How CliftonStrengths Development Helps People Improve Careers

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"Professionally, it literally changed the course of my career. In my previous role, my manager and I were butting heads, my performance reviews were not glowing, I was constantly frustrated, being told to kind of sit in the corner and don’t challenge the status quo and why can’t you just sit there and get your work done?
And the company that I worked with decided to embrace Strengths across the organization, so they put everybody through it.
I took the StrengthsFinder assessment for the first time and my Top Five just, they nailed it. And it was like oh, well, this is why I’m so frustrated. I was in a role where progress was slow in coming and, you know, being an Activator, I want to get things done. Achiever, I want to get things done.
So it was literally I’m like I’m in the wrong role. And I even said to my boss, I’m like I’m never going to be successful here, this isn’t ever going to be anywhere where I’m happy.
And it was the only time that I ever posted for another position. So he wanted somebody, very specifically, to balance him out and be, you know, the yang to his yen. And we worked together for three and a half years.
We built a team that was based on Strengths to support and complement the center leaders. So we had four centers across the country, very different leadership styles, very different cultures, so we leveraged Strengths to identify people that would work well with those individuals and that just, it was probably the best, the best team experience I’ve ever had, the best management experience I’ve ever had, the most I’ve ever had at work, because I was clicking on all cylinders.
So that literally changed the course of my career. And I’ve embraced it ever since. It’s how I was raised to be a manager and it’s, I’ve, I’ve done it ever since.
For various points in my career I would describe who I am. And my language was around the work that I did for an organization.
StrengthsFinder opened up my understanding of the connection between my purpose and who I am and the Strengths that I have been given, my super powers, to really understand that it’s not work that I do, it is really my fulfillment of purpose.
I realize I’m decent at what I do, but I actually can get even better. Now that my Strengths have been revealed, it makes sense.
So it really just changed my practice. The better way I can say it - it conceptualized how I’m wired. And, in fact, it took me to another level to say I can be bold in how I’m wired. And that really is what the assessment did for me.
You go through these types of assessments, and there’s a lot of them out there, and as an HR professional, I’ve been through a lot of them, so when I was working for an organization that had me do my Strengths in the first month of my employment, I was like eh, okay.
And then I went to this two day course on Strengths and it just made complete sense to me. My, the things that I struggled with personally, like why do I do that, why do I react that way, why do I struggle in that arena, started to come together for me.
And it helped me be more self-aware and helped me learn how to manage my teams based on their Strengths and the things that they’re strong at, right? Or their talents so it’s affected me at work in everything I do and I think sometimes people feel like I’m sort of beating a drum about Strengths, but it’s so important.
The neat thing about my Strengths is that I’ve actually been able to use my Strengths to even create my position. It was a position that didn’t exist before I came and so I’ve been able to customize it and tailor it to fit my Strengths, which has been great.
And so I can use my Strategic in working with the executive team as we’re building a culture. And also, then, as I’m working with leaders and doing coaching with them, I find that my Individualization has been really helpful because it helps me better understand what their journey is and appreciate that."