10 Reasons CliftonStrengths Help You Excel

[Excerpts From The Full Transcript] 

Introduction

If your aim is to excel in life and business based on your own unique talents, then CliftonStrengths is for you. CliftonStrengths is a talent assessment owned and offered by Gallup.

It’s possible you are one of the 27 million people who have taken the StrengthsFinder talent assessment to discover your Top 5 talents. Or maybe you’re one of the billions who have no idea what this is.

Either way – knowing and using your CliftonStrengths will help you excel in life and business.

Here are 10 reasons why.

#1 It’s Your Talent DNA

Your CliftonStrengths hold limitless potential for advancing success based on how you naturally think, feel, and behave.

CliftonStrengths are like your hidden talents – things not so well known or at least not named about you. Your talents are your raw material and limitless potential.

Once you read your report, you’ll see yourself very well described on paper – all the things that are right about you and even some things you may not like about yourself. When others read your report, they will say – “yeah, that’s totally you.” 

#2 You’re One of a Kind

CliftonStrengths tells you how unique you are from everyone else. In fact, according to Gallup, “the chance that two people share the same Top 5 in the same order is 1 in 33 million.”

#3 You’re Not Classified into a Category

Since your talent DNA is completely unique, you are not classified into a personality type or behavioral style. 

I worked for Corporate America for two and half decades. During that time, I was constantly asked to take different assessments. We would get our reports and share those, and I mostly didn’t like the process.

I felt classified, boxed in, and under-valued by those who thought their category was superior for leadership. I always felt under-appreciated and under-estimated by these experiences.

Until CliftonStrengths.

#4 It’s Freeing

Knowing your Talent DNA frees you to believe in yourself based on how you are uniquely wired to change things for the better and bring good to the world.

When I found out not only that I was unique based on my Talent DNA, and that I have plenty to offer – I felt free - free of all the labels and boxes and categories others used to classify me.

#5 It Brings Self-awareness and Understanding

You gain self-awareness in how to make a difference based on how you naturally think, influence, relate, and execute.

Specifically, knowing your talent profile based on your CliftonStrengths helps you to gain deeper self-awareness in these four areas:

• Thinking: How you absorb, think about, and analyze information and situations
• Influencing: How you influence others to action
• Relating: How you build and nurture strong relationships
• Executing: How you make things happen and get things done.

All of us do these four things – we just do them differently than anyone else. 

#6 It Tells You How to Target Success

You're empowered to succeed at higher and higher levels at work and everywhere else.

By investing knowledge, skills, and experiences with your top talents, you build strengths that result in near perfect performance. You can build your strengths infinitely.

Gallup’s research shows that those who know and apply their strengths daily are three times more likely to report a higher quality of life and lower stress. They are six times more likely to be actively engaged in their work. I know this is true in my own life and feeling truly blessed to be able to work in my strengths zone.

#7 It Helps You Grow As a Leader

“The path to great leadership is founded on self-awareness,” says Donald Clifton, Inventor of CliftonStrengths and Father of Strengths-based Psychology.

I coached a young man who was introduced to me by his boss. She wanted him to gain greater insight in operating in his strengths with a focus on communication, teamwork, and growth for leadership in the future.

In our first conversation, he expressed that he wanted to make decisions that help drive change and help others to be successful. He aspired to be in a leadership role and recommended that we focus on his weaknesses so he could succeed to management. This is a widely held view that if only we focus on closing the weakness gap, we will resolve everything that is wrong with us and then we’ll succeed. I helped him see how to apply his strengths to be a great manager. It…changed…his…life!

#8 It Helps You Overcome Your Weaknesses

It's a myth to believe that we should develop our weaknesses to become better at something. 

As Donald Clifton says, “Your weaknesses will never develop, while your strengths will develop infinitely.”  We stay in mediocrity by wasting time trying to develop in areas of our weaknesses. Why? Because in most cases our weaknesses are areas of low-to-no talent and as one commentator explained, “you can’t put into a person what isn’t already there.”

#9 It’s Your Formula for Success

We succeed to excellence by investing time in things that play to our strengths.

Our strengths provide our unique formula for success. I call it our “secret sauce to success.” Your

My Top 5 are Strategic | Connectedness | Maximizer | Futuristic | Self-Assurance.

My success formula is “Strategic Connections Maximize Future Success.”

It’s the strategic way that I connect ideas, people, and resources to deliver excellence according to a defined vision for change that has made me successful throughout my career. It’s why people at my former job called me “legendary.” I was able to operate in my genius zone where my strengths could all fire at once.

#10 It Can Make You a World Champ

Investing in your strengths can make you a world champ because you have the potential to do something better than 10,000 other people.

Consider Ma Long, a world champion in ping pong.

He is known as the best forehand attacker in table tennis history. Turns out he had a weak backhand and an extremely strong forehand. Should he spend hours of practice on his forehand or his backhand? If you believe that we should focus on our weaknesses to win, you will say he should practice more on his backhand. You’d be wrong. Thankfully, he focused on his forehand, using his backhand only for controlled returns to set up his forehand. That’s how he became a world champion.

In Summary

The purpose for you to take the CliftonStrengths assessment is to profile your own talents that make you unique and powerful.

You’ll better understand your individual areas of strengths and weaknesses.

You’ll expose the kinds of activities that you likely excel at and those that you are not wired for.

You’ll gain tremendous insight into how to invest in and develop your individual talents into strengths for near perfect performance, and how to manage your weaknesses. 

You’ll gain a deeper understanding for how to work with others to build high-trust, highly productive relationships that lead to better outcomes in your personal and professional life.

It is my highest recommendation that if you want to excel in life and business, you'll start with CliftonStrengths.

Be sure to book a free session with me so we can explore how you can excel.

CliftonStrengths is a registered trademark of Gallup, Inc. You can purchase your CliftonStrengths Top 5 or All 34 Talent DNA at gallup.com.