The CliftonStrengths for Managers report is the latest product being offered by Gallup to help you – as a manager – discover and understand your most dominant talents – your first 10 themes. Your distinct CliftonStrengths profile sets you apart from every other manager and this report outlines how each of your most dominant talents gives you an advantage in your management practice.
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The report gives you an understanding on:
How each of your Top 10 themes contribute to your success.
How each of your Top 10 themes get in the way of your success.
The action items that you can implement immediately for each of your Top 5 themes.
So, what are my personal experiences in using the CliftonStrengths for Managers and how it helps me lead my team?
I am currently leading a group of 8 members that are working in multiple projects under my portfolio, not counting the teams matrixed to my portfolio. With different project needs as well as individual and team needs, my themes of talents helped me to connect with them, work together to achieve the project’s goals and provide assistance as needed.
Here are just some of the activities I am doing in relation to some of my Top 10 themes:
Introduce the project – what the project is about, the goals, the expectations, roles and responsibilities, the value it brings among others. As a manager with Belief as Top 1, it is important that there is clarity of these things to ensure everyone is aware of the project(s) they are working on. I also like the project plan to be detailed to minimize misalignment or misunderstanding of the expectations.
Connect with each team member. Every week or every two weeks, I have a one-on-one catch-up with each of them. Not focused on their tasks but more on their wellbeing and any other things that each would like to highlight that he/she needs assistance. I have a separate team meetings to discuss their work activities.
Recognizing team member’s contribution – either small or big. As a person with Positivity as Top 2, I like recognizing contributions. In my one-on-one catch-up, I am making sure I have a balance of praise, encouragements and improvements.
Get team’s inputs. As a person with Includer as one of the most dominant themes, getting feedback on how the team can do better is one of the items in my list. I usually do it on a one-on-one setting and open suggestions to the team meetings. I also have a weekly Free Talk Friday where the team meets and do non-work related activities – assigning one of them per week to lead the activity.
Plan ahead. My Futuristic theme helps me to look not only on the present situation but also on the end-to-end of the project. This gives the team a full picture of the project and what they are going to expect on the succeeding weeks and even months.
Having Responsibility in my Top 6 sometimes lead me to do the tasks on my own to complete them earlier. But with the activities to help me develop my Responsibility theme, it develops my skill to delegate tasks, trust the team member(s) and guide them if they need to. It might take time at first, but with coaching and trust, I am seeing how my team members grow and deliver value accordingly.
There are a lot of action items in the CliftonStrengths for Manager report that you can leverage with your team. Moreover, it helps me to identify how my themes can get in the way of my success. Some examples:
My Positivity theme might have a tendency for me to talk more on what worked rather than what went wrong. With Harmony as my Top 9, I dislike conflict which increased my initial tendency to focus not on the wrong things. But knowing these themes and how it can get in the way of my success, I am able to strike a balance between what worked and what went wrong to ensure transparency and come up with ways to continue the success or mitigate the risks/issues.
There is a possibility that my Harmony kicked in the opposite – meaning to avoid conflict instead of resolving conflict, which might result on just letting one of my team members to fix things. With Responsibility and Belief, it helps me to set in the right direction by guiding my team members in resolving the issues and not drop the ball.
There’s a lot more to discover and develop your management skills with your CliftonStrengths Managers Report! For more details, you can visit https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/349703/cliftonstrengths-for-managers.aspx.
Purchase the CliftonStrengths for Managers report and get additional supplementary materials and an introductory coaching session for FREE! Visit https://www.soaringstrengths.com/product-page/cliftonstrengths-for-manager-coaching-1 for more details.
All the best!