CliftonStrengths For Managers Report

So those are the three main reports that are now out there. This one is totally new as of the summer of 2021. You can buy this right on Gallup’s site if you go to shop.gallup.com. And then if you click on “Assessments” in their main navigation, you'll see CliftonStrengths for Managers report right there for you. 

Who should get the CliftonStrengths for Managers report? I mean, they put manager in the title so that it would be obvious. If you are a people manager, this can be useful for you. I also think that this could be really useful for aspiring managers, and anyone who's really interested in your impact on other people. It's a big self-awareness tool. So if you want to think about your personal leadership and how you affect other people, it's very much focused on you and your personal behaviors.

CliftonStrengths For Managers Is All About YOU

Inside of this CliftonStrengths for Managers report, what it does is it breaks down your top 10 talent themes. And then for each one, it gives you 3 different categories.

• How this talent might contribute to your success
• How this talent might get in the way of your success
• How you might apply this talent theme in terms of action items — things that you can go do to put it to work

Now, before giving you a few examples of things that I saw in my report so that you can get a feel for what this is like, I think the main thing that you'll get out of this report is a really important nuance to bring up. So, I wanted to pause and do that first, which is, that this report is all about suggesting how you can use your strengths to have more meaningful conversations with your team about their goals. And if you could see my emphasis on the “you” and the “their,” you can see this is all about YOU.

And what happens naturally, when you're a manager and you do something like StrengthsFinder 2.0 as a book with your whole team, you get really excited about wanting to know their natural talents so that you can assign work to them, and you can align the work better with them. You can get to know them better, because it's like having a human instruction manual on the team.

But if you're like most people, the focus automatically goes to them, your team members. And then there's this overlooked moment where actually, if you would look at your own talent themes - at your own natural talents - your own preferences of how you think and feel and act in the world, you might actually unlock some really cool things about how you could help them have better performance by knowing what makes you great naturally. Makes sense. 

So it's just an interesting thing. I think this report unlocks this area that many people overlook. They end up focusing all on the team instead of looking at themselves. So let's go through a couple of examples. What I did is I just made a couple of notes on my personal CliftonStrengths for Managers report so that you can get a sense for the kinds of things that you'll see inside of it. 

CliftonStrengths For Managers Explores The 3 Categories For Each Top Talent Theme

So let's do one example under each of those 3 areas. So for each of your Top 10 talent themes, you will see examples of how that talent might contribute to your success, how it might get in the way of your success, and then action items. Here's what I got out of the CliftonStrengths for Managers report.

Category 1: How each top talent might contribute to your success

In the CliftonStrengths for Managers report, there's a section called “contribute to success.” In mine, there's an example that popped out for me was on my talent theme of Futuristic. It says, today's events and activities are leading somewhere, and you focus on what that somewhere could be. It was something like that, and that the team benefits by hearing what's coming and that the team might be inspired to know exactly how today's work is going to secure this future success. 

And as I read that, I thought, yeah, that really does ring true when I think through my career. And there were a lot of moments when, as a leader, people were going through the hard slog of things, and they couldn't really see how this work was going to pay off. I could see that future, and I could make that connection with them and help people stay inspired when it was getting a little in the middle on the thick of it. 

Category 2: How each top talent might get in the way of success

In the CliftonStrengths for Managers report, there's also a section called “get in the way of success.” My report definitely hit home. So I'll tell on myself with a couple of things here. The one that really popped out for me was Maximizer. There was a comment in that section of how it might get in the way of your success as a manager, about how it's energizing to someone who leads through Maximizer to make existing things better. That is actually really energizing, and that starting things can be difficult at times.

It's interesting because I also have Activator and Strategic in my Top 10. So I have a real sense of urgency. But it's true that I am way more energized at tweaking something or making something better or revising something or having something to work off of as a starting point than to create it from scratch. It feels more laborious to me to create it from scratch. 

And I could see that maybe somebody would think, “well, she usually works really fast.” Is it because they're procrastinating? Are they less interested in this thing? So I could definitely see that being something to watch out for.

The other one really hit close to home, where it said, “you should remember that people aren't projects”. And it made me think of this guy. Early in my career, I identified a guy on my team and I thought, “Oh, he has so much potential. He's so smart. He's such a good performer in the current role. And he has so much potential to grow in the company in this role and in future roles.”

