drive them and motivate them and energise them.

And what it then helps individuals to do is kind of understand where they’re working from. They’re working from a base of natural talent and confidence.

So it’s allowing individuals to, position themselves and understand, actually, what do I do well? What are those things that I naturally attend to more easily with those effortless moments, those things that energise me and motivate me as well? I think when we have that, we, we tend to find ourselves, leaning into challenges a little bit more easily. We’re a little bit more resilient around those. We’re building easier resilience. We’re building easier self efficacy around those, as well.

From that, then people are a bit more informed and and willing to take more informed risks and explore new ideas because they’re working from that base of confidence.

I’m not saying that all risk pay off, but, it certainly helps when shifting from being more cautious into being more informed, willingness to take those risks in those sort of new spaces and explore those new ideas.

That can increase kind of the, the focus around innovation and creativity, you know, due to that increased confidence as well.

And we spoke about before around you, Richard mentioned psychological safety as a construct. Now all of these require that and they all kind of have this, symbiotic relationship, I think, in that when we are able to work from that base of natural confidence and natural talent, we’re a bit more informed in the risks. We’re a bit more open. We’re a bit more willing to communicate who we are and what we like. Then we do create that psychological safety for others. We create an authentic moment around us turning up, and that then creates the environment in which we can be more creative, that we can be more innovative, that we increase confidence in our approach.

Then, obviously, you know, because we work from that place of confidence and, motivation, we’re making work more enjoyable and generally less draining. We do spend a lot of time at work, so it’s often nice to be able to know that we come into work, we’re enjoying the company of people we work with, and we feel like we’re doing something of value.

And not only that, I think we, we use the concept that we feel like we’ve been seen.

We get to be seen for who we are and what we contribute, and not so much what our role is, but us as individuals within that.

And, you know, a big focus these days is obviously around mental health and job satisfaction.

I think these are kind of outcomes for me from the other aspects. When we are doing something we love or doing something that we, working from our natural talents, we feel more confident. We feel more able at work and empowered at work than actually I think our general well-being and our mental health, not only at work, but you know, at home, because work and home are, harder to separate these days with a lot of remote working.

And then we’re getting increased job satisfaction, and that tends to then lead to a more vibrant and dynamic culture.

I think also, you know, from a productivity perspective, we’re getting just more discretionary effort out of individuals. They’re more willing to try to step into spaces with other people, whether that’s in challenging spaces, in collaboration, in managing conflict, all of those sort of areas, because people are more appreciative of other people’s styles. And I think that’s what we’re trying to encourage here through a strength based, approach.

And then we get to, you know, improving relationships through understanding. We understand ourselves.

We’re creating this moment of connection with other people. I think it’s about then realising the strengths that other people have through their approach, but not only just in their personality, obviously, but their collective skills and experience and knowledge that they bring into the workplace as well.

So when we understand ourselves in order to understand others, then we have a a stronger connection with people. We’re more likely to display altruistic behaviors and be more empathetic, particularly around mistakes, and around, disagreements and resolving issues as well. We’re not we’re looking past the person, and we’re looking back to the, you know, the situation at hand and how do we best approach that.

And finally, you know, we’re creating that culture of appreciation and recognition.

And I think that’s the important thing is that we recognize and appreciate and we see other people for who they are. And that’s, the, you know, the true value of a strength based culture in my view is that we are kinda looking beyond ourselves. We’re we’re appreciating the fact that other people turn up in a different way. And there actually may be something to learn from that and leverage from that as well.

Any thoughts on that from folks? Anything else you would add to that?

Well, I think there’s expanding perhaps that relationships piece around, customer. So appreciation of customer and understanding customer.

Yeah.

And and partners as well. I think I think there’s there’s a lot I’ve I’ve started to see some which some threads in the literature about that, that sense of customer service picking up on what you were saying about the the empathy and the altruism Mhmm.

To the customer engagement as well or partner or engaging with partners as well. Yeah. So I think that, you know, there’s a base there of the relationships, and then how do we expand that up further?

And I think the the work that we’ve been doing more and more around the, you know, remote people, remote workers, people who aren’t or or maybe completely remote is the, the impact it’s having on, relationships at home where, you know, the work and home are very close, and it’s, you know, it’s sometimes very hard mentally to turn yourself off between work and home, particularly when you maybe have children, your partner’s working at home as well.

So it’s helping, foster that more appreciative inquiry, being more curious, for example, being more open to different ways, different stresses, and and different approaches.

Great.

So what do personal strengths then bring? And I I think there’s a few of them. I think in improved communication is one. I think we’re, facilitating a deeper connection with people and and ensuring that, you know, we feel, we feel heard, but we’re also willing to listen to others.

I think we’re enhancing more of that empathetic communication.

We’re not putting a value on an overvalue on our own strength where we’re looking to be more appreciative of the range of strengths that others bring and how they can compliment each other or compliment you.

I really like this concept of extending out emotional literacy.

And it’s some work that I’ve built reading that I’ve been doing is like when we start to extend out that and we recognize our own emotions, we’re more effective at recognizing them in other people as well. And I think it’s still a growing or maturing area around emotional literacy, particularly in a corporate environment. And in some cultures, where talking about emotion, talking about feelings, talking about, well-being isn’t isn’t really readily done or discussed. So extending out kind of the language and the, vocabulary that we have around emotional literacy, I think, is really important.

