Building a Thriving Team Culture: Unlocking the Power of Strengths-Based Approaches

Unlock the secrets to creating a thriving team culture with insights from our founder, Brian Schubering. Have you ever wondered why some strengths-based approaches fail while others flourish? Brian shares his expert perspective on common pitfalls, like diving into strengths work without gauging if your team is ready. Learn the importance of mindfulness and securing supportive partners as you embark on integrating strengths into your environment. This episode is packed with best practices and lessons to help you persistently and thoughtfully embed strengths into your daily interactions.

Understanding your strengths is crucial, but how can you gain new insights about them? We discuss the value of seeking feedback from those who know you well but can maintain an objective stance. Brian emphasizes structured conversations, starting with the strength you resonate with most, to receive affirmations and uncover hidden strengths. By doing so, you'll anchor your strengths into your behavior and interactions more effectively, enhancing both your personal growth and your team dynamics.

Typecasting is a trap that can stifle team growth. Brian sheds light on why flexibility is essential to avoid pigeonholing team members based on their observed strengths. Recognize when it’s time to seek external support and explore the myriad of resources available to enhance your strengths journey. Finally, we highlight the importance of initiating open conversations within your team to foster a strengths-based culture. For more insights and resources, visit our website and join us in building a positive and strong team culture.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

When embarking on your strengths journey, whether individually or as a team, or as part of a larger organizational initiative, it's crucial to remember that it's a developmental process that takes time. For those already familiar with strengths, you know that integrating strengths, language and understanding into everyday life can be slow and challenging, like learning any new language. Your personal understanding of strengths will grow and develop over time, but despite your best intentions, there are gonna be setbacks that challenge your resolve to build a strengths-based environment. But don't give up. You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. For more information about us, visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the podcast, we're going to be revisiting an older interview I did with our founder, brian Schubering, back in 2018, about the four most common mistakes that we encounter with teams and offer some practical ways to avoid them, while also deepening your understanding of what it means to live out of your strengths, trying to build positive team culture. When using strengths, we're going to offer some best practices and lessons that we've learned along the way sometimes the hard way, to help revive your efforts and encourage you to stay the course around strengths work. Before we jump into the show, I have a quick request. If you've been enjoying the podcast, please consider leaving us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Not only does it help others find the show, but it also provides us with some valuable feedback so that we can craft more episodes that can help you, your team or your organization build a strengths-based culture All right.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Now on to the show. So more people than ever are on a journey with strengths. As of the latest statistics I could find, in 2024, something like 31 million people worldwide have taken the strengths assessment. People from all walks of life and professions around the globe are engaging in intentional conversations to understand what is right about them, and that's absolutely fantastic. But whether you're new to the strengths or have been using them for years, just take a moment to pause and ask yourself what direction am I going in, what do I want to get out of this and what kind of help do I need? The answers to these questions can very much help you get more out of your strengths journey.

Speaker 1: 2:36

So the first mistake that we see quite often is that people get really excited about their strengths, results and they just jump in with both feet before considering a couple factors, namely, what is like the work or personal environment like that they're in? Is it conductive to this type of self-discovery or learning? Is it hostile? Maybe Are there advocates that can help. You know, help this understanding. Have some feats, some handles, some, you know, this new information, what are we going to do with it? Jumping in is not bad, but without some proper consideration you might get a little discouraged before truly you know, starting on this journey. It's like if you're really into pickleball and so you go buy fancy shoes and a paddle and rent a bunch of expensive I don't know other equipment for your house, but nobody else around you is in to pickleball, well, you're probably not going to go very far with all of that stuff. Here's Brian explaining a little bit more about this mistake and how you can prevent some of the pitfalls of jumping in.

Speaker 2: 3:39

The common phrase is hit the ground running. They receive their five strengths. They want to engage them as quickly as possible. That's amazing, but sometimes we find people don't ask questions like are the relationships I'm in ready for this kind of strengths approach, this level of honesty, environment that I'm in? I'm willing to embrace this as well, because people are excited to do what some of the material says, that is, focus on your strengths, but the environment or context may not be ready, which may cause some frustration as well, as people may be saying this is where I need to be engaged. That really is outside of maybe their responsibility. That's one of the challenges that we find that comes up in our work often.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Do you recommend people don't start until that environment is ready, that they, that they wait until those things are in place, or to start, but just be aware of how do I integrate this into that environment or setting that isn't ready for it? Well, I just think that starting.

