Unlocking Personal and Professional Growth through Strengths Awareness

What if the key to personal and professional growth lies in better understanding your strengths and how they shape your attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and motivations? That's the powerful proposition we, your hosts Nathan Freeberg and Brian Schubering, explore in our recent Leadership Vision podcast. We dive into the sensory world of strengths, illuminating how recognizing patterns can build self-awareness and acceptance, paving the way for genuine growth. Plus, we venture further into the realm of strengths, throwing light on domains and the fascinating idea of strengths experienced on a continuum.

In the second half of our conversation, we share more about Leadership Vision, our consulting firm dedicated to cultivating positive team cultures. We extend an open invitation to connect with us and learn about our various courses designed to support leaders. In addition, we give you a taste of our exclusive email newsletter, a treasure trove of valuable tips and resources. We're thrilled to have you join us on this enriching journey of discovery and growth. So, are you ready to unlock the potential of your strengths and elevate your leadership skills? Tune in to our podcast and let's get started!

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:06

Hello everyone, it's Nathan Freeberg and you are listening to the Leadership Vision podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has spent the past 25 years investing in teams so that people are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. It is the holidays here in the United States and I think generally this time of year, people kind of slow down a little bit. They maybe put things to bed for the year and start thinking about the year ahead, and so, while we don't have any new episodes for you the next two weeks, what I am going to share with you is some excerpts from our course that Brian Schuber and I put together about a year ago called Seeing Strengths from a New Perspective, and this course is available for purchase on our website if you would like to check that out.

Speaker 2: 0:59

But really, why I wanted to share this is because I think this time of year people are thinking about, or maybe rethinking about, how can I do things differently in the year ahead? Maybe they want to think through different elements of their job, their personal life, their kind of the structures or the way that they go about doing those things, and I really think this course is just a fascinating way to think about your strengths in a new way or a different way, or maybe consider some things you never considered before, and so what I am going to do here this week and then next week is just share some snippets, some highlights the best sort of three to five minutes of each lessons. This week will be lesson one through three and then next week will be lessons three through six, and I really want you to wrestle with it, think about it, maybe click the link in the show notes to get more information about these courses themselves, but really it's just a way for you to maybe engage with your strengths in a new way here over the holiday break and into the new year. And, of course, if you have questions about any of this, you can reach out Nathan at leadershipvisionconsultingcom or to get more information about this course. It's leadershipvisionconsultingcom slash courses and this is the seeing strengths from a new perspective a six part online course to expand your understanding and expertise in the application of strengths.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Okay, so the first lesson is all about how our strengths are sensory and they can actually be observed. They're not just something internal that we wrestle with Now. This is a core belief of ours here at leadership vision, as we believe that strengths show up in our attitudes, our beliefs, our feelings and our motivations. When we know how and where to look for examples of strength in these areas, we can learn more about those that we work with ourselves and how we can best collaborate to complete our tasks and find fulfillment. In this little snippet here from lesson one, our founder, brian Schubering, who has been working with strengths since the beginning maybe longer than anybody he's going to share just a little bit about what we can look for and how to detect strengths in these four areas.

Speaker 1: 3:14

What we're talking about today is primarily an invitation to open up our understanding of what strengths actually are. In our understanding of strength, strengths have a demonstrated value in almost all of those areas. There's something sensory about it, and that word is simply an invitation for all of us to lean back away from all the written definitions that we all use to help us understand how we can detect or listen for strength. If we pay attention to how a person's senses or their sensory reactions to the world around them, if we pay attention to that, we can get some really key indicators of a person's strengths, which strengths that they rely on heavily, as well as and again, this is like a byproduct of that level of observation is that we're continuing to deepen our understanding of what that strength looks like. For another conversation down the road or another group that we're working with. So what if? Just what if we began to listen to someone's attitude and think to ourselves what am I hearing? That would be an indicator of what that person's attitude is really like towards that person or towards that subject matter, and then ask yourself which strength is maybe behind that attitude? You can use the language of strength to help someone understand why their attitudes change. When different things are happening or when they're in different environments, their attitudes may change. There is an opportunity for us to have a greater sense of self-awareness, a greater sense of self-acceptance that we don't have the same attitude in every situation, and that can be an indication of the things that maybe we should be leaning into because our attitude is enlightened or our attitude is quickened, as well as maybe some of the things that we may be a little more cautious, because our attitude is an indicator that that may not be something that we're going to enjoy, that may not be something that we're good at. Belief is one of the really keen indicators of strengths that are kind of helping to push or fuel a person's attitudes and how they show up. Not frame how they're expressing their belief, but taking a more curious posture of asking what strength is there, because that can be a learning moment for the individual to help them better understand why they believe something. As you're navigating through the waters of daily life and when you think about someone's feelings, if it is that keel that's helping to guide someone through the events of a day, it can be really helpful to then identify that there is feelings that are being expressed and then to ask what strength is maybe informing that feeling or what strength is supporting that feeling.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Sometimes I think that strengths are the motivation center of why it is that we feel inspired to show up and do our best. Motivation is an easy word for us to tie into. We know what motivation feels like when we're motivated to do something and we know the joy that comes when we're motivated, like once that flywheel gets going.

