Understanding and Leveraging Your Strengths for Business Success

Katie Bell: 1:13

Welcome to another episode of the treat your business podcast, we are going to explore strategies and tools that can drive success in your business. And this is possibly something that some of you, you will have never heard about before, you may have heard me talk about other strength tests and other ways that you can really unleash your power. And what we’re going to focus on today is this game changing approach for businesses, which is the Clifton Strengths Assessment. And we’re going to uncover how identifying strengths in as in you, as a leader in your team can revolutionise your business’s performance. So the Clifton Strengths Finder, or assessment was developed by Gallup and that it’s gained loads and loads of popularity for its ability to highlight

Katie Ball: 2:03

your unique strengths. Now,

Katie Bell: 2:07

if you go onto their website, and I will make sure the link is in the show notes for you. But we there there is a 34 strength test and there is a five strength test, you only need the five guys, okay, I’m all about simple, quick stuff, just take the five strength test, it’s about 20 quid, maybe$20. I can’t remember which way round. But it’s it is neither here nor there. And we have made sure everybody in the business in both of my businesses do the Clifton Strengths Finder test, okay. And we can do that at various points. Sometimes we do it at interview stage, sometimes we do it when they’re already part of the business. And I would encourage you to really start to think about how you bring people into your business, and how well you know them right from the beginning, because that is going to set them up for success rather than failure. Now, when you take this test, it’s, it doesn’t take you very long to do and it’s all about not overthinking it. So you can’t trick this, you can’t try and answer it in weird ways. And then expect your strengths to be something different. Okay, this is what you are hard wired to behave like in any given scenario. And this five strengths that it’s going to give you your top five strengths, numbered one to five will sit in one of four categories. And the categories are execution, relationship building, influencing and strategic thinking. So if you are have skills in the influencing domain or the influencing category, this means that you have strengths involved in interacting with other people, persuading people leading people. So these people are often quite charismatic, and they’re really impactful communicators. So these are people who like to initiate action and inspire others and galvanise their team around them. They like to express their ideas quite clearly, quite effectively. They can be really skilled at building relationships and winning people’s trust. And they are people that possess a real strong presence, and they’re really decisive people. Is that you? Or do you think you have more skills in the execution category. So when you execute, you are about getting things done? Taking action, turning ideas into reality, people with strengths in this domain are dependable, they’re consistent. They’re driven to accomplish tasks and meet goals. They thrive on routine and structure. They take ownership of tasks and commitments, and the skilled at identifying and solving problems. Now just going to throw this out there guys that if you are a clinic owner or a business owner, which the majority of you are that listen to this podcast, I’m just going to say that not many of you are going to hold many strengths in the executing domain. No judgement, I only have one, it’s okay. You are going to ever listen to that and go Yeah, it’s not really me. You’re going to be you’re going to feel more in tune with the influencing and the relationship building domain. Okay, my VAs my admin team are really high in the executing domain. No shit Sherlock, because they look they are. They are task orientated. They love to meet goals. They thrive on routine and structure. They like taking ownership they want to get shit done. Now, you could have more strengths in the relationship building domain and this is made this is often when you’re strength finding your clinicians, your therapists and you plot them out on a really fancy spreadsheet. You can you often see that you will be heavy in relationship category because that’s why we do what we do. So these people form and nurture relationships. They are quite empathetic people they’re really team or orientated. They understand that they connect with other people’s feelings. They like to create peaceful environments, and they like to resolve conflicts. So they don’t. Quite often they like harmony within within a team. They bring optimism, they’re quite enthusiastic in situations they help others grow and reach their potential. So this is where I’m expecting you all to be nodding and in your cars thinking, Yep, that sounds more like me. Or maybe you’re in the strategic thinking domain. Now, as clinic owners and business owners, we quite often have some of our skills within this area, because this is our ability to analyse information, think critically, planning for the future, we are problem solvers. So we’re good at gathering and analysing data. If you’ve got lots of strengths in the strategic thinking domain, you envision possibilities and future outcomes you like you’re quite creative in terms of ideas and concepts. And you plan to make decisions based on those longer term goals. So it’s really important to understand that, as individuals, we can have a combination of strengths from different domains, so different areas, and your unique combination of strengths contributes to your overall personality and your abilities. So this assessment helps us as individuals, and as leaders, within a team, understand and leverage and unleash those strengths. So you can enhance personal growth, professional growth, teamwork, and generally just be much more effective. So when it comes to implementing this into your business, I’m always looking at ways that I can get to know my people around me better, so that I can become a better leader, I can be more self aware of who I am, and where I need to pull in terms of and focus on where my strengths lie, and