In this episode, we embark on an imaginative exploration as we merge Strengths with the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI).
We picked five different Strengths and created AI images for each of them. What’s fun about this activity is that there’s no right or wrong answer. We had a lot of fun playing with this new technology, but even better, we found it helpful to explain Strengths through our eyes.
Our conversation springs from that moment of ingenuity, taking a deep dive into the world of Strengths visualization, where we translate the essence of unique qualities into AI-generated images. We hope this conversation enhances your understanding of your Strengths and the Strengths of others. Enjoy!
You are invited to join Leadership Vision Online, free to the next 150 members! This new community allows you to connect with like-valued individuals, network, and learn from others while elevating your leadership skills through exclusive resources, live events, Q&As, workshops, and member-led discussions.
-
Read the full blog post here!
CONTACT US
ABOUT
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
In this episode, we embark on an imaginative exploration as we merge Strengths with the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI).
We picked five different Strengths and created AI images for each of them. What’s fun about this activity is that there’s no right or wrong answer. We had a lot of fun playing with this new technology, but even better, we found it helpful to explain Strengths through our eyes.
Our conversation springs from that moment of ingenuity, taking a deep dive into the world of Strengths visualization, where we translate the essence of unique qualities into AI-generated images. We hope this conversation enhances your understanding of your Strengths and the Strengths of others. Enjoy!
You are invited to join Leadership Vision Online, free to the next 150 members! This new community allows you to connect with like-valued individuals, network, and learn from others while elevating your leadership skills through exclusive resources, live events, Q&As, workshops, and member-led discussions.
-
Read the full blog post here!
CONTACT US
ABOUT
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
One of the invitations I would have for everybody is to truly embrace and know themselves through the use of the language of strengths, understanding that on any given day, if we choose to use the language of strengths to help understand ourselves better, that we may see and become aware of just new things on a daily basis. And that also can apply To how it is that we use strengths to better understand who others are, depending on the day. Like with each day, as the Sun moves across the sky and creates different kinds of shadows on the topography, so too do daily circumstances and daily events create different kinds of shadows of how a person expresses themselves. So how do we give ourselves permission to be unique and Use and allow the language of strengths to help us understand how we express ourselves, and how can we give other people the space and the freedom to express themselves in the way that they feel is best fit for them?
Speaker 2:You're listening to the leadership vision podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the Past 25 years so that people are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan freeberg. Welcome back to the leadership vision podcast. Today I am really excited to play a bit of a game with Brian. Like most of the world, we have been playing around with some different AI tools and some of it's helpful and some of it's not, and Recently there was an ice storm out here in Portland, oregon, and so I was trapped in the house with my kids for over a week and I kind of started messing around with some of the image generating features that you can do with AI, and I made them all these custom coloring books, which was really fun. They were very specific and tailored to like. One of my daughters is really into bunnies, one of them is into hippos, my son is into, like, greek mythology, and so we created all these fun coloring book images.
Speaker 2:They were specific to their tastes and then I was like, huh, what if I took some of our older blog posts where we describe the different themes of strength and just literally say, create me an Abstract image and just dump all this text from all the interviews and research and other stuff that we have done over the years and see what happens?
Speaker 2:And so today in the podcast, I have picked five different strengths that we have these images for and we're gonna talk about them. And what's kind of fun about this activity is that there's really not a right or wrong answer, and you can see all these images in the show notes in the accompanying blog post, and we're just gonna talk about how this robot, ai, has interpreted these strengths based on the inputs that we gave it. And I think it'll be really fun to not only play with this new technology, but also just to help explain strengths a little bit through our eyes and the lens that we maybe see them with and Perhaps give you some more insight. So, without further ado, let's get into it. Brian, are you ready to play this game?
Speaker 1:I am ready to play this game and what I'm Recognizing right away. I Didn't know. That's how you generated the Images. So you really what we wrote and you put that as the prompt. Okay, the AI prompting was what we actually okay.
Speaker 2:So when you?