We are then looking at conflict and reframing conflict, I think. So we’re looking more from conflict to collaboration and saying, well, actually, yes, we it’s okay for us to disagree. We have different viewpoints. We come at things from a different perspective, but actually, what are we trying to solve here?

So we move away from the disagreement to the to a resolution. So how do we reach that agreement? How do we resolve that dispute?

And I think when we have improved empathetic communication, we’ve got stronger emotional literacy, then conflict resolution becomes that little bit easier. Now no one likes conflict. I get that. It’s not a comfortable space for most people unless you’ve got a confrontation score of ten, then it’s always going to be it’s always going to be at some level of discomfort.

But I think having a strength based approach and being more curious and inquiring allows us to negate, some of the negative aspects of that.

I think the other part then, we start to look at that, the tailored support and the and those development pathways. So we don’t always sit in the ideal role or the ideal environment.

What a person, you know, a strengths helps us do is really understand where we are and what our preferences are and what’s required of us in our role and our relationships and the environment that we’re working in.

And that allows us then to understand those, that capability or that conscious flexibility that we can create in order to, fill the gap or understand what we need in order to do that. So those tailored support ways or or more conscious support and development pathways become a a really critical aspect of a strength based culture. Because we’re not saying that there’s no development.

What we’re saying is that we’re a bit more conscious about the development that we need, and how can we look at it and leverage from our own space, our own starting point in order to address that.

Then we start to build people with, so the the idea of, reliability and honesty and authenticity comes in here as well, building trust and rapport. So when we’re coming from our, a place of authenticity, we’re often building more rapport with individuals and we’re building trust with those individuals. We’re more honest in what we can achieve and what we can’t achieve. And I think some people may call that, you know, vulnerability, for example. We talk a lot about that as leaders at the moment, but I think it’s a really important aspect, which is we build trust and rapport when we are, demonstrating honesty and authenticity.

And we can do that when we understand who we are and how we like to work. And we’re clear about that as well. And that we put our hand up and go, that’s not my wheelhouse. I don’t do that very well.

I need support in order to do that. It’s not my, area of motivation. It doesn’t energise me as well.

From that, we can create better social awareness and engagement as well. We’re looking up and beyond ourselves, with, you know, that emotional literacy, the willingness to be more empathetic and and, being more curious helps us better engage more socially with other people around us. And then obviously it’s going to drive engagement, you know, accountability for our own engagement, not to be entertained at work or, the organisation or your leader there to, you know, drive that motivation. But this takes a personal accountability bringing that forward. This is how I like to work. This is what I’m good at. This is where the the support is required, for example.

And then the the one that I the the second one I like out of this, list, and I was I was sitting at, Dallas airport last week when I wrote this and reading a whole heap of stuff, and I was just thinking, well, actually, as I looked around and particularly, in some of the environments that I’ve been travelling around, this enhanced perspective taking has become really, an interesting topic, I think.

And being able to kind of step aside and step back from my own point of view and look at, okay. Well, what does that mean for other people? What are those other strengths that I could be leveraging? How do I, maybe put some stuff down around my ego or, you know, my own expectations, my own things about myself, and extend out that and navigate that, a little bit more fully. So I’m able to, look across more of the emotional landscape, and and look across the requirements of that, and, you know, I kinda put my hand up and go, yeah. I need to extend out a little bit more. I need to in enhance what I’m looking for and looking at without as much bias.

And I think then, you know, ultimately, what we’re doing is increasing inclusivity.

We appreciate that diversity is a fact.

That inclusivity comes with an action. And I think, generally, when we start to work from a a base of personal strengths or being more strengths having a strengths culture, what we’re doing is appreciating the value of inclusivity and diversity as a mechanism for performance and, and well-being.

Anything you’d add to that list, you know, that’s there’s it’s quite a solid list, but anything in your own experience that you would add to that?

I would add, not so much to add, but to emphasize, Glenn, the confidence you get when you, when you have a better awareness of, the strengths that you bring to the table. Yeah.

I think I wrote about this in a blog a few months ago, but Right. I I remember very distinctly an occasion where I was asked by a board to do a detailed business case. And and prior to knowing my Facet five, I would have agreed to that because it was my job, and, I would have had a miserable couple of weeks and lost weekend, so on.

But knowing my Facet five, I was sort of confidently able to say to them, well, I can see, yes, we do need a detail detailed business plan, but that’s not actually my strength. That’s not what I bring to the table. Yep. I bring relationships and the academic excellence of the courses we’re developing, and I suggest we get someone from outside, and I’ll give them the information.

And, you know, surprise, surprise. I just all totally agreed. There was absolutely no pushback from that. But if I hadn’t understood my Facetify profile, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to just say that stuff, but I’m not doing that job.

Yeah. It’s interesting. We had a conversation this morning, on a master class this morning with, the guys in Europe and one of the ladies, she said it, sometimes it’s like pushing a round circle through a square hole.

And then actually when you realize what your strengths are, actually, if you turn that circle on its side, you can still get it through that square hole. We’re just looking at things through, you know, in a, in a different way, we’re taking a different perspective.

And actually I think you’re right. I think we’re just a little bit more honest about what motivates us, what we’re good at, and sometimes what the result will be.

