S1, E4: The Best Way To Fix Your Weaknesses And Improve Your Leadership

Proactive Mindset Formation, Part 4 of 7

Happy Thursday to you!

Today we’re diving into the third frame of the MettlEdge Mind, let there be strength.

As a reminder, The MettlEdge Mind is a model that helps you harness your high-octane brain to take control of your time, tension, tone, talents, tasks, teamwork, and emotional turbulence to shape a strong sense of self, purpose, and belonging—what I call your MettlEdge.

You do this by putting your thinking into the service of your emotions. I’ve already covered the first two in previous episodes, let there be tension and let there be compassion.

Today I’m going to talk about talents.

Have you ever heard the story about a man who asked the question “what would happen if we studied what was right in people instead of what was wrong with people?” (The History of CliftonStrengths)

The man’s name was Donald Clifton and his question in the 1950s led to a global strengths movement based on the premise that “Companies, leaders and those they lead can achieve more by focusing on strengths rather than only on weaknesses”.  (Gallup.com)

This way of thinking is a game changer when it comes to personal development.

Why?

Because it turns our attention to the things we naturally do well.

It gives us permission to thrive in our own unique ways of thinking feeling and behaving.

Instead of struggling to do everything, we grow up the everything we were made to be.

I want to get started today with a brief acknowledgement about some of the ways I was made to be.

I am aware that I am deep and quite theoretical. I am aware that this shows up in how I present content.

I wonder sometimes as I record these podcasts if it’s too much.

But, this is how I think. How I think impacts the way I feel and behave—and communicate. The same is true for you. While I’m sure the way I present will develop over time, it won’t fundamentally change.

I am made to study complex things and to understand them through more simple constructs. I know I’m made this way because it’s something I do well. It’s something I enjoy.  

I instinctively study complex things with the desire to grasp their complexity in a way that can be captured in a tool, model, or picture that simplifies the concept and makes it useful.

Doing this kind of work gives me energy—joy. Hours pass with ease.

This kind of being and doing is “right” with me.

But perspective is important.

Others may hear me talk about this and think “there is no way that would be energizing and fun for me.” Hours spent in complex thought would be torturous.

If I was expected to do this kind of work, there would be a lot wrong with me because that doesn’t fit how I think at all.  

To each in their uniqueness, Let there be strength.

Focus: What’s going through your brain right now? What do you think makes perspective important?

When I studied to become a professional coach, I immediately realized I was made for it.

In fact, I’d been naturally posing as a professional coach for years.

People interest me.

Not developing potential haunts me.

Coaching helps me put the two together to be a valuable tool, a useful resource, for people to pave their own path and crush their potential.

This is because professional coaching helps people gain clarity and make decisions that move them forward into what they want.

It reveals behaviors, values, and beliefs that no longer serve someone’s desires. Gaps in skills and capabilities that are barriers to dreams. Simple changes to an environment that can change everything. Or perspectives of self that stop people from sharing their uniqueness and making the impact they were made to make to a family, team, or community.

Not all coaching is practiced with this type of growth and awareness in mind.

Not all coaching is this pure.

Pure coaches partner with people in their tense, stuck, uncertain, challenging, difficult places.

They show up wanting to see people, be with them, suffer with them, and not stay there in the suffering together, but rather pure coaches want to provide as much value as possible for others to move forward in the ways they want, grow through change, and thrive in alignment with their values, beliefs, strengths, and relationships.  

Pure coaches boost a client’s requisite variety.

I talked about requisite variety in the introductory episode of this podcast series.

Requisite variety is a term used to describe effective systems. Again, I’m not an expert in the technical application of this term, but I know what it means. It means that to be most effective, a system must have at least as many options available as it has obstacles that it may encounter in order to operate without stoppage. (sciencedirect.com)

Pure coaches boost their client’s ability to see paths to get where they want to be that they don’t already see. They help their clients design solutions that skirt around stoppages.

They help their clients counteract varied distractions with a sufficient variety of actions. 

Requisite variety is personal agency, and it thrives in people as they partner with a coach who supports them to harness their brain and think.

