Top 3 Ways to Spread Strengthsfinder in Your Organization

You have taken the Clifton Strengthsfinder test. You received your results and you want everyone to know about your Woo, Positivity, Achiever, Empathy and Activator! You start thinking about all the contexts that you inhabit here on planet earth and you think,

I wish everyone I came into contact with could know their strengths.

You are hooked.

So, how can you get the StrengthsFinder revolution started where you live, work and play? Here are my top 3 ways to spread StrengthsFinder in your organization.

1. Buy Codes

If StrengthsFinder is unknown in your organization, start buying codes for your coworkers and supervisors. This is easily done and costs under $10. Simply purchase your top 5 access now.

Have people take the test and set up a meeting to talk through your results. This will yield an increase of personal self awareness based on strengths and a boost in team awareness around what people in the group are good at.

2. Talk About It

If StrengthsFinder is known in your organization, but not much has been done with it, you need to talk about it! Set up a meeting to walk through everyone’s strengths. Allow 60-90 minutes.

Here is what I would suggest you do:

1. Have everyone spend 10-15 minutes re-reading their top 5 theme definitions and highlight what really resonates with them. (Many times people read their theme definitions and never interact with anyone after reading their results.)
2. Spend 10-30 minutes discussing with everyone what was their strongest strength and why. Encourage not only the individuals to respond, but teammates as well. This should prompt a lively discussion.
3. Next, ask everyone to share at least one pair of strengths that are working in combination and how they see them doing this. Again, have everyone answer and have the group give feedback as each person shares. This could take another 15-30 minutes depending on the size of the group.
4. Finally spend some time asking everyone to commit to doing something different at work based on their strengths in the next month. This will put some accountability around actually using strengths intentionally rather than just paying them lip service.

3. Make it a Habit

Schedule a follow up meeting in the future to discuss where you see your strengths playing out at work and where your teammates are using their strengths as well. If you can use these micro-interventions over time, even 15 minutes to start different meetings, you will have a better chance of letting Strengthsfinder spread in your organization.

Talk to your manager about using strengths at a retreat or strategic offsite. People are always looking for team building and other fun activities to do at off site events. Strengthsfinder is a fantastic tool to use at these types of gatherings.

Many times we get questions through our website about how companies can use StrengthsFinder during a company outing. This is a great thing to talk to your manager about but I have to be frank and say:

1. If you do not have someone in house who can facilitate a workshop, it will be challenging to spend a worthwhile amount of time digging into strengths.
2. If you do have someone in house and you spend less than a day going through strengths, you will be hard pressed to really ingrain what is being learned by glossing over everyone’s strengths

Why Using StrengthsFinder Matters

Spreading StrengthsFinder in your organization is a worthy goal.  Organizations that embrace a strengths based culture can see employee engagement rise by over 70%. Just having a general awareness of strengths can improve employee engagement by 6X. Either way, using StrengthsFinder in an organization can have a huge impact.

One thing that we find over and over again is that organizations think they have ‘done’ StrengthsFinder. What this usually means is somewhere along the way, they had employees take StrengthsFinder and then had one 60 minute meeting where they spent 30 minutes talking about the themes, and then maybe received a mouse pad with their themes printed on it, and then never talk about it again.

Did they really ‘do’ StrengthsFinder?

It is a noble goal to want to spread StrengthsFinder in your organization. It does make a difference – if it sticks. To make it sticky, to really move the needle on employee engagement, you need to invest in this tool. This is what we help organizations do. It is not cheap and it takes time, but the results can be exponential.

Some of our client organizations have experienced tremendous bounces from working with our firm. Want to find out more? Email us and we can talk about how we did it.

But, regardless of this, at any level some awareness of StrengthsFinder is better than none at all.

Do you have any examples of how you have spread StrengthsFinder in your organization?  What worked well?