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Improvement

by John Pearson

FIND

YOUR
STRENGTHS
Try this exercise at your next staff or board meeting: OK, everyone,
please stand up for a pop quiz. And good news: I have a Starbucks

gift card for anyone who can answer all five questions!

1. If you have ever taken an assessment, such as


StrengthsFinder, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,
DiSC, Social Style, Birkman Method or The Smalley
Center Free Personality Test (the one with four
animals)then remain standing.
2. Based on the assessment you selected, remain
standing if you can actually remember your type,
color, animal, or four-letter description or your Top
5 strengths from StrengthsFinder.
3. Now using that type or your Top 5 strengths, if
you can describe what your color, word or letters
meanremain standing.
(For those few still standing, follow up with these
questions: If you said ENTJ, what do those letters
mean? What does High D mean? What does Woo
mean? Youre an otterso what?!)
4. Remain standing if you can list your supervisorsor your board chairstype or strengths, using
that same system.
5. Remain standing if you can list your direct
reports types or strengths, using the same system.
(This one is rarely needed.)
Ive conducted this pop quiz for more than 60

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February/March 2014

clients and in dozens of workshops and


training sessions over the last eight years.
With more than 1,000 people, the quiz
has cost me fewer than five Starbucks
cards. Some leaders do remember what
an assessment says about them, but few
study the uniqueness of their bosses,
board chairs or direct reports.
Thats tragic on multiple levels! We
invest enormous amounts of energy in
resolving staff, volunteer and board
conflictswhen instead, we could easily
avoid many interpersonal problems by
simply becoming students of those we
work with. We could dramatically reduce
staff and volunteer turnover simply by
knowing and leveraging the unique
strengths of the people around us.
How? Numerous camp and conference leaders have discovered the
StrengthsFinder assessment and
resources and have created a strengths
mindset in their ministries. They are

THE POWER OF
STRENGTHSFINDER
TO IMPROVE YOUR

among almost 10 million people from more than


100 countries who have taken the online StrengthsFinder assessment.
The benefits are both collective and personal. Our
studies indicate that people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times
as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than
three times as likely to report having an excellent
quality of life in general, writes Tom Rath in the
best-selling StrengthsFinder 2.0.

Leveraging Board Strengths


Will one more assessment help? Yes, says Mike Pate,
executive director of camping for Transformation
Ministries, which includes two camps in California
and one in Arizona. Three years ago, Pate began using
this popular tool for discovering and leveraging the
strengths of his advisory board members.
Many boards unknowingly expect their executive
directors to have all the strengths. The StrengthsFinder
assessment identifies 34 of the most common talents.
They are categorized within four domains: Executing,
Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic

Thinking. This online tool helps individuals, including board members, to focus
on an individuals top five strengths
instead of his or her weaknesses.
Clearly, no one person will be gifted
in all 34 strengths, but research by the
Gallup Organizationwhich also owns
StrengthsFindersays job satisfaction
will skyrocket if you help people leverage
their top five strengths. For example,
here are Pates top five strengths in order:

iStock / Dean Mitchell

TEAM AND MINISTRY

Communication: People with this

strength are skilled at putting their


thoughts into words in conversation
and presentations.

Strategic: Those with this strength

can quickly spot relevant patterns and


issues and find alternative routes
forward.

Positivity: People talented in this area

are upbeat and have contagious


enthusiasm. 

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EXTRA INFO

STRENGTHSFINDER TOOLS
Each of the following books includes a unique access
code for taking the StrengthsFinder assessment online
and includes a three-page description of each of the
34 strengths:
StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and
Why People Follow by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie
Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your
Community by Albert L. Winseman, Donald O. Clifton and Curt Liesveld
Assessments, development packages, coaching kits and more info are available at www.strengthsfinder.com and www.gallupstrengthscenter.com.

EXTRA INFO

MORE STRENGTHS RESOURCES


The Strengths Mindset by Paul Kaak from the May/June 2009 issue of
InSite. Download it at www.ccca.org/go/strengths09.
Managing Your Boss by John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter, Harvard Business Review Classics
The Team Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit by John Pearson
(See the strengths tool suggestion to Laminate Your Strengths.)