Speaker 1: 6:23

You can hear many people talk about how they can get deep into conversations because some of their strengths motivation is to connect with strangers or to create intimacy in between people, or for people to solve conflict that's coming up. They just have this motivation because part of their strengths is just what a strength does when they see an opportunity, and that's a strong motivator. And again, the reason why it's so important to talk about attitudes, beliefs, feelings and motivation is because this is just another framework, another way of us helping people understand the depths to which their strengths are really anchored and the variety of which their strengths are actually expressed in all types of different situations. It's really helpful for people to gain that confidence, that grounding in how they can be more true to themselves, no matter what's happening around them, and what I'm asking people to do is to pay more attention to how they're responding themselves within an environment or within a relationship, by paying attention not to strengths, but paying attention to their attitudes, their feelings, their beliefs and their motivations.

Speaker 2: 7:33

first, I think this is such a fascinating idea and, as Brian just kind of challenges there, I would also challenge you to ask yourself pick a situation, pick something that's happening recently and ask yourself what's going on. Are you having an emotional response? Are you feeling motivated to get involved or to do something? Is there a belief or something that's getting triggered, and what is your attitude becoming like In the course? We actually go into a lot more depth on all of that, with some more questions and other kind of food for thought, but hopefully that is just a little bit to give you something to think about.

Speaker 2: 8:17

The second lesson is all about the domains of strength, but we've got a little bit of a twist on it. So, as you may or may not know, all 34 strengths are organized into four categories. Think of them as like big buckets that we kind of group similar themes into Strengths that help us relate to others, strengths that help us get work done, strengths that help us influence others and strengths that help us think into and solve big problems. Now, it can be a mistake to think that a strength that is labeled as a relating strength like, say, oh, I don't know later Like that strength can't possibly think strategically or get work done or influence a group. Now in the course, this lesson really dives into how all strengths are able to do all four of those kind of big high level things and we unpack that and go into more detail. But here's just some of the quick highlights that can help you think about this, maybe in a different way.

Speaker 1: 9:16

If we begin to group them into similar behavioral patterns, preferences and qualities, it's easier for us to remember. I happen to love using the domains as a way to orientate ourselves towards strengths, because if we think about domains as a process of thinking, as a way of thinking about strengths, it helps us to lean back or get above a focus on just one or five at a time. It helps us think more categorically, more broadly, on how strengths are actually represented and how strengths show up. The language of strengths helps us better understand how we are emotionally navigating the world and the relationships around us. I think that when you begin to look at strengths within their domains, it helps us better understand our emotional reaction to strengths. When strengths are generative, when they're applied in a way that can help everyone raise themselves up a little bit, Domains can help us understand our emotional reaction to strengths. There are so many resources that are helping us better understand what strengths mean, how strengths are demonstrated and all the different varieties of expressions of strengths, Because where I feel the future is for strengths professionals is to have a different type of dexterity to how it is that they help people understand how they're being perceived. Domains are a great way of helping people understand how they're being perceived and how their perception of the world around them is impacting them. If we're able to help people understand how they're being perceived through the language of domains, that can really help someone understand how they're coming across. I think that's incredibly useful for people.

Speaker 1: 11:03

That's not a strengths-based question per se. As we all know, strengths do not work individually. They all work in pairs and they work in combinations. The domains can help us really understand easily how to categorize or how to understand how that person is being perceived by others Using the domain language. What am I experiencing? What am I feeling? I'm feeling influencing strengths. Once this guy truly is leading, with the strength of a later paired with the strength of individual visualization, there's a very unique exercise that we can do individually to practice what it is that we're talking about today. Just start to get the ball rolling. Just pick one of your strengths, a strength that you know well, a strength that you feel is maybe your favorite strength. Then ask yourself how does this strength demonstrate the characteristics of the influencing domain? How does my strength of ideation demonstrate the characteristics of our relating domain? How does my strength of strategic demonstrate itself in an executing domain. Can you see what I'm doing?