Speaker 1:okay, that makes complete sense. Now, I had no idea how you got that far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't know, yeah, and so what's fun is that back in 2012 or 13. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yep when you and Linda wrote all 34 of those scripts and then we put those on our website and then we have that in the strengths course or whatever, so that info is out there. And Again, I was just like I am so curious to see what would happen and so I didn't, because you know, if these tools chat, gpt and whatnot, you can really say no, I want it more like this, I want it more like this. I didn't do any of that, I just put it in there and said generate and let's see what happens.
Speaker 1:So you gave it one, one prompting, one run at the prompting.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was a you know, yeah, 500 blog post. But yes, yes, okay so wow, and I specifically I, you know because we could have really finessed it and gotten it to a really specific image of maybe what we wanted but part of what I wanted to do with you, and when I proposed this the other day, I wanted it to be vague, to see, in part to show that strengths aren't such a specific like.
Speaker 2:No Achiever has to look like this and it has to include these elements and it has to be this way and yeah, I and recently we recorded a podcast where we talked about our learning community and how you and Linda create these images. To represents a person's strength, and so this is Sort of along those lines, but it's more about the individual strengths.
Speaker 1:So should we do the first one yeah, let's stop talking about how we did it as far as I'm sorry about the options good, good, good.
Speaker 2:Okay. So the first image here, brian, is the one with the person on the ladder. Yep, and the first part of it I want you to guess, because you don't know what's what. So I guess which Strength you think this is, and then we will go from there. So again, listener, if you're listening to this, all these images are in the show notes, but we'll kind of describe the pictures as we go. So okay, brian, I'm gonna describe it quickly. So it's a, let's see, it's it kind of like a sunburst? In the middle there's a person standing on top of a very tall ladder. There's a whole bunch of swooping, colorful lines going up to this sun thing. There's gears rotating, there's a lot more to it, but which strength do you think this is?
Speaker 1:The first strength that comes to mind is achiever. Is that correct? That is correct.
Speaker 2:Wow, ding, ding, ding, ding. Wow, all right, tell me what you think. Did the robots of the world do a good job?
Speaker 1:interpreting. This is interesting. The reason why I chose achiever, the reason why I chose the strength of achiever, is because there's definitely a direction in this picture. There's an individual there, and what I've learned from the strength of achiever is that there is oftentimes an individual knows that there is a pathway of work or a progress that a person wants to accomplish to get somewhere, and that's what gave me the indication by looking at the ladder.
Speaker 1:If you look at the picture and you see how those lanes fan out to the right and to the left of the ladder, we have also met people with the strength of achiever that have many different pathways forward. They've made different pathways by which they can achieve the goals that they want to accomplish during the day and, depending on the person, may determine how many of those pathways they can actively engage in a generative fashion to actually accomplish something. So I like that pathway patterning that's going along there. The second thing that I'm noticing is that there's gears that are surrounding the light the light I see as the goal, by the way, like what is the accomplished?
Speaker 2:meant yes totally.
Speaker 1:The gear is represent to me different ways of thinking that a person with the strength of achiever may demonstrate. We are often curious to listen to people describe how they go about getting the challenges and tasks of the day done, and sometimes it makes sense in a linear way and sometimes they're working many different pieces together and that's more like what a gearing might look like and multiple gears working together. I also like that about the picture because that explains some counterintuitive ways that people get done. Obviously, this is just talking about one strength and not any strength that's paired with this. I also like the dimensionality of this is the last thing I'm going to say is there is a dimensionality that's beyond that sun, beyond that light. I also believe that people with the strength of achiever have this ability to keep their momentum going beyond actually achieving the task.
Speaker 2:That's what I see Top right hand. One of the things that I love about getting Brian going on strengths is he just talks so much faster than normal.
Speaker 1:Next time I try to talk slowly, he's got so much that he's thinking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that I like about this is, I think, that with achiever, there's also this idea of momentum about, the more work that you do. You kind of go faster and maybe get more and more done and gears kind of have that mentality.