For me, if you ask me to do a whole heap of detailed numbers, I’m not that person. I can tell the story around them, but I’m not gonna be the person who’s gonna make sure that one plus one equals two. It always ends up at two point five or or some other random number that I then have to go and justify. So I think you’re right. I think we become more confident, both in how we like to work, what we can achieve. But also, we put our hand up and going, you know, that that’s I’m not the best person for that.

Rob, you were going to?

Well, I just had some retort about, it’s not all about me. Building on David’s on David’s point about, well, I I know where I shine and I know where I don’t.

Mhmm.

And so it’s an emotional maturity almost or an ad you know, a stage in adult development about, well, you know, I know who I am, and I know what I’m like, I can do and Mhmm. Connection then to other team to other team members and, you know, reinforcing what you’re saying before about the appreciation and the perspective taking. Mhmm. That I think that’s a positive feedback loop, you know, that we can that we can tap into. Yeah.

And I think it’s it’s often part of the teaming work that we do maybe with the line dance or, you know, getting people up and and appreciating the different approaches to the same concept or the way they like to work, across our scales, whether it’s will or emotionality or whatever it might be, really does help. You know, the outcome of that is people have a different perspective from other people. They’re hearing different ways and approaches and methods, that they may not thought of before or felt like they could access and, and, you know, access different styles within the group. And I

think this is really, important for leadership just at the moment. You know, leaders in some areas still have to have all the answers. You know, the teams do look for them to solve some of the problems. So I think this can really help with helping individuals both be a bit more, accountable maybe, and also for leaders to be able to go, yeah.

Actually, I’m I’m a great facilitator of the solution, but I might not have all the right answers, but I’ll try to ask the right questions in that approach. Yeah.

Great.

So let’s have a look just then at some of the business advantages. Obviously, there’s a whole range of things that businesses will, benefit from that.

Some of the work that we’ve been seeing with Gallup, for example, they’re saying that there’s, you know, up to a ten to nineteen percent increase in organisational performance.

When employees are leveraging their strengths, they’re likely to be more energised and more effective in their roles.

But Again, work by Gallup around employee engagement, discretionary effort. And I’m just reading some numbers here as I wrote them down the other day, which is, it can typically double from around thirty percent to sixty percent higher engagement linked closely to higher product activity, better retention rates, improved profitability.

So Gallup tend to be doing a lot more work in this space, and they’re very well suited, to that work. And the numbers that they’re turning up with, you kind of have to double check. Sometimes you go, surely they can’t be doubling those rates through one initiative. We’ve been trying that for how many years now.

And apparently the strength based culture is helping with that.

Obviously, improve, improve employee retention. The Centre for Creative Leadership did a study, and they got a fifteen percent increase in employee retention through helping with not only understanding strengths, but job alignment and role alignment, and creating that culture of appreciation in organisations.

They’re looking at Gallup was saying that there’s a strength based management processes or practices boosted up to twenty nine percent increase in profit.

And that’s mainly through productivity, and the customer focus that you spoke about before, Rob, and, reduced turnover and absentees absent absenteeism.

Say that very quickly three times as well. So big numbers and better team dynamics, better collaboration, less, and more cross business collaboration and class, cross business, team dynamic improvements, not just sitting within the within the same team, but a willingness to stretch out across process lines, across business departments as well.

And as you mentioned before, we improve customer outcomes. I think it’s, operates from that strength perspective. We’re enhanced, perspective taking, looking at it and being more responsive to customers and being more proactively responsive to customers as well.

So they’re big, they’re big hikes in in the in the business. And my question probably is, why do we or do you think we have a resistance to a strength based culture if we’re getting these sort of numbers in organisations? Is that your experience, or do you find that organisations are quite open to talking about a strength based approach?

Okay. My my personal experience is the current organisations that we’re talking about when we say performance management isn’t really a great, way of motivating staff. They kind of asked me to get up and leave the room and take my stuff with me. So talking about strength based culture still is a little bit far too far removed for them. Any thoughts?

Definitely, as you said, tradition and history.

I think that’s that that, you know, shared, experiences and education around, well, you know, you need to identify the weakness and work on the weakness.

And, you know, Seligman, back twenty twenty odd years twenty five years ago, did a, you know, great, service to us all on that.

I I think there’s that, but then there’s whether or not there’s inertia and Mhmm. That’s a lack of, skill or or, you know, and they can see that it’s, there’s a whole new series of investment and skill building capability development that that is attached to that, and it’s, well, it’s almost easier to to dwell in the in the space that you’re in rather than gonna make that that, that I think it’s good to that.

You’re getting rewarded for the behavior that you’ve already got in place.

Unless we change the, you know, the reward and the metric, to the not so much the what all the time, but more of the how, and and this becomes part of that metric.

Then obviously, you know, you why would you do something that you is gonna be counterproductive to your having a a well paid job, for example, or a bonus is sometimes what we’re hearing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Very good.

Risk appetite more generally, I think.

Yeah. And I I think, in some cultures, some organizations, their risk appetite is a bit higher, but it does take a lot of effort in order to do that. So what’s the, role of personality and strengths? And I drop this slide out just about every time I have a conversation. So for those who haven’t seen it, or those who have, my apologies. So when we talk about personality and strengths, you know, we’re talking about an individual’s personality, those trait or or enduring characteristics of personality.

We know that they drive our behaviour.

