Does it ever feel like some projects struggle to take off—like they’re doomed from the start? And yet, others flourish without issue? It kind of reminds us of that age-old adage: if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.
Here at Spark!, we champion the power of personal story. Every human has a unique perspective, and unique strengths to match. But how do we harness the strengths of our team? And why is it so important for our company culture and success?
CliftonStrengths™ is a registered trademark of Gallup, Inc. and includes 35 unique skills and talents, each as unique as the individuals who exhibit them. Identifying, utilizing, and developing our own unique strengths helps to guide which team members will climb trees, and which will swim deep in the ocean.
Whether your skills fall more under executing, influencing, relationship building, or strategic thinking, there are ways to maximize potential and harness these skills—we like to call them superpowers.
Let’s consider some hypotheticals! Let’s say you have a teammate whose top 10 strengths favor executing and strategic thinking skills, but struggles with relationship building. They might not be the best person to work the customer service phone lines or work on the sales floor. Instead, their skills are much more suited to marketing or other heavily technical roles.
Even within these categories, specific strengths like “Learner,” “Strategic,” “Deliberative,” and “Discipline” might align with specific responsibilities in the workflow of a project. Someone with those four strengths might excel at gathering information and planning overall strategies for the use of that information. Others might fare better with sharing that information publicly and ensuring its consistency.
Identifying your strengths is only one part of the equation. At Spark!, we use Human-Centered YOUnity™ to inform the decisions we make on a daily basis. Every human’s story is critical to who they are, how they show up in their communities, and why they are uniquely themselves.
Combined with the wisdom of
CliftonStrengths™, we create a company culture where people are encouraged to engage in the roles in which they excel and communicate with each other to bolster the efforts of the whole team. Fish may have difficulty climbing a tree, but if they make friends with a bird, they can see things from a whole new perspective.
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