Getting a Team to Leverage their Strengths to Collaborate

I was asked to enable a team to use their strengths to improve their collaboration as a team with the help of the CliftonStrengths assessment.  

Love that thought - especially since I'm a certified Strengths Strategy Coach.

This team were the leaders of R&D and had teams reporting in. So yes - their average experience per person would between 18 to 20 years.

The challenge - covering a lot of content along with reflection and discussions within a short time.  Specifically I was given a day, after a lot of negotiation. There's many dimensions to CliftonStrengths that have to covered before a participant is able to understand how strengths manifest, as well as how they can be triggered, unconsciously and consciously.  This is true for group settings as well as one-to-one strengths coaching.

The base workshop design was from my Signature Workshop "Decode your Strengths", and I included a lot of pre-work and post work - i.e. articles to read and exercises for self-reflection.

The participants were wonderful and invested their time to complete the pre-work assigned to them, in addition to completing the CliftonStrengths assessment.  Their participation during the workshop definitely enhanced the learning experience for everyone.

We covered the 34 Strengths, Great Wall of Talent, Theme Dynamics, how collaboration happens when weaknesses are negated by complementing strengths, and ended the day with short case studies of how strengths, when understood, can be used to manage different situations at work.

What's next? Practice and Reviews.  Let's see how they go.

Here's some of the action from the day.

Building the Top 5 Great Wall of Talent

The Great Wall of Talent

Creating the Team Domain Map

Do connect with me if you wish to build a Strengths-based Team or Organization that can use their strengths to effectively collaborate with each other.

Worklife Balance - The Art of Balancing Yourself

The stress we face at work and home has been increasing only over the past 15 years, not that it was much less before.  Because of the late hours, working lunches, extended working weekends, and family responsibilities, it's very difficult for folks to find the time to wind down. What aggravates the problem is that many people are caught up in jobs they don't really like doing and delivering results by putting in extra hours like never before.

This has increased over the past four years because the lockdown and the mandatory work from home policy blurred the lines between work and home. Achieving work-life balance seems to be an impossible dream, for most of us.

Photo credit: pexels-michael-judkins-1113552

For clarity - here's a basic definition of work-life balance from Google - "the division of one's time and focus between working and family or leisure activities."

With organizations competing heavily for growth, employees at all levels of organization are being pushed harder than ever before. Some days, you feel it's better to stay in bed and switch off the wi-fi and phone. 

Credit pexels-pixabay-Stay in Bed 271897

Worse - it can lead to a feeling that you are stuck (due to a variety of reasons, particularly financial reasons).

Stuck Lift Button Photo by imustbedead httpswww.pexels.comphotoperson-holding-black-and-white-round-ornament-10835818

There's a lot of literature about work-life balance available online and in books.  Managing the stress that one goes through (at home or at work) is a key theme.  Meditation, diet and exercise are frequently prescribed and they are all effective to the extent that the employee is able to carve out the time to do it diligently. Most don't work on the root cause.

I also like the idea from Marcus Buckingham of doing more of what you love and less of what you don't enjoy. This would have the effect of unbalancing yourself in the direction of the things that you enjoy doing.  Of course, easier said than done, but nevertheless, it is definitely worth attempting. A lot of artists, athletes, business and corporate folk have managed to do this. The example of Mr. Piyush Pandey from the Advertising world comes to mind.

I've an additional viewpoint to offer. 

When I was in the corporate world, there were many days when we worked late in the office, leaving only around 8 pm. I used to sing regularly with my church choir at the time. We would have practices on two weekdays that began and ended late since the singers were all working people.  I recall many days when I attended practices though I was extremely tired from the office day.  

Instead of being exhausted on returning home, I would find that I was energized.  I checked with other singers who also confirmed similar feelings and experiences.  Subsequently, I spoke to other people at work, asking them how they unwound from a tiring day or week.  Each of them had different methds or activities - from listening to music, playing with their pets, going for a long walk or even a jog at night, giving attention to the family members (including kids), working on their hobbies maybe twice or thrice a week, each of which contributed to improving the way they felt about themselves.  

