Significance Strength: Build A Genuine Career Brand

Significance Strength: Get Known For Your Talent

I get tons of questions about how to align your CliftonStrengths talent theme of Significance with your career. So in this series, I break down one strength per episode. That way, you can add to the insights from your StrengthsFinder report and make a better match between your job and your strengths.

- If you’re exploring as a manager, use this series for career development ideas and even new clues about responsibilities you could give a person with this talent theme so that they can show up at their best.

- If you’re exploring for yourself, use this as a chance to build a reputation for your strengths so that you’re more likely to be given assignments that live in your strengths zone.

Career Branding For The Significance Strength

Today, the talent theme of the episode is Significance. You’ll get three layers to chew on:

1. Career Branding
2. Red Flag Situations At Work
3. Fresh Application Ideas

You probably already have a reputation for what you know. If you imagine your resume or your LinkedIn profile, I bet it's full of “the what,” which are things like job titles, skills, knowledge, expertise, or the degree you earned.

Now, what’s missing in most of them is "the how,” and this is where your StrengthsFinder talent themes live. This is. an. overlooked. use. for tools like LinkedIn, which is not just for job seekers.

I bet you are like my StrengthsFinder training clients, where you don’t physically see your teammates and customers every day. That’s why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding - it’s how your teammates, customers, and vendors go look you up before a meeting. It's their most efficient way to learn about who they’re about to talk to.

And rather than only telling them what you know, you should also give them a peek at how it is to work with you.

Here are a bunch of adjectives to consider using in your career branding efforts and your LinkedIn profile when you lead through the Significance strength:

• Visible
• Credible
• Star
• Admirable
• Successful
• Big Dreamer
• Professional
• World Changer
• Pro-Grade
• Purpose-Driven
• Performance-Oriented
• Difference-Maker
• Results-Oriented
• Not Afraid Of The Spotlight
• People Who Want Their Lives To BE For Something … Not Frittered Away

Red Flag Situations When You Lead With The Significance Strength

These are the cultures, interactions, or situations that feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone with the talent theme of Significance. They might even make you want to quit the team. So I’ll give you a couple of these to be on the watch for — because if they fester, you might get the urge to quit the job or become detached at work.

Here are a couple of Red flags for the Significance strength (talent theme):

1. Busy work. If you lead through the Significance strength and you think the work you’re doing has no purpose, it will bother you at a values level because this is not how you want to spend your life.
2. No one sees or cares about your results. If you’ve been busting your butt for months in a thankless role, you have a red flag on your hands. People who lead through Significance want to leave their mark on the world — they like to be recognized for making an impact through what they do at work. If you’re doing something big, and it seems that no one will see it or no one will care, it will drain your energy fast.

3 Fresh Application Ideas For The Significance Strength

These are ways to apply the talent theme of Significance at work , even when the job duties on the team feel pretty locked in. If you’re reading this as a team manager, be sure to have a conversation around these ideas. You’ll both be able to come up with places to apply them.

For someone who leads through the Significance strength, put the talent to good use with one of these options:

1. Take a chance on something big. If you manage someone with Significance, give them a highly visible project that has a lot riding on it. Be sure to communicate the importance and the gravity — when they know that their success (or failure) will be in the spotlight, it’s a hugely motivating factor. Whereas others might feel crushed by this pressure, it brings someone with Significance alive.
2. Put them on a project to start a recognition campaign. While people with Significance love to BE recognized, they also love to help others feel significant. Ask them to create a shift in the team culture over the next 6 months so that praise and credit-giving feels like the norm on the team.
3. Rub elbows with high achievers. Ask this person to name a few of the top achievers that he or she admires in the company. Then get them linked up on a project. People with Significance love the opportunity to step their game up by standing side by side with people who are great.

So there you have it. It’s a quick tour for building your career through the talent theme of Significance.

Here's Your Personal Branding Homework For The Significance Strength

1. Go take action on your LinkedIn profile with the career branding section. Challenge yourself to write one sentence in the Summary section of LinkedIn that captures how you collaborate as a teammate at work.
2. Then think over the red flags to see if there’s anything you need to get in front of before it brings you down.
3. Volunteer your talents through the application ideas. And if you’re a manager, have a conversation with your team members about which of these things sound like something they’d love to have more of.
4. Dig into the Significance strength all the way. You can really nerd out on the nuances on the Significance Talent Theme Page.

 

Here's A Full Transcript Of The 8 Minute Episode

 

You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where we help work teams apply their greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and I gotta tell you, it's hard to find something more energizing, than using your natural talents every day at work. And as you might expect, I get tons of questions about how to align your CliftonStrengths talent themes with your career.

So, in this series, I break down one strength per episode. This time, it's Significance, so that you can add to the insights in your StrengthsFinder report and then you can make a better match between your job and your strengths.

Now, if you're listening to this episode, in a manager capacity, use this series for career development ideas. Use it for clues about responsibilities and tasks you could assign a person with this talent theme, so they can show up at their best, every day at work.

