A Conversation About How Your Strengths Help You Collaborate (Podcast)
Welcome to the next installment of the Leadership Vision Podcast where we share our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of StrengthsFinder.
On this episode of the podcast, I’m having another Strengths conversation with my colleague and the Director of Business Development at Leadership Vision, Logan Joyce. More specifically, we’re having a “push” conversation. A push conversation is any dialogue between two people where you’re intentionally pushing Strengths to the center. You can talk about everyday things but reference your strengths and the strengths of the other person so that you’re practicing the language of strengths. Practicing seeing things from another person’s perspective and practicing using Strengths to articulate your perspective.
In this episode, you’ll hear Logan and I discuss how our Strengths help us to collaborate with others. Logan and I share a few Strengths, but we also have a few that are quite different, and it’s in those differences that you really hear how uniquely we approach this topic of collaboration. Collaboration is defined as “the action of working with someone to produce or create something.” Everyone collaborates in one form or another every day. On small things and on big, we’re a species that is built to collaborate. Understanding our unique approach to collaboration is important if we want to do it well.
We picked this topic from a list of eight conversation starters that help you talk about your Strengths without necessarily having to talk about those Strengths. There are of course many ways to go about this, but to get your push conversation started, find a friend and ask them how they do one of the following things:
- Get work done?
- Make decisions?
- Form relationships?
- Communicate best?
- Collaborate with others?
- Learn new things?
- Adjust to change
- Handle conflict
I’ve been learning so much from these conversations, and the more that I do them and listen and re-listen to them as I edit, I think everyone should be assigned to have one of these conversations each week. Maybe not to record them, but to seek out a colleague to better understand how your two sets of Strengths interact. There’s no end to the number of things you can apply to your life.
A Conversation For Everyone
Push conversations can help anyone who wants to understand themselves or those around them better. If you or the person you’re talking with isn’t familiar with Strengths, answer the prompt using generic language not referencing your Strength specifically. Instead of saying “I think through “Competition,” I could say, “When I think about solving a problem, I’m always comparing things.” If you are talking with a person familiar with Strengths, they can help draw those examples back to one of your Themes.
Instead of trying to talk about one of your Strengths at random, these push conversations setup a context or a scenario that should prompt examples. For example, instead of saying, “Tell me about your Strength of___,” you can use one of these conversation starters.
As you listen to Logan and I talk about how our Themes of Strengths help us collaborate, think about how your Strengths help you collaborate. ALL of us have to do this, sometimes a lot, and knowing the way you do it best will help in so many ways.
About The Leadership Vision Podcast
The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of StrengthsFinder. Leadership Vision uses StrengthsFinder to work with People, Teams, and Culture. We believe that knowing your Top 5 Strengths is only the beginning. In fact, our highest potential exists in the ongoing exploration of our talents. Subscribe to the Leadership Vision Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Please contact us if you have ANY questions about anything you heard in this episode, or if you’d like to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.