What’s the point here.

The point is that I was reminded this week as I was working with my mentor coach to renew my International coach federation credential that I feel called to practice pure, professional, and powerful coaching. It woos me. And this makes sense. I am called to practice what I am wired to be.

I am called to practice what I am wired to be.

People who practice pure, professional, and powerful coaching leave behind their desire to teach, mentor, direct, consult, or counsel. These are all essential and useful ways of relating with others. But they are not pure coaching.

When relating with a client, pure, professional, and powerful coaches put aside those aforementioned things and pick up their curiosity, respect, belief in people, outcome-based thinking, and their coaching skills toolbox.

They show up like a mirror, ready to skillfully reflect what they experience with people so people can discover for themselves their own passions and create for themselves their own pathways and pursue for themselves their own definition of success.

My natural strategic and futuristic thinking, my intrinsic desire to learn, my foundational belief that people are made with unique talents and that teams suffer from anemia when they do not draw out these unique talents in service to one another, my tireless work ethic, my love of spending time with people in small groups, my knack for seeing connections, and my confident, competitive, and idealistic spirit that drives my want for things to be as they can be—because why not make the most of all you have been given?--all contribute greatly to my professional coaching skillset.  

My most natural ways of thinking feeling and behaving fit the job of a professional coach like a glove. When it comes to being a professional coach, you could say I think in many of the right ways, not the wrong ones.

Fuel: In what ways are you wired in the right ways for the work you do? In what ways do you think the people you lead are wired in the right ways for the work they do? What difference does it make?

Focusing on strengths builds success.

It gives people freedom to develop excellence, recognizing that excellence for you will look different than excellence for others. Weakness fixing merely mitigates failure but does not build success.

When we work together, combining our common drive for excellence and our unique “right” ways of thinking feeling and behaving, we achieve more than we ever could alone.

When Donald Clifton asked the question about studying what people do right, I wonder if he ever imagined that he would spend his life helping people discover and develop their strengths through a research-driven consultancy and what has become the CliftonStrengths assessment, a tool that drives people, organizations, and teams all over the world to reach their potential.

Teams are more effective when they are strategically balanced, having people with various thinking, relating, influencing, and executing talents.

People are more effective when they are valued for the contributions they were made to make. They are set free to develop excellence when they are not focused on fixing their weaknesses.

The best way to fix our weaknesses is not to spend more time developing them, but to give ourselves permission to embrace them as part of our unique selves so we stop stressing about the things we were not made to be and start spending more time sharing, developing, and enjoying the everything we were.

Let there be strength.

Fight: What do you think about the idea of giving yourself permission to not be good at everything? Does it seem wrong?

In what way do you want to fight to let there be strength in your life?

What do you want to do in response?

When will you do it?

What difference will it make?

This has been episode four of our podcast series on Proactive Mindset Formation.

Up next in our “The Six Frames of a Proactive Mind” Series, Let There Be Limits. I bet you can guess what that is about.  

Please download our podcast on Apple Podcasts and comment on our episodes.

If you would like to connect and experience some of the clarity and forward movement of professional coaching as I described on this episode,  you can go to my website, mettledge.com.

Click on enroll now to see our available 1:1 coaching memberships.  

Click on learn more to talk with us about our 6-month MettlEdge Mind Cohort.

As I said at the beginning, I’m interested in the theory behind proactive mindset formation, but I’m way more interested in making the complex process of forming a proactive mindset accessible, doable, attainable—simple and approachable—even though it will always involve more nuance and incomprehensibility than we may be able to imagine or than we may prefer.

It’s what I’m made for and it would be an absolute privilege to share it with you.

It’s why I created the model I’m sharing with you.

And it is why I want to do more than talk about the model. I want to give you a way to engage with it in a powerful way, with 2 to 3 people you trust in our 6-month mettledge mind cohort.

If you want to learn more, schedule a call at mettledge.com or message us on Instagram, Mettledge.coaching

I pray this podcast has been a blessing to you! Let’s go!

References:
https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/253754/history-cliftonstrengths.aspx#ite-254129