Using strengths for team building

I’ve tried this with two department-level leadership teams and one coaching team and it seemed useful. I prefer this over any of the personality-based approaches.

Step 1: Each team member does a strengths assessment

Take the CliftonStrengths 34 assessment (better) OR get the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book which comes with a code (adequate).

NOTE: “Strengths” is not equivalent to what you are good at but rather what strengthens and energizes you.

Step 2: Each team member shares their top 5 strengths

Have each person reason read out each of their top 5 strengths and the description of the strengths. You will naturally notice overlaps but read the descriptions again each time to reinforce what each means.

Example (my top 5 strengths)

1. Ideation: “You are fascinated by ideas.”
2. Strategic: “You create alternative ways to proceed.”
3. Learner: “You have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve.”
4. Intellection: “You are characterized by your intellectual activity.”
5. Input: “You have a need to collect and archive.”

NOTE: There is much more detail in the actual report.

Step 3: Visualize everyone’s top 10 strengths under the strength themes

CliftonStrengths has 4 themes grouping related strengths:

• Executing: “make things happen”
• Influencing: “take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard”
• Relationship Building: “build strong relationships that hold a team together”
• Strategic Thinking: “absorb and analyze information that informs better decisions.”

Each person adds their top 10 strengths under the corresponding theme. Be sure to use icons and/or colour-coding and/or different shapes to highlight 3 things:

1. Who’s strength is this?
2. Is it a top 5 strength?
3. Is it a next 5 strength?

Example

Example visualization for the top 10 strengths of a leadership team

The visualization makes several things much clearer:

1. Where the team is collectively strong and where it is collectively weak. This can help when assessing new team members, knowing when to get help, etc.
2. How each team member best contributes to the team. For example, you might notice that six of my strengths are in Strategic Thinking. This is not to say that someone can’t also cover activities that aren’t strengths but we can acknowledge that this will likely be draining for that person.

I’ve been doing this with Post-Its on the whiteboard and then translating the results to Mural.