Speaker 2:And also I like your idea where you said about the achievement of that little sun. They've climbed up this ladder a variety of different ways. They got there, but then they get to the top and out it's like, well, what's the next thing? How do we get the next piece of work done? So achiever is a working hard strength. And what's one thing that people should know? I know someone who's very near and dear to me that lives in my house as achiever. What should people know if they're working on a team with someone with achiever?
Speaker 1:That the motivation for getting work done could be different with each person. You never really know what their ultimate motivation is. Sometimes we assume that it's for them to feel a sense of accomplishment but that's not always true. They can also be working for other people and on a vision that's totally not their own.
Speaker 2:It could be more self-focused. Others focused, relational, goal-oriented, whatever.
Speaker 1:You have no idea until you talk to them.
Speaker 2:Well, we got, we're gonna do five of these, so that was fun. All right, the next one we're gonna do, Brian do you see the one with the light bulb. Let's see, yeah, the light bulb. This is another soft ball.
Speaker 1:What do?
Speaker 2:you think this one is.
Speaker 1:Easy, I think. Wait, this is a guessing game Ideation. This is a guessing game Ideation.
Speaker 2:Very good, very good. This is one of mine, so I'm gonna describe this one. So there is a and this is a very abstract image, they all are.
Speaker 2:There's sort of a looks like a scene of a person sitting under a tree, perhaps thinking in kind of they're on a coastline, but not a beach and they're looking up into the sky and there is this whole plethora of kind of swirling images, maybe the tails of a peacock bird, what A bunch of light bulbs, some stars going off. Oh, there's a globe, like a silhouette of the earth, perhaps.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you can also see the sun coming up over. Maybe it's like the Scottish Highlands or something.
Speaker 1:Are people gonna be able to see this?
Speaker 2:image while you're talking about it, oh yeah. They're well, so if they're watching this on our YouTube channel, they can see it there.
Speaker 2:They aren't staring at you, or if they're driving in their car. The images are in their show notes. Probably shouldn't look at it now, but they can, yes, look at our website and find them, which they can access through the show notes. So, brian, tell us about this image and ideation and what it brings up to you, as I have ideation, and so I'm gonna stop, because I could just kind of go off and off.
Speaker 1:All right, this is what I see. What got my attention first about this picture was the light bulb, and we oftentimes talk about ideation with reference to some kind of metaphor, with a light bulb, light bulb going off or bright ideas. That's the first that kind of gave this away. But when you think about the strength of ideation, we oftentimes think of people that have the capacity to create all different types of ideas based off of one initial spark of ideation. And so when I look at this picture, I look at all the different waves, the dimension, the coloration, the different forms and shapes, and I think that when a person with the strength of ideation is expressing their ideas, it can take many different forms, many different colorations, many different textures, and we oftentimes have met people that can talk to each one of these different forms and arcs and little colorations and that can be completely overwhelming. On the flip side of person with strength of ideation can also focus on just one of those light bulbs or just one of those arcs or one of those shapes, and so that, to me, always depends on the individual, on the spectrum of how to understand strengths.
Speaker 1:One expression can be a person who talks about this entire skyscape. Another person can talk about just one central image. What I like about the person in the image. If you look to the bottom left-hand corner, you'll see a person sitting under a tree. I would look at that representation of the tree as the original idea. I like the original idea that they're sitting under and thinking through this much larger landscape, seascape and skyscape. I'm gonna stop there, nathan. What do you see?
Speaker 2:First off, it's a mess, and sometimes ideation it's a beautiful mess. It is a beautiful mess, but it can be so part of what I interpreted a little bit differently. So the person with ideation is not the person under the tree. It's kind of beyond the hill where that sun is coming from.
Speaker 2:And so the person under the tree is viewing what it can sometimes feel like of a person with ideation. All these beautiful images are just like blah, blah, blah, everything's going out. And if you're patient and this is one way it shows up if you're patient, you see how the sun is maybe rising. That is like the formed idea. And so the rising sun is like, because sometimes my ideation is like this and this and this, and color and lights and this, and go and go. And if you stick with me long enough, eventually that sun will kind of rise over the horizon and be like oh, this is the fully formed so if we ran together for longer periods of time, your ideas may become fully formed by the time the run is over.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly. But in our description of ideation we talk about like the funnel. And did you mention the funnel?
