What Is Strengths Coaching?
The Strengths Coaching I’ll refer to here is what happens after a person takes a Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. The report that comes from taking a Clifton StrengthsFinder shows a person’s totally unique human makeup or wiring as I like to call it, based on how their 34 traits line up.
The results of this assessment don’t throw a person into a box or category that someone else created. This assessment brilliantly shows a person how entirely unique they are. As a Strengths Coach, I get to show my clients what to do with their uniqueness. I’m passionate about this work.
“Millennials love not being put into a box by the way”
Traits / Strengths
The traits at or near the top of someone’s Clifton StrengthsFinder report are generally thought to be someone’s Strengths. This is true if a person is aware of their dominant traits and if they’re actively working to leverage their dominate traits to create the best possible version of themselves.
I spoke in front of an audience of approximately 75 people. I asked the audience to raise their hand of they had ever taken a Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. My best guess is that as many as 60 out of 75 hands went up.
I then asked those who had raised their hand to keep their hand up if they had done anything with their StrengthsFinder assessment results. Again, my best guess suggests that approximately 10 hands remained raised and as many as 50 hands went down.
Eye Opener
This was an eye opening experience for me. At that moment, I began to understand why so many people I encounter think they know their strengths. In reality, these people might know the words that sit on an assessment report but if they’ve never gone beyond the word descriptions on the assessment report, they likely don’t know their unique personal strengths and more importantly, how those strengths operate.
My Strengths Coaching Process
- Begins with my client taking a Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment.
- What: In our first session together, I help my client to understand what their report says, how to read and interpret their report and we set the ground work for our second meeting.
- Why: In our second session together, my focus is on interactively taking my client on a deep dive into their unique top traits. My goal here is to help my client see how and why their unique traits cause them to operate the way they do. Simultaneously, my client will learn how their unique traits could be coming across to other people. It is during this second meeting that “Ah Ha” moments and “Light bulb” moments frequently occur. This is when my clients start to see not just what dots are sitting on their report but they start to see how their dots work together to make them the unique person they are.
- How: In our next meeting, this is when I build our meeting around the homework my client worked on after our second meeting. During the homework stage, I find that many of my clients start to develop clarity around what they uniquely have to offer. Once the switch flips in my client’s mine, it is now time to start working on how they can leverage their unique giftedness to create their best performance.
- Leverage: In our fourth meeting, this is where I apply my 26+ years of experience as a professional recruiter to help my clients to create a personal strategy around their unique Strengths. By strategy I’m referring to what my client will do with their new-found understanding of how to create their own best performance. For some of my clients, this means making course adjustments in the job they already have in the company they’re already in. Some of my clients come to the realization that they might be in the wrong job or that they might be in the right or wrong job in the wrong company. Other clients who had been scratching an entrepreneurial itch now have the clarity to see that stepping out to start their own business of some sort is the right personal decision.
Bottom Line
What matters to me is that each and every Strengths Coaching client I’m privileged to work with is able to move forward with enhanced Clarity, Direction, Confidence and a Strategic Plan to know how to get to their next destination.
What's Next?
Many of my Strengths Coaching clients learn so much about themselves through the Strengths Coaching experience that they stick with me to work on improving their Emotional Intelligence. In addition to being a Strengths Coach, I am also a Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach. The work I do around Emotional Intelligence Coaching is the most deeply impacting work I’ve been privileged to do with other people in my entire career.
The combination of Strengths Coaching and Emotional Intelligence Coaching is what moves my clients from “Good to Great” and I’m fortunate enough to go along for the ride.