Speaker 2: 4:35

just start, just get in. Um, just start something, Cause here's what you don't know. You don't know yet who around you is going to respond in a positive way to the work that you're doing. Cause if you're, if you're doing any kind of work that's going to increase your self-awareness, your self-acceptance, um, people are going to respond to that. We have a culture that is very receptive to people improving themselves or wanting to be developed, so that's kind of already baked in to many organizational cultures.

Speaker 1: 5:11

That's really true. I think in this day and age, people are very open to that maybe, than they were even just five years ago.

Speaker 2: 5:17

So by stepping into a strengths experience within your organization, I think you may find people that may respond positively to that and those that maybe aren't ready for it. They may not even engage at all. But part of the success of any strengths journey is finding partners and advocates to go on that journey with you. Because strengths alone, engaged in self-reflection by yourself, can only be so effective. We need to rely on the relationships we have with other people, those who know us, that can help us understand how these strengths maybe really apply.

Speaker 1: 5:53

It's important to start, but be aware of how to integrate this information into an environment that maybe isn't ready for it. Starting is crucial, of course. It's crucial. You got to do it. But knowing how to proceed in a potentially unready environment well, that can be just as important. By stepping into a strengths experience within your organization or even your family, you might find people who respond positively and some who don't like even engage at all.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Success in any strengths involvement in any strengths journey well, that's going to involve finding partners and advocates, because strengths alone can only be so effective. We need to rely on relationship with others who know us and can help understand how these strengths apply. So the second mistake that we see all too often is that people take the assessment, they read the results and they think that they're done Like that's all I need to do. Well, often there's no follow-up either or any additional thought on how to interpret this information beyond what's just what's on the page. This is a bummer. It's a huge bummer because there's so many great resources available and places to take it. Even a simple understanding of strengths can become much more powerful than what's just on the page. And until you put your strengths results really into context work, family, friends, whatever. Well, you really don't know their true potential. Here's Brian.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Again, I've actually had a one-to-one conversations with people and their response was I've read the book, what else do I need to know? It's just, I think Is there more to this?

Speaker 1: 7:28

Well, for some people, there is no more than that.

Speaker 2: 7:31

But I you know, reading the book is helpful in understanding the philosophy of StrengthsFinder. But reading the book and being done with it is again just scratching the surface. Most of the books that are out there around StrengthsFinder have a vast array of content explaining what the strengths are, but until that's put into a contemporary context and an active context where you can interact with other people, I think it's going to remain pretty static and one dimensional.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Well, and I think too, when you, when you just get the textbook definition of something out of context, you might be like I don't agree with this at all. Even though it could be right and accurate. If it's not in your context, it just it won't connect. How do you get around that then? How do you encourage people to not just read the book and be done? I'm talking like on your own, so you're just a solo per new or you're just an individual out there? What's an easy first step? Anybody?

Speaker 2: 8:26

in any context. Have someone that you know, someone your relationship with someone that you work with, someone who understands you, has regular contact with you. Have them have a conversation with you about your strengths and ask them for feedback on each of the individual strengths. Read them the definition, then ask them what do you think about my strength of ideation? Do you see this? Does this resonate with?

Speaker 2: 8:50

your understanding and observation of my behavior. What about my strength of adaptability? How have you seen that at work? Because I think that what that's doing initially is it is allowing you to put yourself in a place where you can receive other people's objective observations to affirm and encourage you in those specific areas of strength. Remember, when you receive your strengths, find your results back. Those five words are new to you. To anchor that into who you are as a person, to recognize it within your ability to form relationships, think and get work done. It's helpful to have somebody else inform. That comes through a conversation.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Do you have to be strategic with who you pick? I mean, obviously you want someone who knows you, but I found you know if you ask a spouse or a significant other, are they too close to you to give you helpful?

Speaker 2: 9:41

feedback, we've often come across that because we call it that they're too close. When you're too close to something, you may not see it in its context, and so to have somebody who may like one of the first conversations you have with someone who's not necessarily that close, so that they can give a better context to what it is that they're seeing.

Speaker 1: 10:02

How do you set it up, though, so that it's constructively helpful to not only say, oh yeah, you're, you are great at that, you're great with people. I see that all the time, but it's, it can be more insight. Without having any level of expertise into strengths, I don't think you need to have a level of expertise yet.