becoming more and more aware of what I shouldn’t be spending time doing in the business. So this is why quite often there’s there’s a variety of assessments and tests, there’s the Colby, there’s the six working geniuses, there’s the IMI, there’s the Clifton Strengths Finder. And there’s loads of them. So quite often, as a leader, you’ll be you’ll have done them all, or you’ll do a lot of them, because each one will give you a little bit more information into who you really are. I used the Clifton Strengths Finder for I think probably now 10 years. And everybody in the business who comes into the business also does this test. And then I plot it out in a spreadsheet in each category. So I list all of the skills. And each skill is sat within one of those four domains, and I plot your name, and then I plot all of your five skills next to it. And then I can start to see what roles and what responsibilities you should have within the company, and what things I should absolutely not be giving you to do. So it starts with you as the leader buying into this, it starts with you being committed, and doing your Clifton Strengths Assessment and then offering the assessment to all of your employees. Now personally, I think you should buy it for them. If you want this in your business, if you want to get to be a better leader. And you want a higher performing team, I think it is a cost of the business that you should foot. And then use the result the results to go have role alignment, how you’re going to put your team together, think about their personal development plans, you can influence your training sessions, the ongoing support this will all cement your strengths based approach. So I’m going to give you an example. Because you guys know me well enough now that I can be quite open on this forum. Could you guess what my Clifton Strengths Assessment would be? I hope you’re being kind as you think. So my Clifton Strengths Assessment shows that I have two in relationships. I have one in execution, one in strategic thinking and one in influencing. So I’m really across the board. I’m not heavy. In one particular area. I’m slightly more heavy in relationships by one, but I’m quite across the board. Okay. Now, my five strengths my first strength is achiever. And as an achiever, this is somebody who’s really strong desire to accomplish tasks and to set goals and see results. So somebody was an achiever strength, and I’m saying this one as an example because a lot of you will hold this as well. We have a drive to do more and more and more and more. We thrive on productivity. We’re most baited by crossing items off our to do lists. We are known for our really, really good time management skills for being determined and very persistent in the pursuit of their objective. So if any of you get to spend any time with me on a one to one basis, you will know, this is my superpower. Okay, I am ridiculously good at time management. And I am obsessed with crossing off a to do list. And I often write things on there that wasn’t even on, but I’ve done them anyway, just so that I can tick them off. And we find real satisfaction in our achievements, that we’re constantly seeking out new challenges. So it’s that feeling of, I can’t stop where I am now, what’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing, and we set really high standards for ourselves? Now, every strength as Philipa, my fabulous mindset coaching Thrive would say, there is always a shadow side, there’s the light and the dark. So when you’ve got achiever, as one of your lead strengths, you are very highly driven, you are a big action taker, you accomplish a lot, you achieve a lot. The dark side to that the shadow side to that is you don’t really rest you need, you’re constantly in pursuit of the next thing, don’t often smell the roses. So it’s having that awareness that every strength, there is a there is a challenge that lies around it as well. But the more you know that the more you can work with it. We like to thrive in environments that have clear goals, structured tasks, sense of accomplishment. People with high with achiever will be admired for their work ethic, their dedication, and their ability to consistently deliver results. But our constant drive for achievement can sometimes lead to that tendency of overwork or neglect, or that aspects of our life. So I have to work. Now, I was gonna say I have to work extremely hard, that’s a load of shit. Because that’s a limiting belief, I a part of me has to work hard to accomplish and make sure I prioritise myself care and maintain that nice, healthy balance of everything that’s going on in your life at one time, that’s really crucial for your over your overall well being as an achiever, my second strength is positivity. So I am a glass half full sort of person. i The dark side to that is that I am not very good at listening to people who moan and don’t really do anything about it. So believe it or not, my third strength is empathy. I’m very empathetic, I’m not sympathetic whatsoever, as my husband will tell you, he has had what he now tells me as a back problem for over a year, and you’ve not even looked at it. And you never even give me any time. And I’m just not very sympathetic to him, because he doesn’t really do much about it. However, positive people are always looking for the solution. They’re always they’re bringing optimism, they’re enthusiastic that content, they have contagious energy. People want to be around positive people. And we have that unique ability to see the bright side of life. So even when the shit hits the fan. And there’s loads of challenging circumstances, it’s being around somebody that’s got positivity as a strength means that they’ll radiate that and a lot of lift those around them and infuse that sense of hope and excitement. So quite often as a positive person, the dark side is that I can very quick with praise is good. But also, sometimes you will avoid the conflict, you will avoid the confrontation. Because your natural strength is to be positive about something, when really, you just need to tell them that it wishes the job. So sometimes we will wrap it up always with the positive. So again, it’s just being aware of the light and the, the you know, the light and