If you're listening for yourself, because you have the Significance talent theme, use this as a chance to build a reputation based on your strengths so you're more likely to be given assignments that live in your strength zone.

Today, as you've heard, the talent theme of the episode is Significance and you'll get 3 layers to chew on related to that theme. One is career branding, the second is red flag situations at work and the third is fresh application ideas.

So, let's start with career branding. Now, if you have Significance, you know, you already have a reputation at work, but it's likely around what you know. If you think about your resume, or you think about your existing LinkedIn profile, it's probably full of what I call the what, which are things like job titles and skills and knowledge, expertise, maybe even the degree you earned.

But what's missing from most of them is the “how”. This is your special sauce. This is where your StrengthsFinder talent themes live. And this is an overlooked use for tools like LinkedIn. Don't think of this tool as just something you would use for job seeking.

Let's start with career branding. So, all of the tools that you've probably used, have built a reputation for you around what you know. If you imagine your resume or your LinkedIn profile as one of those tools, I bet it's full of the what these are things like your job titles, your skills, your knowledge, your expertise, the degree you have. And what's missing from them is the how. And this is your magic sauce. This is where your StrengthsFinder talent themes live. And this is an overlooked use for tools like LinkedIn for your resume. And those are not tools that are just for job seekers.

I bet you are just like my StrengthsFinder training clients where you don't see, you don't lay your eyes on your teammates and customers every day. And that's why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding, because it's how your teammates and your customers and your vendors go look you up before meeting. They want to see who they're about to talk to. And rather than only telling them what you know, you should also be giving them a peek at how it is to work with you.

So here are a bunch of adjectives you can consider using in your career branding efforts in your LinkedIn profile.

So, people who lead through Significance are often high visibility or comfortable with high visibility. They're big dreamers. They're difference makers. They're credible. They're purpose-driven. They're not afraid of the spotlight. They are results-oriented and performance-oriented. And what I love most about people with Significance is they want their lives to be for something not frittered away.

So, now let's move on to red flag situations for you at work. These are the cultures, the interactions, or the situations that are going to feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone who leads through the talent theme of Significance. They might even make you want to quit the team. So, I'll give you a couple of these to be on watch for, because if they fester, you might get the urge to quit the job or to become detached or to become disengaged.

So here are two important red flags for significance. One is busy work. If you lead through Significance and you think the work that you're doing has no purpose, it will bother you at a values level, because that is not how you want to spend your life.

The next one is a thankless job. If you've been busting your butt for months in a thankless role, you have a red flag on your hands because people who lead through Significance want to leave their mark on the world. They'd like to be recognized for making a big impact for what they do. So, if you're doing something big, and then it seems like no one will see it or no one will care, it will drain your energy fast.

Alright, and now let's move to our application ideas for Significance. These are ways to apply the talent theme at work, even if your job duties on the team feel pretty locked in. So, if you're listening as a manager, be sure to have a conversation about these ideas. I'm framing the ideas as though you're listening as a manager. But also, if you're listening for yourself, be thinking about whether you could volunteer your talents this way as a team member.

So, for someone who leads through Significance, consider putting the talent to good use with one of these 3 options. One, take a chance on something big. If you manage someone with Significance, give them a highly visible project that has a lot riding on it. And be sure to communicate the importance and the gravity. They want to know that their success or their failure will be in the spotlight because it's a hugely motivating factor. You know, other people on the team might be crushed by that kind of pressure, and you would be nervous to even bring up the visibility or the importance. But if someone leads through Significance, it's going to bring them alive.

The second idea for application is to put them on a project to start up a recognition campaign. So, people with Significance often love to be recognized. They also love to help other people feel significant. So, ask them to create a shift in the team culture over the next 6 months. So that praise and credit-giving feels like the norm on the team.

Third idea for application, ask this person to name a few of the top achievers around the organization that she admires, or that he admires around the company, and then get them linked-up on a project with one of those people because people with Significance love the opportunity to step their game up by standing side by side with people who are great, rather than being an intimidating factor. It's one of those uplifting challenges for them.

So, there you have it - a quick tour for building your career through the talent theme of Significance.

So, here's the homework. If you lead through this talent theme, go take action on your LinkedIn profile with the career branding section. Challenge yourself to write one sentence. Integrate one of those words into the summary section of LinkedIn to capture how you collaborate as a teammate at work.

The second, if you lead through Significance, think over those red flags to see if there's anything you need to get in front of before it brings you down. If you manage someone with Significance, look at those red flags and see if they might be an issue on your team.

And then finally, number 3, if you lead through Significance, volunteer your talents through these application ideas. And if you're a manager, have a conversation with your team members about how to assign those kinds of things. So, with that, I'm your host, Lisa Cummings from Lead Through Strengths. If you're thinking about doing a virtual or in-person event to kick-off your strengths-based culture, head on over to leadthroughstrengths.com/training to see if our current StrengthsFinder offerings are a good fit for you.

And until next time, thank you for being part of this powerful strengths movement that helps people unleash the awesomeness that they already have inside them.