I got really excited about him. I kept having one-on-ones with them trying to encourage them to apply for other roles and to get on this promotion path. And finally, he fessed up to me and said, “You know, I just want to be able to see my kid's soccer games and have flexibility in my work, I don't really want all that extra heaviness.” And he said, “...and most of all, I just want spare time to be able to play fantasy football and have hobbies. It's just not something I want for my life.”

And I was, of course, very grateful that he felt comfortable enough with me that he could tell me that he did not want to be on this path that I saw for him. But that hit home for me when I read this thing about Maximizer. Maybe I was seeing him as a project. So, really insightful.

If you go get this report and you do some thinking on the way that you've interacted with people or thought about your relationship with your team, it can definitely show you some deep stuff to be cautious of, to be excited about, and use really useful stuff here. 

Category 3: How each top talent might offer you action items

In the CliftonStrengths for Managers report, there's also a section called “offer you action items.” What I loved about these action ideas is they're just things that you can go do to put your talent to work. And you, of course, don't have to use every action item. But some will stand out to you as things where you're like, yeah, that seems cool. That seems easy. I'd love to do that. If this would be useful to the team, why not.

And it just gives you ways to go put your talents to work. So one that stood out for me was under Individualization. The action idea is to ask each team member to describe their best day at work. And it goes into more detail like, ask them what they did, what goals they achieved and who they were working with, and what recognition they received on this best day. 

And the main thing that I got out of it was thinking about Individualization. It's all about that curiosity that you have about what makes that person tick. And asking questions like that, that just feels really natural.

For me, that would be easy. Instantly, I'm thinking, Oh, you could put that in a rotation on one-on-ones. You could open up a conversation about stuff like that, and it would help me help them have more days that look like their best days.

And who wouldn't want that? And I can do that just by doing something that feels natural. So that should give you a sense for the kind of bullet points and the kinds of elements that you'll see inside of the CliftonStrengths for Managers report. 

Be A Strengths Master. Grab Your CliftonStrengths For Managers Report And Join Our Upcoming StrengthsFinder Events!

If you have $39.99 to go spend on your own or to grab out of your team budget to get a sample of it, go out and grab it. You can find it at shop.gallup.com. 

So if you want to do that, to expand your team, I'm sure you also are interested in doing things like team events. So if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably know that approximately each quarter, we have a public event that we offer, so that any single ticket could come in and take a class with us. 

We do a quarterly virtual event, 11 to 1 p.m. Central time. It's $50 per seat. That's it. And you can buy just one seat or you can buy a seat for the whole team. So it's about the most affordable way you're ever going to be able to do a training. It's of course a huge savings for people who have been wanting to do this as a team building but they just don't have the budget to be able to do a private event. Imagine if you have 10 people, you've got yourself an event for only $500 total. Pretty cool! So if you're a team with a lower budget, this is a really great way to go.

You could also, of course, do it just as a single ticket if you're a Strengths junkie and you want to take your knowledge further, or if you're a Strengths coach and you're interested in seeing how other people present CliftonStrengths, and to get new ideas, you can always come in and get a sense for our tools and our ideas. 

And then finally, the whole reason we created these public events is for new hires, because people would do private events with us and then they would say, Well, I have this new person. How to get them up to speed so that they understand all the Strengths language and all the things we're talking about?” 

Other Relevant Resources For CliftonStrengths for Managers 

As Lisa mentioned in the episode, CliftonStrengths for Managers is about suggesting how you can apply your strengths to initiate meaningful conversations with your team. This holds true even during the pandemic when most team conversations are remote. Check out our Managing to People’s Strengths episode and see how Lead Through Strengths facilitator Joseph Dworak manages to dig into his team’s strengths by asking open-ended questions about work and life during team meetings. Effectively, that gives him enough information on how to manage to people’s strengths.

In another episode, Strengths-based Conversations, Joseph actually suggested some creative ways on how to strike up fun and engaging conversations that are grounded on natural talents. Visit or revisit that too!

It comes with a reminder though that CliftonStrengths for Managers is first and foremost all about YOU as a people manager. You can’t be too focused on your team and expect them to work wonders with their strengths if you have not reflected on your own top talents first. The episode My Manager Hates Me: The ‘Not Savage’ Strengths Approach expresses the need to honor your own strengths as well as you honor that of your team. This may be useful in difficult scenarios where team members may have conflicting strengths. Knowing how to play on your strengths can help you turn the conflicts around.