What the Domains of Strength Teach us about Team Culture

Our work at Leadership Vision ultimately is centered around establishing a healthy culture within a team. Often, when we are asked to help build a team’s culture, most of the leaders of these teams are concerned with finding people solutions to cultural problems. They think they just need to find people with different “strengths” to make things better.

We don’t think this is the correct approach.

We believe that no matter what strength you have, that strength can contribute to how a team culture thinks critically, how they influence within the organization, how they get work done, and how they build relationships. And this is where the Domains of Strengths can really help.

Upon first glance, the Domains of Strengths are a simple way to organize all 34 Themes of Strength into four categories. But they are so much more. The domains of strength help us understand how all Strengths can contribute to team culture.

We also believe that there needs to be a shift in terms of how we are using Strengths to inform our teams. From how Strengths show up in individuals, to how the individuals Strengths can contribute to healthy team culture.

Today on the Leadership Vision Podcast, we introduce the idea of using the Four Domains of Strength to build healthy team culture. We explore this philosophy at a high level and introduce how each of the four domains can contribute to healthy team culture. We then unpack each domain over the next few episodes, so stay tuned!

What are the Domains of Strength?

The domains of strength are four different categories that have been used to group Strengths together, Strengths that have a common way of forming relationships, making decisions, thinking things through, and how to get things done. We use domains of Strength because they help people understand how the talents of each of their StrengthsFinder themes are brought together to form a theme. The four domains of Strengths are:

1. The Executing domain
2. The Influencing domain
3. The Relating domain
4. The Strategic Thinking domain

Click on the links above to dive deeper into each of the domains.

RELATED: Exploring the Domains of Strength

A Simple Activity

After you have gone over the definitions of each domain, ask the members of your team these two simple questions:

1. What does the {domainName} domain look like, feel like, sound like?
2. What value does our team place on {domainName traits}?

When you’ve done that, share your responses with us in the comments, on social media, or send us an email!