And when we’re on a default mode or an autopilot, what we basically get is these shortcut neural pathways. We you know, our brain has created these, quick fixes and, and quick routes to getting things done. And those behaviors kind of create a set of default outcomes for us. So we’re, we’re not thinking about them. We’re just going about doing them, but they don’t always provide us with the best outcome.

And what we’re doing here is just adding in a level of self awareness and understanding now, that we’re actually being more conscious in the behaviors and being more conscious about who we are and how we like to work so that we’re choosing different behaviors and we’re getting different outcomes. So this is all about making things a bit more conscious. So if you think about the four phases of, conscious competence, so we go from, unconscious incompetence. We don’t know what we don’t know.

We move into conscious incompetence, and it’s those moments of going, actually, there’s a lot for me to know. I don’t know as much as I thought I did. And And really what we’re trying to do with a strength based area is to say, the shift into conscious competence is easier on a strength based level because these things should be easier accessible, more easily accessible to you. So we can bring them forward, inspect them, you know, cover them in a bit more, polish them and put them back with a bit more competence. So the idea is, of a strength based culture for us and the role of personality is just making that, that unconscious more conscious for a little while, inspecting it, understanding the context that it’s turning up, and ensuring that it’s turning up in the best way possible.

And, of course, that’s all, in relationship to the context, the time and support you’ve got, the process and the tools, all those cultural elements that wrap around and influence. Everything from micro things such as, you know, email signatures to how, people run meetings. There’s a whole range of elements that will affect our behaviours. As we just spoke about, you know, some of those things we do because they’re the way we do things around here, and, that’s what we get rewarded for.

So the great thing then we’ve been facilitating a lot more of in organisations is this concept of conscious flexibility.

So when we understand ourselves and at the heart of conscious flexibility is self awareness.

So the the idea about conscious flexibility is that we’re understanding our strengths. So we know our preferred tendencies, how they impact our behaviour and our performance. So we’re putting in that understanding level, in between our personality and our behaviour.

We recognise when the context, our context, or our situation requires us to flex a little bit further beyond our preferred style, and we’re stretching responsibly or or stretching consciously into those new behaviours, But we know where we’re starting from, and that’s the key for me, is if we’re just being reactive, then we’re not really understanding where we’re starting from. Now we can stretch as far as we want, and the further we stretch away from our preferred style, the more effort it’s gonna take, the more effortful, we often say it’s going to be. And sometimes then that reduces our, efficiency, our efficacy, our, our well-being and resilience over that period of time. And we do that consistently. That can be very draining.

So what we’re saying is when we understand our strengths, we understand the context that we find ourselves in. We have a more conscious approach to how we fill those gaps. Now we may be able to say, like David said, that’s not my gig. I don’t do that. Pass it over to somebody else. Get rid of it. But in the majority when we’re at work, we’re figuring out how far we need to stretch from our bird style, and then what that means for us and for the work.

When we think about some of the values, the value of having that more conscious flexibility and we’re taking accountability for that is what we’re recognising is where we may over rely on a set of strengths and we overplay those. The old saying, you know, when you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So where what we’re doing is just being more conscious of the approach that we’re taking.

With practice, then it enables us to build more versatility in our approach. So just, you know, we’re building in skill, we’re able to do that more naturally and more efficiently. It may still not be our preferred approach, but we’re able to do it a little bit more easily. So that allows us to stretch beyond, you know, different scenarios in different roles, different relationships, and different challenges just with that little bit more ease, than we would have had before.

It enhances collaboration. It fosters that stronger team dynamics by encouraging individuals to align their approach with the needs of others or to be able to leverage others and their style as well. And it helps us, I think, navigate that complexity. Building up that flex beyond our natural strengths helps us again, build that, our ability to manage complexity, more than anything, build out, ability to be more resilient, build our self efficacy in that we actually we can stretch, and it’s okay. And it, you know, we have survived and we’ve come back. And again, if we keep doing that, we’re building a a a more conscious habit of, our understanding how our strengths turn up, but also we’re we’re recognising what it takes from us and how we might need to flex into, changing context around us, role, requirement, relationship, society, all of those sort of things.

Any thoughts on that concept?

See, granted, for me, it makes me think of situational leadership, which is Yeah.

Sort of or sort of idea that, there although that sort of takes me back to not so much a strength base because if you’re applying situational leadership, then you need the strengths of well, you need the skills and competencies of each of those leadership styles.

So if you’re applying that model, you can’t just say, well, I don’t have the strength in coaching, so I’m not gonna apply that leadership style. You would actually have to develop the skill and competency and have the flexibility to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t care.

I think it it sort of overlaps nicely on the situational leadership model and and similar models.

Yeah, I think you’re, I think you’re right. It’s not that it’s not too far away from that. What we’re basically saying is, you know, with the situational leadership model, you tend to have a dominant or a more preferred mode, I suppose, that you start in and you’re having to flex that just like kinda the Thomas Kilman model, for example, where you’re flexing into different conflict modes, is we’ll have a primary approach, and then we don’t just just don’t have the privilege in our jobs anymore, I think, to not be able to do that. And what we’re saying is, how far do you have to go and what do you need in order to do that, and how far is too far?

I think in both of those instances, granted, it goes back to your previous slide where you have a personality and a behavior and the awareness and understanding intervenes. So both in situational leadership and in the Thomas Kilman stuff, you’ve you’ve got situation where your personality will push you in one or two directions, but once you, you know, conscious understanding in the middle, then then you have that, at least knowledge that you should be able to to flex in a couple of different ways.