Futuristic:

Activator:

John Pearson led camps in


Illinois and Washington and
was CCCAs executive director from 1979
to 1990. He is now a board-governance and
management consultant living in San Clemente,
Calif., as well as the publisher of Your Weekly
Staff Meeting eNews and author of Mastering
the Management Buckets. Learn more at
www.ManagementBuckets.com. Email him
at john@johnpearsonassociates.com.

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These individuals are inspired by what


can be, and they energize others with their
vision.
Those strong in this area make things
happen by turning thoughts into action. They
often lack patience.
So what does the list look like in action?
Imagine how Pates board could leverage
these strengths. His top five strengths fall
into three of the four domains. By contrast,
one of his board members, Dave Barton, has
four strengths in one domain: Relationship
Building. As a result, Barton might inaccurately suggest that Pate should focus more
on Relationship Building. Instead, Pate will
gently coach his board and his three camp
directors with this insight from the book
February/March 2014

Strengths Based Leadership: Great


Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow:
While the best leaders are not
well-rounded, the best teams are.
But its not enough for the advisory
board to leverage Pates strengths. He
must also grow his direct reports in
strengths awarenessso they will
affirm strengths on their teams.
Leadership is nothing without
followers, and Strengths Based Leadership describes the four basic needs of
followers as trust, compassion, stability
and hope. The book highlights Gallup
research showing that when an organizations leadership focuses on the
strengths of its employees, the odds
of those employees being engaged in
their work and mission jumps from a
lowly 9 percent to almost 73 percent.

Strengths Insights
from Camps
Ken Beebe, executive director at Twin
Rocks Friends Camp and Conference
Center (Rockaway, Ore.), uses
StrengthsFinder with his board and
staff. In a board enrichment session in
2011, Beebe discovered that his top
strength, Belief, was enhanced by three
strengths in the Strategic Thinking
domain: Strategic, Ideation and
Context. One of his board members
had all five strengths in the Relationship Building domain. The exercise
helped them understand and celebrate
how God had wired them differently.
For example, when board members
conduct Beebes annual performance
review, they reference the StrengthsFinder chart as a reminder to focus
on his top strengths, not his areas of
weakness. And Beebe and his board
chair appoint committees based on
strengths, not seniority.
When Byron Hill led his teams at

Camp Ridgecrest for Boys and Camp


Crestridge for Girls (Ridgecrest, N.C.) in a
two-day strategic planning retreat last year,
he began with a StrengthsFinder exercise.
Hills top strength is Arranger, which
means he is gifted in organizing with a
flexible style. Arrangers like to figure out
how all of the pieces and resources can
achieve maximum productivity.
Five of Hills nine team members
had strengths in the Strategic Thinking
domain. Hill, now semi-retired, sought
ways to constantly affirm team members
for their unique contributions to the
process. The retreat facilitator leveraged
their strengths by awarding Starbucks
cards to people who recognized a
colleagues strength in action. Art, I
just saw you affirm the Learner strength
in Ron, he might say. Enjoy your
favorite beverage on us!
Another way to maximize this
knowledge is to appoint a Strengths

WHILE THE
BEST LEADERS
ARE NOT
WELL-ROUNDED,
THE BEST
TEAMS ARE.

champion on your team. He or she can ensure that


a strengths mindset is part of every managers 24/7
leadership.
Pates team includes a Gallup-trained strengths
coach who created individual wallet-size cards
listing each persons Top 5 strengths. He encourages
team members to affirm that new assignments will
align with their strengths. And in meetings, his
teams uses tent cards listing each persons name
and their Top 5 strengths.
Many camp and conference leaders also
customize the Weekly Update to My Supervisor,
which includes a reminder of both the supervisors
and direct reports top strengths (downloadable at
www.managementbuckets.com).
As stewards entrusted with the well-being of
others, we diminish our spiritual opportunities
when we take leadership shortcuts and presume
that everyone else approaches life and work just like
we do. Instead, leaders leverage. And StrengthsFinder
resources offer excellent tools to help them improve
their abilities to do just thatand as a result, improve
their teams, camps and overall ministries. l

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