Three Keys to Hosting a Strengths Conversation

Knowing your top five Strengths is only the beginning. When you got your results, you may have felt validated, vulnerable, or skeptical, but something about the language of Strengths makes you want to know more. So how do you make sense of it all? The best way to begin making sense of your Strengths is through a Strengths conversation. This is when you sit down and simply talk about who you are with someone trained in the Leadership Vision philosophy and approach to hosting a Strengths conversation.

In this episode, we share three keys to hosting a successful and generative Strengths conversation. Even if you haven’t been trained in Strengths, they’re great reminders for all of us as we converse with anyone.

As a reminder, our Strengths Communicator Training helps people develop their skills and knowledge of Strengths to ultimately lead others through this generative 1 to 1 conversation. We have a virtual cohort starting here this fall; learn more here.

Three Keys to Having a Successful Strengths Conversation

The Strengths conversation is at the heart of what we do at Leadership Vision. It is both art and science. It’s structured yet organic. There are rules, suggestions, and a lot of room to go with your gut, but it is a proven process for helping people understand what makes them unique. If we had to synthesize all the things we’ve learned about Strengths conversations over the past 20 years, working with Strengths in the past ten years of training others, it comes down to the following three things.

1. Pay attention to your big picture perspective

Pay attention to your big picture perspective. That is the plan you put in place for this conversation. Maybe the strategy or some of the key questions. Keep that in the back of your mind and let that be a guiding voice as you’re having the conversation.

Before you plan to have a Strengths conversation with someone, you should minimally be aware of what their Strengths are. During the training, we help participants to think of possible questions based on those Strengths and to look for connections or pairings that may exist within their top five. Remember, the big picture is to listen to their story for how their beauty and brilliance appear in their life’s context.

2. Be as present as you can

Be as present as you can be with that person. Remember, do your best to control your Strengths, explaining and your Strengths interpreting. We can save that for another conversation, but we are just capturing the illustrations people are sharing about their Strengths development through their stories.

3. Practice stepping behind the conversation

Practice stepping behind the conversation, meaning, try to imagine seeing the world from the other person’s vantage point. Remember, you are seeing the world through their eyes. You’re feeling the world through their feelings. You’re understanding their life’s experiences through their people. And we are there to capture that information and reflect it back to this individual later on. Remember Strengths are happening within the person’s context. We are simply there to capture the information and reply back to them later on.

Your Strengths Conversations

Remember, this is hard work, and there’s a reason why we offer a four-day training on hosting Strengths conversations, but we also want to be a resource for our community members who haven’t gone through our training, or can’t go through our training. If you’d like some help with this process, please reach out. We’d love to hear from you! Connect with us at connect@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.