Yeah. And that you might just need to build skill, and that skill could come from formal learning, from mentoring, from coaching, just throwing yourself in the deep end, making heaps of mistakes, learning as you go. I think there’s a whole range of different ways, you know, preferred on on your basic style. Mine’s always been throw myself something at it and then go and lick my wounds, later.

So how do we cultivate conscious flexibility then?

I think the first part is that reflection part, which is, you know, identifying our preferred approach.

It’s understanding how we like to approach our, our work, our natural motivators and energisers, and recognising those tasks and moments that stretch or demotivators as well. So we’ve got a good sense of what what draws us in and what repels us.

I think then the context becomes important. So in the context that we find ourselves, what are those elements that I can leverage more of? What do I find I’m doing quite easily that I can, reframe or reuse? And then what are those areas that I need to be more conscious of and and create understanding around then I might need to have a new approach.

Practise makes perfect, as they say. So practising intentional flexing, using creative ways to leverage your own style. As I said before, you know, you can push a round circle through a square hole just by turning it around or looking at it in, in a different perspective and it will go through there. So it’s how do we reframe the skills that we’ve got?

A great example would be if you’re a high energy person, for example, and you’re great at motivating and engaging people, you might be able to use that same energy in a different way, in a more structured way of, of driving planning and implementation that you might not have seen before.

So it helps us leverage also the complimentary skills that we might find in our team and team members, and we’re co mentoring and supporting each other in that process.

Then I think we’ve got a better sense of the, and as you said, David, you know, that situation of leadership, we didn’t then have to develop them. We had to have some capability in those, areas. And what we’re saying is how much and in what direction do you need to develop?

And obviously it’s kind of like a starburst. It’s in a, you know, different context, different requirements. We’re always building skill and we’re always we should be open to that. What we’re saying is that we can start from a particular, position and understand what skill actually is going to be helpful.

And the last one is in feedback, both, you know, the good old Johari window of seeking feedback and and just and giving, you know, information through disclosure.

I think that approach helps us understand how we’re turning up, how that flex, that conscious, flexing is going. Is it turning up well?

Or is is there still more skill, required as well? And I think that you can just use it in terms of how you’re turning up more generally, where you think a strength is turning up really well and you’re getting feedback. Actually, it may be a bit overplayed, or it’s not the right strength for the right time.

So let’s talk about some strategies then to create a strength based approach.

Like most things, it starts with leadership in my view. So when we start with our leaders, we share who is sharing their strengths, and how they’re applying them. They’re recognising and rewarding strengths in others. They’re making decisions and resource planning based on strengths. Then Then we’ve got a, a stronger platform. So we’re leading from the front around a strength based language. We’re demonstrating that with our leadership.

The other part is obviously you need some way of talking about and measuring, personality to uncover those strengths. So we’re not saying that your personality drives all of your strengths. We’re just saying that it’s a foundation from which you can then discover others.

You can create that broad lexicon, that broader language, around strengths as well.

By having a kind of framework around that, you can then start to collect those together and go, well, actually, my goal focus what does my goal focus and high vitality do for me? It makes me very good at x, y, and zed. So we start to use that as, an enduring language that others understand as well and that we then can use to uncover other strengths and create more commonality, around personality.

The other thing that we can start to do is align, you know, our strengths with roles, whether we’re redesigning roles, for example, or we’re providing opportunities for employees to move roles or do role participation, and then helping them align some of the areas. All they’re, you know, working in project teams, for example, that allow them to, leverage some of their strengths and demonstrate those.

Or if they’re in that consciously flexible mode where they’re learning from other people as well. They’re getting some mentoring and coaching. They’re getting on job skill development, and feedback in the moment.

Just like the oil change processes then, you need to integrate that into organizational practices, whether that’s recruitment, for example, whether that’s performance reviews, whether that’s team building initiatives, all of those sort of small micro practises that we have on a day to day basis all need to start using a strength based language. And I think it’s, you know, in our team, we use that in in trying to understand what we’re leveraging right now. What do we need to call on this week, for example? What are we, looking from other people to support us in the work that we’re that we’re doing? So it doesn’t have to be a huge plan. It can just be sort of those, again, those little micro habits that we’re creating, where we’re putting language, and describing how we’d like to turn up and what we need from others.

The important thing then is we’re getting, you know, creating that language through that measurement of personality. We’re talking about what those strengths look like and feel like and how they’re demonstrated.

And, actually, we’re giving regular feedback on how they’re turning up. So we, you know, it does require a little, structure around, psychological safety and a few other things for that to turn up, of course.

But the interesting thing is that, the interesting thing here is that when we start to recognise it in other people, it’s more likely to be demonstrated.

So peer feedback, and they as they say, you know, if you’re going to want to, create a habit, then, tell somebody outside of your family you’re more likely to stick with a habit. If you’re telling a peer or, somebody you work with, they’re more willing to keep you accountable.

The other aspect then is promoting a continuous learning culture and development culture. So while there’s some idea that once you’ve got a strength, you don’t need to do anything else and kinda takes care of itself, What we need to create is that more open to learning, open to experience culture, and not only openness, but provide that as well through that, the organizational practises, through aligning strengths, or giving development. And the thing that we don’t do well, I think, in most cases, is just celebrate successes, calling those, those small things out, recognising when somebody is doing something well and, actually, when they have stretched out of their comfort zone or they’re stretching their style, as well.

