Isogo TV :: Fuel Your Story, Live Your Strengths

One of the most powerful applications of knowing your Strengths is that every talent you have provides a hint about what you NEED. When you know your needs, you begin to see what's missing around you and where there may be opportunities to use your strengths even more effectively.

On this Q&A day, I answer a question I often hear when people access their Full 34 StrengthsFinder report. Their eyes immediately travel to the bottom of the list — 29-34 — and they ask…are these my weaknesses? Today, I define what a weakness really is and address the bottom of that list!

As a manager, if you are looking for a magic bullet to motivating your folks, the truth from this episode is about as close as you are going to get. Ask this one question of each of your team members, help them apply it, and watch their productivity soar. And maybe take a thing or two off your plate as well!

Turns out that an obsession with peanut butter can actually be a sign of talent! Strength shows up in the most ordinary and most unlikely of places in our everyday work and our everyday lives. Often, it is those personality quirks--even idiosyncrasies--that can point us towards our greatest strengths. Today mine shows up a in peanut-butter-stirring superpower.

In this tribute episode, it is the words of Curt Liesveld that say that Talent is "internal and invisible" and, as he impressed on me over and over before he suddenly passed away this year, it is our job--our challenge--to bring that internal and invisible out into the external and visible, to allow our strengths to be used, to be understood and to flourish.

On this Q&A day, I answer a question I hear quite often after someone sees their StrengthsFinder Talent Themes for the first time. Sometimes our Talents have gotten us in trouble in the past, and we've been told to tone them down. This can be confusing when now we're being told they can be used as Strengths.

As a manager or team leader, our one-on-one meetings with our team are often annoying or perplexing. One or both of you leave feeling discouraged or unproductive. It doesn't have to be that way! Today, I share Part 1 on how to have your BEST 1-1 meeting with your staff.

Hands down, the greatest day-in-day-out impact of a Strengths-based perspective has been on my marriage. On the closest relationship of my life. It was from that impact, that I saw the power for every relationship (personal or professional). So, I hope the challenge and the (imperfect) recovery of my story impacts your story.

Traveling abroad or chatting in your own house, miscommunication can take us down a long (sometimes ugly!) road. Today, I'm unpacking the cause of that all-too-common frustration and giving you an idea of why putting words to our strengths clears away the muddled frustration and opens up opportunity to bring the best of yourself and bring out the best in others.

There is one question I hear in every engagement I facilitate--from a bright group of engineers to 1-1 coaching with a mom-preneur...Will my StrengthsFinder results change? So, in this episode of Isogo TV, I answer that question and share the takeaway from a very frustrated manager about this very thing.