the shade of light and the shadow. Third strength, as I’ve said is empathy. So these are the ability to understand and feel emotions, feel, see perspectives, experiences of others, we have the ability to kind of walk in somebody else’s shoes and really understand that we can create a safe and supportive environment where people feel understood and valued. And that’s really something that I work hard on in thrive, that people can feel understood and valued and safe and that there’s no judgement and you can you can come in and say that you don’t know anything about certain subjects and nobody’s going to think anything less of you. People with empathy, can listen, they can provide emotional support, they can foster strong relationships, okay. But people with empathy, have to really manage their emotional boundaries. So I have to work hard on not absorbing all this emotions because then it can be quite overwhelming for me, I have to prioritise myself care so I don’t burn out. Learning to empathise without taking emotional burdens on is a real key part of your development. Because as a, as a physio as an osteopath, as a as a chiropractor, I always think we’re kind of these people that like, absorb all of the energy of our patients. And when you’re doing 50 6070 100 patient weeks, that will lead to burnout very quickly, if we can’t put that kind of nice, almost eggshell or around us that just bounces off those emotions. It’s not that we’re not being empathetic. It’s not that we’re not listening. But we’re not taking it on board and taking it in. My fourth strength, this will not come as a shock is competition. So this means if we are going to play the cereal box game, if you’ve never played that, you need to get out more. If you have, we’re gonna play a serious game, I will rupture both hamstrings to win. Okay, if we, in fact, it’s interesting. If we end if I enter a competition, I will only enter a competition if I think I can win it. If I don’t think you can win, it won’t get involved. So and this is quite common in our industry, because we all tend to share quite a lot the same characteristics, we’ve got a strong desire to measure ourselves against others, we strive for healthy competition. But we do compare our performance and achievements with those of others, which is the one reason why I don’t follow any other clinics on social media. Okay, because instantly I go into comparison mode. So it’s not always about being the best. But we are motivated by the process of improvement and the thrill of that challenge. So we set very high standards, we put in a lot of extra effort to achieve the goals. You know, I’ve recently been going to a new boxing gym, okay, and it’s a boxing and strength and conditioning gym. And it’s amazing the difference when you’ve got a trainer who was looking over you who says, if they say to me a bit, you can’t do that game on, because then I have to do it, then I have to do it. Obviously, they’re always safe. And they’re always really careful. And they’re always fabulous, really professional people. But just given that challenge, got that opportunity to compete, I then have to be involved. So embracing and leveraging the fact that you can excel in roles that have goal setting, achievement, performance improvement is great. My fifth strength is futuristic. That’s my ability to see what lies ahead. In vision, imagine future possibilities. We are forward thinkers, we’re drawn to thinking about the what what we could create. We’re excited by new trends, technologies, innovations. And we’ve got that kind of sense of anticipation and inspiration to bring discussions about the future. So we’re quite contagious, and very energetic people. Okay. However, that might sometimes mean we struggle to focus on the present moment, because we get too caught up in the future. So we’ve got to find that balance between the two. So can you see my ability to understand myself as a leader when those five strengths, what that definitely means for me is that I should not be involved in the day to day running of either of my businesses, okay, because I don’t possess those skills. My role should very much be in leadership. galvanising, the team, getting the team moving to where we want to be setting those creative ideas, those future possibilities. Being the one that rallies the team gives that positive, contagious energy, and uplifts people. And that’s why I love to do podcasts. That’s why I love to do coaching. That’s like why I love to be a teacher as well. I like to teach as well as coach to different things. So you can see that I’m really working into my superpowers. And every day more and more, we’re getting rid of things that don’t work in those kind of five strengths. So now you know me really well, I’m going to go on set your challenge to go and know yourself really well. And here’s the thing, you’re going to go onto the Clifton Strengths link pop up, pop it in the show notes, download the five strengths test and do you first of all, and see what your five strengths are. And I would really love for you to tell me what they are. So, again, we’re going to pop away in the show notes for you to let us know what your strength test is. Because sometimes when you do it for the first time, it can be a bit overwhelming. You don’t really know what it means. So tell me and I will help you figure out what that means you should be doing what you shouldn’t be doing in your business. The more time you can spend in your superpower, the more fulfilling your days are going to become. And once you’ve done the You and you’ve got your head around you. First of all, I would then encourage you to go and get anybody around you to do it as well. You can get your partner to do it, you could get your kids to do it. And you can plot it on a spreadsheet of where all of those strengths lie and you can see where your gaps are, where your holes are. And that can also help in who your next recruit should be. Who is that person that you need to plug those gaps when it comes to the to that Strengths Assessment. I have loved this episode. I hope you have to and join me again next week. Well, we are going to dive into how you can go on holiday without working. We’ll see you next week.

Katie Bell: 21:56

Thanks for listening