Speaker 1:That's the one thing.
Speaker 2:I wish this image mentioned because sometimes if a funnel, if you think about like big top, like if you're pouring something into a jar, you're collecting a lot of ideas and it filters out into that one idea at the bottom, but if you flip it over so it's the small end on top, that's when you know you're maybe someone has given one idea and then can like produce a ton of ideas from that. It's interesting, it's a very fun way to think about it that I hadn't thought of before.
Speaker 2:So this is good, this is fun. Okay. The next one is the the balloon one. Wow, okay, you see that one.
Speaker 1:Can I describe this?
Speaker 2:So there's a, there's a. This also has another sun, kind of a sun, in the bottom left. So the bottom left of the image is a little bit darker and then it gets very bright. To the top right there's a bunch of balloons and flowers and swirly pink and light blue, pastel colors, some bubbles. Which one do you think this is Brian?
Speaker 1:I'm not even sure if this is gonna be even close to getting wrong.
Speaker 2:Positively To getting wrong.
Speaker 1:The strength of positivity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was the one that when I.
Speaker 1:This is really fun.
Speaker 2:When I saw I immediately thought positivity. I think anyone with an even cursory understanding of strengths would get this right. So what I well? Actually I wanna talk about it first real quick, because I like how there's a little bit of darkness in one side of it, and I'm wondering if you can speak to that right off the bat here, because sometimes the misconception is that people with positivity are never negative, or quote unquote dark.
Speaker 2:They never have any of that. What do you think that might mean? Or how do you interpret that in this? I mean, we're adding the meaning to all of this, but With the strength of positivity.
Speaker 1:One thing that we have found is that sometimes the initial expression of the strength of positivity is often heard in negativity, negative observations, something that's paying attention to the negative or the distracting around them. Oftentimes they can even sound like a doomsday theorist. Almost what they're saying is, or what they're asking of other people is hey, is anybody else paying attention to, maybe, what's going wrong? Or the things that we're ignoring or the people that we're forgetting to include, and that can sound pretty pessimistic and negative, maybe even stressful. But that's someone with the strength of positivity saying you know, if we take care of this or pay attention to this, it can all be sunshine, rainbow, unicorns, balloons and helium. So that's distinctly part of the strength of positivity.
Speaker 1:Like we always say, strengths are interpreted on a spectrum and one end of the spectrum is someone who starts with the negativity and pessimism, another person that starts with positivity, optimism. Either way, it's the same strength, the strength of positivity, but in this picture there's the overwhelming side of the bright colors, the balloon and the balloons, and that is more likely. What we are usually experiencing with the strength of positivity is someone who is always upbeat, who is uplifting. They're bringing the brightness and illumination to the world around them. They see things just in a positive perspective, like a helium filled balloon. They're always lifting things up and elevating one's perspective. Nathan, what do you see here besides like how we started?
Speaker 2:Well, and I think, to reiterate, the strengths are on a spectrum and also that we're talking about these individually, but positivity really looks different depending on what other strengths are at play and what else is going on. But the thing that I like when you look at this, you can't help but smile, just like when you have yes, it's fun. It's like, oh, this is cool. I would do something creative with this. Maybe put this in our entryway of our home so when people walk in they're like, oh, that's fun, it's bright, whatever.
Speaker 1:That's a nice idea.
Speaker 2:What's cool about like working with someone with positivity is that they often do that same thing. They tend to have a brightness to them. They, for better or worse, have an optimism that we can do it. We can accomplish the thing, we can hit the mark, achieve the goal, whatever it is, and often in my experience at least, working with someone with positivity they will believe in you almost more than you can believe in yourself, and so when you've got that on your team, it's pretty great Fun, all right.
Speaker 1:The next one is this yeah, so this one this is one that I was like. I wanna mess with this a bit, but I didn't. So this one I didn't.
