What is CliftonStrengths? How This Powerful Assessment Can Improve Your Leadership and Team Engagement
Jun 04, 2024
What is CliftonStrengths, and why should you incorporate it into how you lead your teams?
CliftonStrengths — formerly known as StrengthsFinder — is a powerful tool for understanding both your own innate strengths and the strengths of the team members you lead.
At Dana Williams Consulting, CliftonStrengths is a core tool we use in combination with our four-part framework for coaching leaders and teams. From working with hundreds of clients, we have seen firsthand how incorporating this tool into the workplace leads to improved communication, boosted team engagement, better performance, and — ultimately — a more successful company.
What is CliftonStrengths?
CliftonStrengths is an online assessment tool designed to identify and maximize individual talents.
The CliftonStrengths assessment measures the intensity of your talents across 34 themes, categorized to represent the best of what humans do. After completing the assessment, you receive a personalized report detailing your strengths, ordered by rank.
Each of the 34 themes are categorized under four domains: executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. You may have top strengths that lie in all four domains, or you may notice that your top strengths lean more into certain domains than others.
But it’s not enough to simply know your strengths — you must implement them into how you work and lead.
How can you implement CliftonStrengths into your workplace?
We help leaders and teams lean into their strengths while authentically representing their personal brand. It’s all about transforming from the inside out.
For example, a VP of a healthcare company hired us to work with her both individually as well as with her team as they were navigating change in a post-pandemic world. She wanted to grow the engagement scores of the team while managing this transition. As part of our work together, she put into place that every new hire receives 1:1 coaching and personal branding to develop themselves from the inside out.
In addition, this VP’s team leaders learn to lead through strengths as part of the “Leader as Coach” training sessions they attend with me. After working together to implement strengths into the workplace, her team is now receiving higher engagement marks from the Gallup Q12 Survey.
We help leaders like you implement strengths through a four-part framework that focuses on the following areas:
Creating true team connection
When employees feel a deep sense of connection to their work and to each other, organizations see higher engagement. We teach teams how to recognize and celebrate individual and team achievements. This enhances overall job satisfaction and morale.
Teaching leaders to harness strengths
We equip leaders to harness their strengths and those of their team members. Effective leadership is crucial for creating a supportive and productive work environment, encouraging innovation and accountability.
Building a strengths-based culture
We help organizations create a culture that prioritized and leverages individual strengths — diving performance and engagement. We teach leaders and teams to integrate strengths-based practices into daily operations, so that each team member is positioned to excel.
Aligning strengths with mission
Aligning your team’s strengths with the organizational mission clarifies purpose and enhances commitment. This alignment helps ensure that every action taken and decision made is in support of the broader goals and objectives, fostering a unified and purpose-driven workforce.
Get help learning to lead with strengths
Book a 15-minute discovery call to discuss the challenges you’re facing in the workplace — and how we can help you learn to lead with your strengths!
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