Now whether that’s actually turned out well or not, it’s the recognition, I think, is the really key thing here. So I recognize that, you know, with my low control, I’m trying to do something of high control. I haven’t done it very well, but the effort is the effort is there. The intention is there.

And it’s not it’s not giving everybody a certificate just for turning up, but it’s it is recognising the value of effort and and that somebody is is trying.

Any other things that you would add in to create a, you know, strategies for a strength based approach in your own experience?

Met metrics is the other thing that we would need. You know, start measuring what you measure gets done type of thing.

Reward differently would be another one from our conversation earlier. You need to start rewarding people for doing these things, so it’s embedded into the, you know, that, organizational practices.

Anything else you’ve had in?

I just wanna try and, unpack with you just a little bit now about the the start piece, in terms of introducing anything new from a organizational practice perspective. Mhmm. I’m talk I’m talking HR where I said Yep. To get folk at the at the, the the top where I’m where I’m close to organizationally, but you need to have senior leadership directors, so I’m championing the cause. I mean, is there is there anything that you’d say there in terms of how, a business case can best be made?

Yeah. That’s a it’s a great one. I think the way we’ve been talking about it is, doing kind of the reverse and and understanding some of the issues that they’ve got, and how a strength based culture may be able to, attend to that.

We often talk about, you know, collaboration or poor communication or or conflict or, people not being able to access different styles or taking different approaches. So we, we tend to start with that moment of those moments in a teaming session, for example, and we look across the line dance between one to ten on a particular factor, and we start the conversation around, look at the diversity of styles you’ve got here.

What if you were to be able to harness all those styles and the the positive aspects or the strength based aspects of those in solving the problems that you’re facing now.

So it’s if we try to flip it to really understand the problem that they’re facing, and then it is, it’s not easy because it’s it kind of has to be that raindrop theory, which is, okay. Well, how about you practice this? How about you, make small changes?

The demonstratable change then, the demonstratable effect, I think, is the most powerful thing. The experience of that is one of the most powerful things.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I’m thinking from the individual development, perspective, that’s probably a way to hit it. Do do you mind just going back one slide?

Yeah. Of course.

There was some there was something in there which just made me think how from that bottom up point of view Mhmm. Our team our team leaders and so forth could be could be helped. Yeah. That’s cool.

Yeah. That’s probably the way I think for for me to look to do it from the ground up in terms of using individuals, developing them, and and and seeing what sort of cascades up in terms of people, seeing the result in individual cases and then helping that to reform, other individuals in that sort of over sort of postmodern wave change. Alright. Cheers.

Yeah. I I think when you know, the the thing that I if I come down, the celebrating success, the pair the peer recognition, and, again, because it starts with leadership, if you can get a leader talking about their strengths and how they go about approaching things, using it from a perspective of learning and, demonstrating that, but also calling out actively other people and their strengths. That’s a really powerful motivator. You know, they have to lead by, example.

So it takes one person to start that or initiate that or catalyze that. I think, you know, it and we spoke about it early on is the concept of talking yourself up, I think, is a real barrier with strength based culture, which is, I if I’m talking about what I’m good at and how I like to work, we kind of have that tall poppy syndrome, which is like, yeah. I think you’re a bit too big for your boots, and, you know, we we like to be have people in their place. So we’ve gotta overcome that perspective and, really change the culture around how do we help people really, express who they are in a positive strength based way that adds value to other people, not just the bragging or ego or whatever it may be, but actually talking about, what they can contribute.

Any thoughts from Rob or David in in Richard in the work that you’re doing? You’re all working with teams on a regular basis.

So something that jumped out when you’re talking about the talk, Poppy. I I thinking about all the American, our colleagues, Elizabeth and Monica might talk to it. I think the Americans are a lot happier talking about their strengths, than in the English tradition.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That, I think that’s a really, it still resonates, culturally that that’s that’s something we don’t do. Mhmm. I, one one way I like to try to do it at at that individual level, just picking up on the earlier point, with the leader or with the senior leaders, is really striking their egos about, well, helping them understand what they’ve got, you know, and and why they’re successful and understanding that, the strengths based approach about, well, what is your recipe for success?

And then how can we enhance that? How can we double down on that? How can we sweat the assets? How can we get more out of that for the individual?

And and then, yeah, that opportunity to expand you know, explore and expand that for the group or the team or or whatever. What what have you. I think I think that’s that’s worked well for me, over the years about, yeah, having that one on one with the the top leader to be able to say, well, you know, this is a way for you to understand why you’re successful. Mhmm. I think that’s that’s a really unusual conversation to to somebody.

Mhmm.

Yeah. And I think then, you know, I would say that ultimately depends on their personality. And I think if you’re a promoter or an architect or somebody with lots of will and lots of energy, that’s a natural conversation. I think if you’re, kind of the opposite to that, then that may not feel as comfortable. But I think the approach is still the same, which is how do you take that those great skills that you’ve got and and, pass those on to other people? How do you, enhance that in the organisation?