Speaker 2:I mean other than just putting in our entry it has. It looks like a big magnifying glass in the middle with a diamond. And then there is like a check mark on the left but it's like, if you think of like a stock, that's kind of going up and down and up and down, but it's always up, and to the right there's that, there's a bunch of vertical lines, there's like a wifi-ish symbol. Have you seen that near the?
Speaker 1:tree. Yeah, I do see that.
Speaker 2:What do you think this one is? It's just a little more difficult to describe.
Speaker 1:Well, there are two strengths that are coming to my mind.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say them both.
Speaker 1:Focus or analytical? Oh, both of those would be wrong oh no.
Speaker 2:I was straight for three, yeah, so this is maximizer. Oh okay, okay, Right. Do you see that now? I do see that now. It's not great oh.
Speaker 1:I do see that now.
Speaker 2:This is where I think it's fun to do this.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like this.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, then, let me stick you on then.
Speaker 1:Tell me why I like this? Because in real life, when you see the strength of maximizer in the wild, it's often confusing.
Speaker 2:Well, I like that in the wild, yeah, okay, there's a little jungle-y vibe.
Speaker 1:On your team. You're singing in the wild, but it's in its natural habitat.
Speaker 1:Okay okay, just living day to day, it's hard to recognize the subtle nuances of the strength of maximizer, because it's really this internal motivation to really over-excel and over-achieve, but it's what the person is focused on. So in this picture the magnifying glass has put over the diamond and that, to me, is really a great illustration of how the strength of maximizer is thinking, is they know what that little extra two or 3% is to increase something to its maximum expression or its absolute value or the best we can possibly get it, and that to them, in their mind, is what they're magnifying, so that when other people see it, then they also have a clarity of the direction and the expectation that the person with the strength of maximizer is actually emphasizing. I also see that's upward growth of that arrow. A person with a strength of maximizer always sees a little bit more that we can do. So I like the upward potential of that.
Speaker 1:I also love the the little bar graphs to the right of the picture with the arrows going up, cause I think the people with strength and maximizer are always seeking to improve or to elevate. And the last thing I'm gonna say, nathan, is those little circular structures on the bottom of the picture. The strength of maximizer doesn't have time for mediocrity, for developments, for taking their time. So I see that people with strength and maximizer as rising above those of us who have more patience and are willing to be slower in the growth and development of others. That's what I see here is the strength of maximizer. Now that you pointed that out, yeah, I like it.
Speaker 2:It's pretty good you told me years ago Pretty good, yeah, it's a pretty good picture. You told me years ago that maximizer is a strength that's rooted in measurement, and so when you look at this picture and think about these lines, as you said, as a bar graph or even pie charts or whatever that's better, then you can see it like oh yeah, it's rooted in measurement. It's comparing itself. Someone with strength and maximizer comparing how am I doing?
Speaker 1:to someone else.
Speaker 2:How you know where do I fit? I have this one as well. Yeah, it's just fine. Okay, so our last one, our fifth and final. Ooh, this one is a different style, so I guess they used a different artist in this one. This one has got a series of one, two, three, four, five Looks like 20 boxes, and each box has some sort of silhouette kind of of a person or shape design, female shapes, kind of human looking.
Speaker 2:Lots of puzzles, lots of ways that these different shapes and colors are being put together. What do you think this one is Brian.
Speaker 1:What I see is the strength of discipline.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's not what, that's not it, but I'm three for five. You know, what is funny is next week we could do a like. What do you think it is?
Speaker 1:Okay, now, what is it? You're killing me.
Speaker 2:Individualization. Oh oh, oh, oh okay, Discipline is interesting, I can actually see that too.
Speaker 1:Look at all the different structure in there.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly. I think what it was going for was, how you know, individuation people are unique, people are different people are valuable everyone is their own thing and I think it was trying to represent that. Can we make a discipline some?
Speaker 1:four for five.