Speaker 2: 10:17

Well, that's what I'm saying. I think you start with someone who is able to share back with you what they're seeing. I think that's the place to start. Then you can go from there, because I think that what those stories are going to do is it's going to begin to push aside some of the behaviors of strengths that you're not using, because sometimes you read the paragraph that you get back in your results and you think to yourself oh my gosh, this whole paragraph applies.

Speaker 2: 10:46

There are other times you read that paragraph, you scratch your head like I don't even understand what they're saying. Or again, you read a paragraph definition of your strengths, and part of it applies when you talk to somebody else. They can validate that they can also begin to share with you areas that they see that are totally engaged. Behaviors of the strengths that are totally engaged that you may be unaware of because they're too close to you.

Speaker 1: 11:00

behaviors of the strengths that are totally engaged that you may be unaware of because they're too close to you. So let's say I just took it. I know you well. You're far enough away, not too?

Speaker 2: 11:06

close, I sit down.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Do you recommend I just pick one strength or say, hey, here's my whole profile, brian, brian, who doesn't know that much about strengths? Try to make sense of all of it. Or how do you cause? I also, I think another mistake that's incorporated in this one is, and maybe reason why people just shut the book is it's just too overwhelming to understand all five of these, so they might not do anything. So would you recommend people just sit down and talk about one strength at a time?

Speaker 2: 11:31

When you receive your five strengths back, my first recommendation would be read through all five strengths. Whether you just want to read through the first paragraph, all the action steps, recommendations, et cetera, it doesn't really matter. Just read through the first paragraph, all the action steps, recommendations, etc. It doesn't really matter. Just read through your strengths. Then my second request would be put those strengths in order, not the order that you received, but as you read through the paragraphs, think which one of these do I resonate with the most, which one of these strengths makes the most sense to me.

Speaker 1: 11:55

When you read that strength, you're like oh, it's totally mean you have all kinds of stories to back it up. Yeah, put that one on top of the stack. That was ideation for me the first time I took it. I think it was three or four and I read it I was like, why is this not number one? It was interesting how that works.

Speaker 2: 12:09

So then I would invite you to put ideation on top. Then, with the next four, put them in a sequence order of your knowing what that strength looks like. So then you have a new order to your strengths. You take that into the conversation. Take the strength you know the best, have a conversation with someone just about that strength. Don't put a time limit on it, just talk it out and then move to the second one, and as you begin to develop a rhythm, you may get only through three before the conversation tails off into something else.

Speaker 2: 12:40

You may all five, but the idea is start with something that you know the most start but then the also the way that we encourage people is get to the fifth one because, if that person has had experience with you, has watched you work with you in some way, they may see things in that strength which you don't resonate with really well. They may make applications that you are unaware of. That will help you understand what that strength looks like, how that strength is applied, how that strength is generative to other people, and that's how someone else's vision can help you understand really how that strength is give you.

Speaker 1: 13:20

They can give you perspective that you just can't see on your own Because you could be too close, right.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Most of us are, or just some of the language that's used in the definitions is foreign to you, but to someone else they see it as clearly identified, for sure, part of your personality, part of your strength set.

Speaker 1: 13:38

When you only get the textbook definition without context, you might disagree with it, even if it's accurate. Context is crucial. It's king right. How do you encourage deeper engagement beyond just reading the book? Moving on to the third mistake using strengths as an excuse for bad behavior. This often happens with people who have some knowledge of strengths, but they use it to avoid, you know, maybe tasks that are outside of their strengths. Quote, unquote, outside, for example, someone with some of the critical thinking themes. They might avoid critical thinking tasks. That's ridiculous. Strengths inform us on how we can do things, not on what we should do.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Here's Brian again, One of the approaches that we have sounds something like this Strengths don't inform you on what to do. Strengths don't inform you on what you could do. Strengths inform you on how you can do. So it's how you can, not what you should. I think many people look at strengths and say this is telling me what I should, and I would say it's actually informing me on how you can. So most of the time with this specific challenge, we take the exact opposite approach. It's not strengths don't narrow you in.

Speaker 2: 14:55

It almost opens you up to potentially do whatever you want because it's informing you of how you're going to get it done. Just because you don't have a lot of strengths that have to do with critical thinking, it doesn't mean you can't do it Right. We would look to the other strengths and ask how do these strengths work together to create?

Speaker 1: 15:18

a critical thinker, a company that we worked with very successful. I don't know if he was a VP or he was pretty high up. He had all relating strengths. He didn't have any strengths that we might stereotypically say these are good, like strategic business leader strengths, and what was fun learning more about him over the years is how he used those relating strengths to think strategic about things to influence others.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Part of his uniqueness was his understanding that that's how he functioned. Right Is that in order for him to be the executive, that he was to do the critical thinking and the critical decision making?

