Know Your Strengths in Your Encore 041

Welcome to episode 41 of Your Encore Life. In this episode we will be talking specifically about the CliftonStrengths Assessment and why it has value for those of us entering into or already in our Encore Life.  As you may recall episodes 39 and 40 were both discussing the value of maximizing your strengths, focusing on strengths and building them rather than putting an emphasis on your weaknesses and trying to overcome them.  We also talked a little about how to minimize your weaknesses by maximizing strengths or by methods discussed in an article by Brent O' Bannon referenced in episode 40 titled "To Manage Your Weakness, PLUG your LEAK".  Let's start by reviewing that:

L: Loath - What activity do you absolutely hate to do?

E: Escape - What activity do you avoid at all costs?

A: Average - What activity is a weakness that no matter how much you try, you are only average at it?

K: Kink - What activity no matter how much you improve leaves a kink in your stomach when doing it?

P: Plan - consciously use one or more of your strengths to boost your weakness.

L: Leave - Decrease or eliminate if possible the need to perform that activity.

U: Unite - Find someone to perform that activity that is a weakness in your place.

G: Grow - If you have to continue this activity, find a way to improve such as training in the basics, then let it go.

The book lists five characteristics of a strength and how best to develop them.  Here we go:

1. Listen for Yearnings:  What have you seen or heard that makes you think "I want to do that"?  What makes your heart flutter or sing?  This cannot be confused with what they term as "misyearnings", which can be driven by a desire for power, glamour, and excitement and can derail us from our true strengths path.
2. Watch for Satisfactions:  "Satisfactions are those experiences where the emotional and psychic rewards are great".  You really enjoy doing them.
3. Watch for Rapid Learning:  If you are learning something best by jumping in and you feel like you have always known how to do something. Slow and laborious learning is a sign that this may not be an area of strength.
4. Glimpses of Excellence:  Often evident in a finite activity or performance, which isn't necessarily impressive but a trained eye or you sense a moment where you shine brightly.
5. Total Performance of Excellence: Total performance excellence is defined in the book as not being "a glimpse, but the complete extension of an activity.  It doesn't happen occasionally, but each time the activity is performed.  It is not subject to circumstances but transcends them.

To become exceptional:

1. Pick a strength and pursue it.
2. Claim it out of fantasy and into action.
3. Do more of it
4. Enjoy it

Again I have included links to the articles and book mentioned in this episode as well as a link to access the CliftonStrengths assessment, which we will talk more specifics about now.

The global strengths movement started six decades ago when Don Clifton posed a simple question:

"What would happen if we studied what was right with people versus what's wrong with people?"

More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies have used CliftonStrengths to bring the power of strengths-based development to their workplace culture.

Every year, more organizations of all sizes give leaders and their teams the chance to become great at what they're naturally good at.

The test itself is an hour-long online assessment, where you'll see 177 paired statements and choose which one best describes you.

The assessment measures your talents -- your natural patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving -- and categorizes them into the 34 CliftonStrengths t