Whatever activity they chose allowed them to use some of their talents that weren't being used sufficiently (or at all) at work.  Sometimes, of course, there was a similarity.

Here's my understanding of this:

We humans are a mix of structured and creative ways of being.  Most of us prefer to have a structured routine on a daily basis, with a few minor changes, because it gives us a sense of comfort. 

All of us are endowed with both skills for both structure and creativity.  Some are wired more towards one side, and our upbringing, education and circumstances (environment) along with our own decisions play a major role in which side we end up using, along with the line of work we choose. 

However, most of our jobs are demanding in a manner that requires us to work in an extremely structured manner in a strongly regulated internal (within the organization) environment that interfaces and interacts with an external environment where regular flux is the name of the game.  This flux increases our work pressure and our stress.  It is compounded by the reality that a solution that worked yesterday (or earlier) will not work sufficiently or as effectively today, and may be completely irrelevant tomorrow. Our jobs also require us to spend extended hours at work on a daily basis, and with remote work, the lines between home and work are quite blurred.  This makes it difficult for us to switch off from work and, has increased the amount of stress we go through.

So what should we be doing to balance ourselves? Here are my suggestions:

• Spend time knowing (really getting to know) your strengths.  You can do this by using a validated psychometric assessment, hire a Strengths Strategy Coach like me and / or getting feedback from people who know you well enough to be honest with you.
• Think about the hobbies where you spent a lot of time while growing up. Identify those hobbies where time just flew by while you were doing it and enjoying it. This would mean that these hobbies are aligned with your strengths.
• Look for opportunities to bring at least two of those hobbies into your current schedule.  This could be daily, weekly, fortnightly. These hobbies shouldn't be easy and should possess a degree of challenge that is sufficient for you to access the Flow Zone.
• Any activity that is less than that frequency would not help you to reduce stress much. Some of my friends who still make time to play football or other physical sports. Others cook meals for their family on Sundays. I sing in my church choir at least twice a month.
• Guard this schedule zealously and jealously, as much as you can.
• Figure out how you could be paid money to do one or more the things you enjoy, so that it becomes your fulltime career and job, instead of something in your spare time.  I have helped my clients make this happen for them and they have more satisfied careers and less stressed lives.
• Initiate a discussion with your reporting manager and HR to plan how to use your strengths more in your job.  I know this is difficult, but it's worth a try.

By doing these things, you stand a better chance of balancing yourself and achieving your work-life balance. 

In the corporate world, the HR team and line managers can look at hiring people based on their strengths so that they will be more engaged while at work.

Want to know more about Balancing Yourself by Using Your Strengths or Identifying a Career based on your strengths? Write to me at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call on +919820155778 for a discussion.

When Your Calling Doesn’t Call: What Do You Do Without a Life Passion?

Interesting headline? Read on... 

“If we don’t know what we want to be when we grow up, is there something fundamentally wrong with us?”

Following our joy, chasing our bliss, finding our dharma: these are good things, right? We want to be like the heroic people who gave up the security of some well-paying 9-to-5 in order to move to Greece and start a goat farm that can power a small village. Amazing, right? Let’s all follow our passions!

But what if we don’t have one? What if there’s nothing in particular we’d want to give up our steady paycheck for? What if we care about living a meaningful life but don’t know what, exactly, that would look like?

If you feel this way, you’re not alone. The people that turned their passions into lucrative careers are happy to toot their own horns about it, and loudly. But most of us aren’t doing that. We haven’t found our calling, so we keep waiting for the phone to ring. We join the circus or buy a mobile home to sell our jewelry out of, and for a while, it feels like a life calling. It feels meaningful and important. Then, after a while, exhausted from working too hard and making too little, we realize that we’re bored and frustrated and maybe we’re not in love with what we thought was our calling anymore. Turns out the call was just spam.

Then we start to wonder: If we don’t know what we want to be when we grow up, is there something fundamentally wrong with us?