Speaker 2:Sure Brian, we could do that Awesome. It'd be fun to see what it does for discipline. I can do that after we're done recording here, but so knowing that it's individualization now, Now this makes sense.
Speaker 1:Now that I see it, it's hard for me to unsee discipline With the strength of individualization. These are the people, as we all know, the people that are seeing individuals uniquely and seeing an individual, their unique expression, their unique capacities. They love to draw that out of people and what I see here is that in almost every one of these little squares is a figure of a human being, and I see that there is a great degree of texture in color and dimensionality and expression and potential, things that are hidden, things that are plain, and just that alone is what people with the strength of individuals are seeing in others. Is that distinct uniqueness? What I do like about the picture is that there is a distinct compartmentalization or drawing of boxes around each of these people, and that is also what people with the strength of individualization do. Is they sometimes get offended if people are grouped together?
Speaker 2:That's interesting.
Speaker 1:I like the separation and distinction that this picture is bringing.
Speaker 2:Nathan, what do you see? Yeah, I mean basically just what you've said, but all the unique parts of a person like there's in the bottom left, there's an image, two image, what appear to be female heads, One of them. It's almost like you can see into their brain.
Speaker 1:it's like kind of a swirly circle.
Speaker 2:The other one is like a couple of different puzzle pieces being put together and in my life what I've experienced is people with individualization. They know what what motivates and they can figure out like how do I get the person with the swirly brain To do what we need to do, versus a person with the puzzle brain.
Speaker 1:I like that there's a lot of examples, a Lot of examples like that in what I like here too, nathan, as you're talking about, and give me a chance to look at it, there are some of these squares that do not have people in it, yeah, and what I have found in my experience is that sometimes people with the strength of individualization Can just see the uniquenesses around them and just be able to identify what is unique about their environment, what is unique about their setting, what is unique for their context.
Speaker 1:They have just a way of naming what's there because they just see things with such distinction and naming, it comes easy.
Speaker 2:What's it difficult about working or living with someone with individualization?
Speaker 1:People with this strength are oftentimes seeking to be understood uniquely as well. So they're they're looking to maybe Hear certain types of encouragement or compliments or just ways that they are doing things that are unique, and for others to point that out is really helpful. If they feel maybe unnoticed, whether they're wearing the wrong shoes or people are overlooking them, they they often can feel kind of like a, like a punch in the gut, metaphorically, like a, you know, a decrease in their self-esteem or self-image, because they want to be seen, they want to be known. When we understood, like a lot of the people that would that we work with, they also carry themselves in a unique and distinct way, so it kind of gets attention and they want to hear about that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, brian, this is fun.
Speaker 1:I am.
Speaker 2:I'm. I look forward to doing this again sometime. A few any final thoughts? Just like a quick, I don't know sound bite of yep Do you want to share with people about like interpreting strengths and looking at their strengths and whatever.
Speaker 1:One of the invitations I would have for everybody is to truly embrace and know Themselves through the use of the language of strengths, understanding that on any given day, if we choose to use the language of strengths to help understand ourselves better, that we may see, become aware of just new things on a daily basis. And that also can apply To how it is that we use strengths to better understand who others are, depending on the day. Like with each day, as the Sun moves across the sky and creates different kinds of shadows on it, on the topography, so too do daily circumstances and daily events create different kinds of shadows of how a person expresses themselves. So how do we give ourselves permission to be unique and Use and allow the language of strengths to help us understand how we express ourselves, and how can we give other people the space in the freedom to Express themselves in the way that they feel is best fit for them?
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the leadership vision podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. If you would like help building positive team culture in your organization, please reach out to us. Connect at leadership vision consulting comm is our email address. We'd love to talk with you to figure out, you know, how do we help these different people work together, how do we become more bonded as a team, how do we achieve our goals, or whatever it might be. We'd also love it if you could subscribe to us on Apple podcast or Spotify, follow us on all the social channels and sign up for our email newsletter. You can find all of that in the show notes or our accompanying blog post at leadership vision consulting comm. My name is Nathan freeberg and I'm Brian Schubering and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening BAM and stop.