Speaker 2: 15:55

he needed to relate to other people, gather their perspectives and opinions. Through his ability to form trusted relationships, he was able to ask people for their advice and what the best decision was. He has put those together, found common themes and made decisions on that. He used his relating strengths To create a trusted team relationship. They trusted him with the information that they provided and they trusted him to do something with it, because that was his role. But that's a great example of somebody who doesn't have the stereotypical critical thinking strengths or the stereotypical decision-making strengths, but still, through relating strengths coming together, you created a person who's critical thinking Can look like these other strengths.

Speaker 1: 16:44

Yeah, yep, we've seen leaders who use their relational strengths to think strategically and influence others. They may not have stereotypical strategic strengths, but achieve critical thinking through their unique strengths. The fourth and final common mistake is typecasting, or perhaps labeling someone based on one's strength and limiting their roles. This can prevent them from showing up in other areas where their strengths might be needed. Here's Brian on this.

Speaker 2: 17:15

A person with this strength is always and we hear that frequently like a person with the strength of belief is someone who is stubborn. Just because they have strong belief systems, they can be perceived as someone who's stubborn. Just because they have strong belief systems, they can be perceived as someone who's stubborn. I think that that kind of typecasting is again confining people. It's backing them up into a corner and not allowing them to individually and uniquely express how that strength shows up for them. I think it takes away from people the potential they have yeah, it sure does For that strength to show in all sorts of environments. I also think part of the mistake that sometimes happens with this idea of typecasting is that a team may see a strength really light up and become super engaged in a context or in a certain situation, and then the team is like oh my gosh, let's always look for that situation for you to be, engaged there.

Speaker 2: 18:11

And again, that typecasts somebody into something and doesn't allow them to truly be able to show up anywhere. I think the expectation should be that we all had the potential to be engaged almost at any time, but then we need to also be discerning enough to think well who is best aligned to be an influencer here or to be a relator here? It all depends.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Yeah, and I think it's important because we talk a lot about you know understanding other strengths in your own, so that you know how do you show up in certain situations and what do you bring unique, that is unique from others. But then the obvious flip side of that is, like you said, if you're just only saying, oh well, brian's only good in this one situation because we saw him really good in that one time, and then keep him on the bench for everything else, you know think about baseball and you've got these relief pitchers that are only, you know, maybe good for this one setting, but then all of a sudden they're asked to do something else, you realize, oh, maybe they're actually have. There's more to them than this one little thing. I think too often we see that in strengths and sometimes it's so off-putting that people can turn them off to the whole thing.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Yeah, and I think that when people start their strengths journey, sometimes the excitement is the overwhelming piece to all this.

Speaker 2: 19:25

And it's not that anyone intends to be overexcited or over-rotate. It's just a consequence of something that they're really interested in, and I can't fault them for that. What I want to raise their awareness to is that there are certain things that naturally happen, which we've addressed here can get the help that they need to make some of these adjustments or to make some very practical decisions in how they're going to integrate a strengths understanding in their relationships or in their work environment.

Speaker 1: 20:01

So those are the four most common mistakes that we see around strengths. But how do you know when you need to call for help, like when the mistakes have become too much, maybe when you're on this journey with strengths? When do you know that you've reached the end of, like, the free resources out there, when you've reached the end of your own ability to self-educate and to understand things, and when is it time to call the help of a strengths professional or strengths practitioner? Well, in this last section here, brian and I share just a bit more about some of the resources out there, when and how to use them, and also how to maybe answer the question about when to call in for reinforcements. Call in the Calvary, if you will, either for yourself, for your team, or maybe both, not knowing when to ask for outside help. Well, that's kind of like the fifth mistake.

Speaker 2: 20:49

There are individuals that know themselves. I think if you're aware of how people on your team are reacting to you, that may be an indication that someone needs help. You may have a team saying let's take this to another level.

Speaker 2: 21:02

And that is a way for someone to say, okay, we need to reach out for help. I think that there are also many ways that people are interacting on social media, where they'll they'll see a great idea on how to engage strengths and that can enlighten them to how they can receive help. I think that there are many ways to be open-minded to um asking for help from others. Um, and part of the need to ask for help is that there are so many people that are willing to do so because they want to share the information they have with somebody else. I think that there's just this overwhelming sense of availability of unique resources that are out there for people to be able to develop more their application of strengths on teams and for themselves personally.