I I was actually thinking when you were talking to me, Grant, the other way, which is, like, yeah, we’ve got some some junior people. So, like, like, using the career motivators to, start to have discussions and think about, like, what’s next and and building on their strengths.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which, like, I never I’ve it’s it’s probably really obvious, but I never really thought of, you know, like, like, utilizing the tool in that way to to sort of think about what’s next.

Yeah. I think it’s a great use of that when you can you’re getting them a a language and a a structure, I suppose, to that conversation around, you know, what they’re looking for, what in how they like to be led, what they’re, you know, looking for over a longer term in their career as well. I think that’s a really empowering approach, for individuals.

Great. So what next for a a strength based culture? And I’m just, conscious of the time. So I’m just gonna come down because we’ve got just a little bit more time. So I moved this because I overspoke this morning.

We’re gonna have a quick conversation about some of the myths then very quickly, which are in that document, the the ebook that I’ve written.

I think then the, some of the myths we’ve got five myths, basically, around, taking strength based approach to that focusing on strengths means that you’re ignoring weaknesses.

Actually in reality is just creating a balance of conscious development.

We’re not so much ignoring them. We’re stretching into those, areas where we’re more aware of what our weaknesses are because they’re probably not a preferred approach.

We’re seeking feedback and we’re, we tend to be then thinking about how do we amplify the strengths? How do we change the shape of the circle to fit through that square?

But we’re also acknowledging some of those gaps. So we’re moderating our gaps by understanding them more than anything.

The other one that I hear a lot is, oh, we’ve got all these strength based culture. We don’t need to do anything because they’ll take care of themselves. I think, again, just because we’ve got a strength doesn’t mean it’s turning up well, and that still requires some skill and development practice around that in order to to turn up well. So we need to kind of make that unconscious more conscious, polish it a bit more, put some skill around it, make sure it’s turning up in the right way for the context that we find it in.

Number three, strength based cultures avoid difficult conversations.

Actually, I think that it’s the other way around. I think that, a strength based culture encourages feedback because you’re seeking to do a better job. You’re seeking feedback from other people. You’re seeking different perspectives. You’re being more curious and empathetic in your approach. So you’re starting to, create more constructive feedback mechanisms for individuals, looking to how you can leverage other people and how you can stretch more consciously and how you can develop your strengths, through that feedback process.

Number four, focusing on strengths being avoiding risk.

Similar to, number one, I think the reality is that it when we’re when we think about conscious flexibility as a concept, we’re we’re encouraging people to be more conscious of the risks that they’re prepared to take and what they need in order to do that safely.

So we’re we’re moving away from just jumping into something, but, being more conscious about the process that we’re going through.

And therefore, we we probably tend to put more mitigants in to make sure that we are successful.

No guarantees, of course, but I think it’s just, again, that conscious conscious making approach that we’re using from a strength base. We’ve got a better understanding of the entirety of that risk. And if you’re, low emotionality, for example, where everything’s pretty good and you don’t need to worry too much, and you don’t worry too much, that conscious flexibility allows you to kind of move up, maybe up that scale a little bit more in order to understand what could go wrong, the, the may happens, as well.

And then number five, strength based cultures guarantee universal success. And I think if that was the case, then we wouldn’t have any problem implementing strength based cultures, would we? And it’s not the reality at all. It’s just that they can be more impactful, when we are. And as we saw with the Gallup and the center for creative leadership numbers, when we do do them well, we can shift the dial on the organ on an organization.

But it’s not, you know, not a direct hit on the bottom line. It’s a more of a matrix or analytic approach, that we’re seeing across organizations in enhanced performance, in health, enhanced well-being, you know, reduced absenteeism, greater discretionary effort. All of those sort of things come from that, which drives success over a longer period of time.

Any other myths that you would’ve that you’ve heard, along the way?

Maybe that it’s something that people want because sometimes people like working on working on weaknesses.

Yeah. Yeah. True.

Then, actually, yeah, I think that probably number six is that working on our weaknesses makes us a better leader or a better employee.

I think it’s kind of the opposite, isn’t it, in in some ways, which is like, if we’re more conscious about what their gaps are, yes, that will actually help us, but we have to understand what the gap is. And so, therefore, we need to understand how we prefer to approach things, what our strengths are, and then understand where we’re stretching to.

And I we spoke about early on, Richard, just before you you, joined was that we’ve grown up in a culture of, development being weaknesses and being risks and having to fill those gaps, kind of that dysfunctional disease model of development, where we we relate development to fixing a problem as opposed to development, which is kind of leveraging a strength in order to reduce a risk, you know, manage weaknesses, create, opportunity or success.

So some strategies for leaders, and the document that I mentioned before, we’ve we put a few down here, but just very quickly, there’s a whole range of different things that we can do to support leaders, and and some of those are modeling strengths application, for example. So, highlighting how people are using them, how they’re addressing challenges with them, making decisions, achieving results.

It it could be as simple as, you know, conversations around one of the strengths could be high will, and they’re very effective, decision making, but how they can then use that in order to be more inclusive in that approach, with the rest of the team. So we called out our strength. Here’s what I do very well, and here’s how I’m being more conscious about applying that so it’s not overplayed that I’m recognising that when I do overplayed that I can exclude people rather than include them.

We’re encouraging, strength based feedback with individuals. So we’re recognizing and aligning team member strengths to, activities that could be in, one to one meetings. It could be in team meetings. It could be through written communication, a whole range of different things.