Speaker 2: 12:16

That is such a great and very easy and practical activity for you to do and I encourage you to maybe take a few minutes and do that for yourself. Do it with each of your five strengths, maybe do it with your team, maybe do it with your family. I think it will really open your eyes up and maybe broaden your perspective on, perhaps, all the different ways you use your strengths that maybe you didn't realize before. How do you share your strength of ideation? In the third and final lesson here that we're sharing as this excerpt this week, we're talking about extremes. Sometimes, when we share information about strengths, we like to give extreme examples because, honestly, it's just more fun. There's a person with a strength of futuristic who only talks about plans like 20 years in the future, or that person with a deliberative who they take like five years to decide what new car they're going to buy.

Speaker 2: 13:11

But here's the thing all strengths are experienced on this continuum and some might look really extreme, like I mentioned. But one of the things that I love about this lesson is Brian talks about how these extremes can be validating or invalidating and when we have a better understanding of this continuum of where my strengths, where your strengths. Where other people's strengths show up, we can validate that person's experience. Understanding how our strengths show up on this continuum of extremes can take our personal strengths awareness to a deeper level, better understand those we interact with on a daily basis and, ultimately, be more effective at what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 13:51

So, again, these are just some clips, some highlights to get you thinking about this, but I want you to specifically think about maybe a couple examples from your own of life, your own strengths in life, that are extreme For me. I think one of them is ideation, and I can just get so whipped up and lost in the proverbial swirl of ideas that I can't take action. And then other times I can get one idea and just go to town with it. Enjoy this little excerpt from lesson three about how all strengths are experienced on a continuum.

Speaker 1: 14:26

There's a need for us to broaden our understanding of the extremes of the behaviors, attitudes, motivations and beliefs of each strength. To better understand just how complex these strengths are and this is why I'm so passionate about this is to help people self-validate that, even though they may have an expression of other strength that is so unique and so rare, it's still okay and it's still their expression of that strength, even though it could be towards one of the extremes. Understanding strengths on a continuum is such a unique approach to helping people feel validated, even if their strength is on one extreme or another or if it's really really general. At least they know that there are times where the behavior or their motivation on their strength could swing to an extreme and that's still okay, that there is a consistent, demonstrated behavioral way that people express their strengths that's consistent to them. What if that general, consistent demonstration of your strength is here, watch, it's on this end of the extreme and that's how you consistently show up time and time again, but it just happens to be towards one end of the continuum. And this idea of understanding strengths on a continuum gives people the opportunity to express themselves in what is considered a normative extreme and still be okay because there's still room for that.

Speaker 1: 16:04

There are so many different variations of the expression of strength, where we start in just ease, like our understanding of strength. That's our starting point, and then there's this ability to move up and down the continuum. Some people I've met people like this. Their expression is anywhere on the continuum at any time. We're holding the understanding of strength loosely and allowing the person with the strength to share with us where they land on the continuum, because it gives people the opportunity to understand where they might fall on the continuum. And that is so helpful for other people to know as well, because people who are trying to use the language of strength to understand others or to understand the team members for this they start with the definitional knowledge of strength and so when a team member may experience one of the expressions of the continuum, they may invalidate that expression as a true expression of that strength, because they don't have room to experience a strength on a continuum.

Speaker 1: 17:13

This idea of continuum is so helpful for strengths because it begins to erode maybe some pre-existing bias or even some strengths stereotypes that could exist, because it gives people permission to be like oh wow, that sounds like you know the strength of harmony maybe it's an extreme expression of it that's still, then, validating not just the expression of the strength of harmony, but it's validating that person, who is that individual's team member, forming a stronger relationship. I am so passionate about helping people understand who they are, how they're put together, what motivates them, what grounds them, what encourages them to be engaged. I'm so passionate about that, and that is what's driving me to like broaden our understanding and applicability of strength, because all that is doing is giving us the opportunity to validate people even more than we were before and then allowing people that are in relationship with that person to do the same thing. If we can do whatever we can to use the language of strengths, to give individuals opportunities to know and understand other people better, I think that's the good work that we're about.

Speaker 2: 18:36

If you have questions about anything you heard on the podcast today, please reach out to us.

Speaker 2: 18:41

You can send us an email, connect at leadershipvisionconsultingcom, or you can also go to our website leadershipvisionconsultingcom and do backslash courses if you want to learn more about this course in particular. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this for 25 years so that leaders feel supported, so that leaders feel mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. And again, if you have questions about anything you heard here or you would like to follow us, you can go to our website, leadershipvisionconsultingcom. Sign up for our free email newsletter where we send out all kinds of helpful information about how to build stronger team culture. We do that weekly and also a monthly kind of newsletter, curated, wrap up with all kinds of great stuff. We'd also love it if you could follow us on all the socials and leave us a review in iTunes and Spotify and wherever else you get your podcast. I'm Nathan Friedberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.