There isn’t. It’s a myth that we all have some single grand life passion that we must be following or we’re living some pale, flaccid version of life. It’s as mythological as the idea of The One for romantic love.

Read the rest of this fascinating article here.

While you do that, I advocate that you should identify a Purpose that aligns with your strengths. This purpose is not written in stone - meaning, you can change it whenever you like, or even have more than one Purpose at a time. I support my Strengths-based career coaching clients in this journey.

If you want to know how to do this, contact me on +919820155778 or write to ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com for a discussion.

Session learnings and Feedback - Strengths-based Resume Writing

Extremely happy to have conducted two sessions on Strengths-based Resume Writing and Interview Preparation for the students of R.A. Podar College in Matunga (E), Mumbai.

Approximately 170 students were covered in two separate three-hour batches conducted over 2 days.

Here is the feedback for both days.

This is where they have stated how they feel about writing their own Strength-based Resume after attending my session.

What they will apply from the sessions-

Extremely grateful to Ruta Vyas and the management at R.A. Podar College for the opportunity.

Do connect with me to conduct such sessions for students.

If you want personalized individual coaching for writing your resume or preparing for interviews, please do write to me at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call on +919820155778 for a discussion.

The Recipe for Effective and Long-term Collaboration

Photo Credit: pexels-alexander-grey-1212407

Have you ever watched a movie with friends, and then later realize that each of you liked and disliked different parts of the same movie that you just saw together, at the same time in the same place?  A similar thing happens with real life people. Have you wondered what causes this difference of opinion? I am sure you noticed that this happens in other areas of life too, including the workplace.  Well, you are not alone in this.  Have a look at this snippet from the world of tennis.

From Facebook - "US Open 1981 final...who thought it would be their last match? McEnroe wrote in his book he could not motivate himself for 2 years after Borg quit. He tried to persuade Borg to comback. When Borg was in Chennai in Feb 2023,he was asked about his rivalry with John in a press meet. Borg recalled the interaction he had with McEnroe in 1982 and 1983. This is what Borg said.

"When I stepped away from the game, I was very young. I played an exhibition in Tokyo. John came to me and said, ‘You cannot stop playing tennis.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘No. Because I need you there!’ ‘But I don’t wanna play!"
“But he was always pushing me because I think, as long as I was there, he was pushing (himself). He liked it, he enjoyed it very much and that was very important for him. And he was very sad, disappointed. And he called me year later and said, ‘You sure you not going to come back to tennis again?’ ‘I’m sure. John. Listen, you do your things. I do my things.’

A similar sentiment was expressed by Freddie Mercury in the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody" when he said that while his solo career was successful, he missed the pushback from the Queen band members when they were writing songs. This pushback helped them deliver some of the best music that has stood the test of time.

If you think about it, this is not unusual at all. You would find this kind of team behaviour mentioned in the Storming, Norming and Performing stages of the Tuckman Stages of Group Development model. Every team tends to go through all the stages. Looking at the Storming stage, team members start to display more of their true selves and their differences while working together, which can lead to conflicts.  In the Norming stage, the team members have worked through their differences and establish some consensus (norms) about what and how things will be done.  There may still be disagreements, but are unlikely to derail the work.  In the Performing stage, the team members understand and accept each other better, enabling them to deliver great performance.  These stages aren't linear and team members are likely to revert to the earlier stages in case of new projects, disagreements or changes in leadership. As the leader or team member, the model will help you understand the stage that your team is in, thus enabling you to make relevant adjustments in your behaviour. You can read more details about the model here - https://hr.mit.edu/learning-topics/teams/articles/stages-development

I have seen this kind of scenario in other situations too. I've learnt that it's important because if you don't have someone who is good enough or better than you to work with, then you cannot improve more than what your mind comes up with.  We know that the seven colours of the rainbow combine to give us many more colours. Similarly, the mind gets it's ideas and inspiration from the points of view that are different / unique / contrary more than the homogeneous.