But it’s encouraging that strength based feedback, which is, you know, how how am I going? How are you seeing me turning up? What could I do with dial up or dial down in the work that I’m doing with you? I have those in my one to one conversations.

What should I stop doing? Do you think I should stop doing that’s impacting you? What should I do more of, that would be supportive of you? Now I can’t always guarantee what I can do more of is aligned to what I naturally like doing, but it means that I’ve got a better understanding of what’s required in my role.

I think then we can help as leaders, challenge comfort zones so we can recognize them when somebody is kind of sitting comfortably in their strength and not extending beyond, and maybe that is impacting their performance and impacting their role. So we can challenge that by drawing them out a little bit further.

We’re not asking them to kinda go from a one to a ten or a ten to a one, but we’re incrementally pulling them out of that and stretching that with skill and opportunity and and support.

We’re celebrating those strengths. We’re calling those strengths out in in action, and I think that’s a really important thing is that when we celebrate those, we’re highlighting the value that we’re putting on those actions. We’re highlighting the contribution.

We’re changing kind of the narrative around what we value in the how we do things, around here as well. And as we had mentioned before, those sort of solving the problems, getting those void those sort of advocacy, getting that demonstrated is a way to start to shift the you know, that change cycle, for implementing strengths.

And I think it’s in how do we create more, open conversations that should be really about strengths so that we create a culture where people feel, comfortable discussing, their strengths, also discussing the, you know, the flex or the gap that they’re working in at the moment. You know, I think, David, you gave a great example where you, you know, kind of put your hand up and said, yeah. That’s not my thing. I don’t like, you’re better off getting somebody else come and do that for you to get the a better result.

I think then we’re creating that openness to that. That does require a few things in place, I think, around psychological safety, that we’re not getting retribution. We’re not getting marked down or or being seen less as, because of having that conversation, as well. And then I think number six is around creating those opportunities for individuals.

So if somebody’s coming in with their career motivators, Richard was saying, then we’re really got to provide an opportunity for them in order to do that. And it’s otherwise, we’re finding that people will come in. They kinda hit a wall of of opportunity, and they’ll go somewhere else. They’ll leave the organization, so you get higher attrition.

And, overall, I think you get lower motivation, from employees.

And then leading with flexibility, I think, is the last thing, which is how are your strengths actually contributing to the situational demands of the team and the and the work?

So while you may have a strength, you can then talk about actually, while my strength is, being quite creative, I’m going to have to lean into or stretch into something and being a bit more disciplined over the next week, because I’ve got a lot of structured work to do. So that means it’s going to come from that energy is going to be dialed down from other places. The, my focus is going to be there And it may feel a bit more inauthentic to people around me and to myself. But what I’m demonstrating is I’m leading with that flexibility in in order to, meet the requirements of the context, the situation, or the or the role.

Very good. So let me go back up, a couple of slides then.

So what we’ve got is the opportunity, obviously, for people to we’ve got the ebook, which, we’ve written out. It’s just a bit more long winded than the conversation that we’ve had, this evening or this morning.

And we’ll send that out. And it’s just on, you know, the role of personality in a strength based, culture. If you haven’t got a key qualities report and you’d like yours, then you can we just need your written permission in the chat. You can just put your name and email address, and we’ll get that out to you. And that will give you a really nice view of who how what your strengths are, how you like to turn up, and how you can leverage those. But also where you might need to look at, when you’re overplaying those strengths as well. And what we’ll do is we’ll send that to you via your myFacetFive, web account so you can get to see that as well.

One thing that occurred to me in that that previous question was a conversation I had with someone recently who was about to be, taking over a direct ship with a volatile crew. So we were going through his phase of five and his strengths and then mapping that against the challenges that he might have with particular members of the, organization he was joining, looking at his strengths and mapping them against the, you know, the specific challenges that he might have with individuals and working out a strategy for, dealing with those individuals.

So, yeah, that’s interesting.

It’s often that conflict of styles, isn’t it? When we, we approach something in a different way to other people, and we create a judgment around that. And I I think about my high determination for people I feel who have low determination who I feel just procrastinate and kind of put up barriers or, my high vitality and not being able to draw out enthusiasm out of people, unless I’m really conscious about that, then, actually, I find I can exclude them, quite quickly as well.

Yeah. Well, I think no. He initially was thinking of going in and trying to make a big impact on the first day, and then Yep. Wasn’t real wasn’t really his style. That was more a a thought of a cultural expectation.

And in the end, he decided, you go in, take a quiet leap, sit back, and Yeah.

See what’s happening, engage with people individually with your strength, and then start having a bigger impact after that.

Yeah.

Very good. Very good.

So thank you very much for coming along. That’s all I’ve got for you, this evening. I’m really happy to answer any other questions or observations, whether these sort of conversations are are valuable, to you. We’ve got a whole year of them coming up of planned sort of master classes and and keynotes.

If you’ve got any topics that you’d like to hear about, then, you know, you can always let us know as well what’s, you know, what’s pertinent in your area just at the moment and what we might be able to contribute to. If you’d like to lead a conversation, that’s even better.

We’re always happy to have people come on and, and have conversations for us. But, otherwise, I will, thank you for those people that have put in their name and email address for the, profile. That’s great. We’ll send out a copy of the strength based guide for you as well, and you can access to this recording. It would take about a week by the time they, process it and take out all the rubbish and, label all the good bits.