Speaker 1: 21:47

What are some of the ways Leadership Vision either can step in and help people when they realize I'm out of depth or when they're saying, all right, I want to begin my team strengths journey. We're at the very beginning. What are, like maybe one or two of the key pieces of things that we can offer help wise to teams, individuals, whatever it is to really help people begin?

Speaker 2: 22:13

begin their journey with strengths and begin it well. Well, there's several resources that people are using all the time. Um, one of the greatest resources that we have out there is all of the articles and blogs that we have written um, as all the work that you have done to archive all of these articles on a variety of topics, from applying strengths to individuals to different types of team activities.

Speaker 2: 22:42

What are the ways that you can use strengths to inform and shape a culture? Every place that we travel, people always tell us that they use our articles as a resource from understanding all the 34 strengths because we've written on all the strengths multiple times and we take a behavior-based approach to that, to searching for activities as well as specific topics. Like I mentioned, there's other resources that we have concerning individuals, engaging a deeper understanding of their strengths through our strengths course and, like I said before, there are also similar resources out there with different companies that I'd also recommend. Right, because your personality may resonate with somebody and not with somebody else, and so find something that works for you. So there are ways that individuals can use the platform that we have on our website to gain the materials that they need.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Which is leadershipvisionconsultingcom. Kind of long, kind of long, but if you're listening to this away from a computer, when you get back to your computer type, that in Yep there's that we also have ways that we can help strengths professionals also have ways that we can help strengths professionals.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Strengths professionals are any individuals who are using strengths within an organizational culture trying to advance the strengths language through shared experiences, and we provide training opportunities for them and we have many people that go through that to understand more about our process and in those trainings we simply share that. This is our process. Here are the techniques that we use. We want people to become experts at this and we know that part of what we're doing is we're adding additional resources to someone who may have all kinds of crazy great experience.

Speaker 1: 24:23

We just want to help move that forward, possibly just raise the bar a little bit on what they're already doing. They just maybe need some way to get unstuck.

Speaker 2: 24:32

And the third way is we really want to help an organization, so we have ways to launch you into a strengths experience. One of our offerings is a launch event which is a 30, not 30, a 90 to three hour experience 30 minutes, so we talk very quickly, really quickly.

Speaker 2: 24:52

So that's an experience where we introduce you to language of strengths. We introduce you to the behavior-based approach. We do an education, even a short education session, with that. We have conversations around the behaviors of your strengths. We take an application approach to it. That's a short introductory experience. We have day-long processes as well as what we call our core process and a variety of professional services. So people come to us for the introduction. People come to us after they've spent years working with.

Speaker 2: 25:23

StrengthsFinder and they want something different to apply to their teams. People come to us for organizational support, internal training, just a variety of different needs, but again, it all just depends on what is it you're specifically needing, because part of the takeaways from this conversation is when you're thinking about starting your StrengthsFinder journey. I think the most important thing to be considering is I'm taking these steps going forward. It is a developmental process in that it's not going to happen right away. Your personal understanding of strengths that's going to grow over time. No matter how well-intentioned we are with teams, you're going to come across roadblocks, people that are hesitant to incorporate strengths. We want to incorporate this, and how can we do this in a way that's productive for everybody? And then, if you're thinking about something organizationally, of course that's the bigger move is how do you gently introduce us on a larger scale?

Speaker 1: 26:19

I think that there's some ways that you can dip your toe in the water with leadership vision to see. You know, in other episodes we've talked about like our style, like the kind of the core things that we believe, and if that's of interest to you. And yeah, I mean we've worked for clients three, four, five, five years long, going through entire organization, um, but you got to start somewhere, right, and I think by the book, get codes, have your team, take it as one of the best, easiest. I think I don't even know what a code costs now $20?, $20. $20.

Speaker 2: 26:55

I think if you buy the book with that it's a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 26:57

It's a pretty low bar to entry. If you simply want to get this information in front of your team, yep.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yep. Which again is the most important part Exactly Just have the first initial conversations and then see what goes from there. Just Just have the first initial conversations, Then see where it goes from there. Just be really open-minded.

Speaker 1: 27:11

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture, For more resources, to develop your strengths the strengths of your team or to build a strengths-based environment in your organization. Visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom and thank you for subscribing to our podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts, my name is Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.