This absolutely drives home the need for interacting and being with people from diverse  ways of thinking.  We have diverse ways looking at the world and making our strengths come to life (i.e. using them) because we come from different homes, cultures, education, experiences and upbringing which have combined to give us a unique worldview.  This is a practice followed by masters through the ages. Most of the time, however, we're not fully aware that we're doing this.

Could this be because we tend to see things as we are, not as they exist in reality?

So, we must first accept that there are things we prefer to do and things we prefer to NOT do - not try to do everything.  NEXT we have to identify them. If we are able to identify and filter out some of the censorship that is invariably there (fear-driven, cautious behaviour from our Imposter Syndrome being a key culprit) that exists in our minds, we give ourselves the opportunity of asking "why not" or "how about" and exploring possibilities while experimenting with different ways of doing things.  You will find your tasks / work sparking into experiences filled with fresh learning and success.

As a strengths strategy coach, I help teams understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and enable them to build the necessary synergy (and engagement) for creating magic at work.  I use PRISM Brainmapping Inventory or the CliftonStrengths assessment as a primary aid for this.

If you want to know how to get your team to collaborate by complementing each other's weaknesses with their strengths, write to me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call on +91982155778.

 

Fighting Burnout with Strengths

Most employees across the world are facing burnout.  Many of them are asking and taking breaks, and some employers are responding positively to such requests. Some opt for medication under prescription.

There is another way - leverage your strengths for this.

From the article: "The most effective coping mechanisms people use involve positively adjusting how they think about or interpret their workplace stressors."

Read the rest of the article here.

#burnoutrecovery #burnoutprevention #strengths #stressmanagement #strengthsdecoder #performancecoaching

The Assist

The world cup is just finished. There were 172 goals scored at the 2022 World Cup, a new all-time competition record, surpassing the 171 scored in both 1998 and 2014.  Lionel Messi has been directly involved in 21 goals at the World Cup for Argentina (13 goals, eight assists), the outright most of any player for any nation at the finals on record (since 1966). For the source of these numbers, go here.

From the above sentence, "Involved in" means assisted indirectly in the scoring of the goal. Here's what it looks like on the football field. 

The art of assisting does not get its sufficient credit in football. Now though, with video tech and analytics, fans are beginning to identify how vital these second-last passes can be and the skill it takes to thread a ball by breaking defensive lines.  

Similarly, in our regular lives, we sometimes tend to forget that we got to where we are because of the assists of particular people.  I'm not just talking about the cheerleaders, but also the ones who challenged us rudely, rejected our views and ideas or just created roadblocks for us where none were expected.  These negative assists really made us UP our game, and have also played a key role in bringing us where we are by getting us to use our strengths knowingly, as well as differently.

So as  2022, draws to a close, I thought it important to thank all those who assisted me, both positively and negatively in my journey.  You may wish to do the same.

Have a great 2023.

My Latest Coaching Certificate

 

Thanks to all those who supported me on my journey.

Leadership Authenticity Starts With Knowing Yourself

Here's a must read article if you want to develop yourself as an "Authentic Leader".

From the article - "Authentic leaders are always investing in strengths -- their own strengths as well as those of their followers." 

When you think about it, you realize that trying to fix weaknesses wastes time, causes unhappiness, dissatisfaction and disengagement, and building on strengths can accelerate growth while having a positive energy experience.

Read the rest of the article here

Practice Art - Feed Your Soul

 If you are in job which is pulling you down, then you have to balance it with art i.e. a hobby that helps you use your #creative style.

Please vote on this Emotional Intelligence Poll

The work problems due to low Emotional Intelligence occur much more than we like to admit.

In the poll below, please share what you think will be most effective solution for both the individual and organization's growth.

Please comment if there is a course of action that isn't mentioned in the poll. The number 5 is just an assuumption, and could be any number of times that you prefer.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/barrettoryan_selfawareness-selfmanagement-strengthsdecoder-activity-6925750616937902080-AIRd?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

Don’t bother working on weaknesses. Success lies in playing to strengths

This article is why I use Strengths in my work as a career transition coach and as a trainer / facilitator. 

Here's a line from that article:

"Encouraging a focus on knowing and building strengths is the route to a vibrant, happy workforce giving their best."

On a personal note:

Too often I have seen talented people stuck in roles that are not aligned with their strengths.  They are in their current career / job, because they were guided by someone who had their best interests and safety at hear. They are not at their most liveliest during the interview.  They seem to be going through the motions at work.  They're reluctant to make a transition to the career that is better aligned with their strengths, perhaps because of loans to pay, fear of the unknown, or fear of what people will say.

You might say - but we all have weaknesses, and we can't really say no if our work involves that.  

That's true.  What you can do is understand the weaknesses they have that matter in relation to the job in hand, and see how it can be complemented by a colleague's strengths - AND vice-versa.

Read the details in article here.

To know more how to leverage your strengths, please view my articles:

Strengths-based Career Conversations

Setting Your Goalsetting Conversation

9 Critical Aspects to consider when setting goals

How do I develop my Strengths?

And I am NOT! - How to leverage your strengths for Resilience?

Why 'Any Job' will not be appropriate for you?

Leadership expectations - 2022 and beyond

Here is another list of #expectations of #skills and capabilities that a #leader should have / develop. Read the article here.

I don't personally see anything new in this list (Read the book "How Did They Manage?" for more about leadership management). Here's what I know: The Strategically Smart leader knows that he cannot know and do it all, so he hires a team that complements his weaknesses with their #strengths and hires a Strengths coach to support them all.

The positive side of "What you don't know"

 Human nature - we fear what we don't know, particularly when we've never tried it before.

Solution if you want to grow :

- Invest in developing more #selfawareness , and

- Get a #mentor or Strengths Coach for support

What do you think?

PS- Check out the clock

A question to help you DECODE on your Strengths-based Career Path

 While I use a number of questions and a detailed career coaching process to enable my candidates decode and design a career based on their strengths, here's a question from the Gallup organization that can definitely help you drill down towards identifying your strengths based career.

Here's a short comment from the article - "You probably can't be anything you want to be because you just can't be good at everything. But if you know and apply your strengths in your role, you can be more successful."

How Leaders empower

 

When leaders empower their team members to enable them to utilize their strengths at work, they become a bridge to superlative performance and employee engagement.  

Why?

When this happens, the stretch goals become a challenge that engages employees positively and helps drive enhanced performance.

If you want to do this for your organization, let's talk.

Video - Five Lenses to Zoom in on a Fulfilling & Satisfying Career

When you have shortlisted a career or two that you are thinking of pursuing, these lenses will help you zero in on how to go about making your career decision. Finally, don't be afraid to make changes and have more than two careers during your lifetime. Many people are doing it, and there's no reason why you shouldn't too. After all, it is your life.

You want help to navigate these lenses? Write to me at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or call at +91-9820155778.

Watch the video here 

When do you you need to hire a coach?

Wondering if you should be hiring a coach? Read this lucid article to get your answer.

Contact me to know how strengths coaching will get you results.  With my coaching, you will become a strong, empathetic and focused leader and will enable you to grow your organization successfully.

#strengthscoaching #strengthsdecoder #coaching #hiringacoach #coachingculture

9 Ways to Reinforce and Live Your Company's values Every Day

 Super read on making your #organizationvalues a reality in terms of behaviour.

I have put some of the 9 ways into practice during my corporate stint years ago, and designed and ran a group process #facilitation session for a client a few years ago to help the employees understand how they can make the values really visible in terms of daily work behaviour.

Read this article here

Using Clifton Strengths as a Filter / Lens to see the world

Here's an excellent article that will help you gain more clarity about your strengths.  This is also a part of what I learnt during my Strengths Strategy Coach Certification.  My teacher and strengths mentor, DeAnna Murphy, and her team at Strengths Strategy (People Acuity) had created a Strengths Lens tool, among many other tools to help coaches like me work with our clients.

Just another reminder for me about why I chose to become a Strengths Strategy Coach.

Read the article here

Want to understand your unique lens of viewing the world? Contact me here or at +919820155778 for an appointment.