4 StrengthsFinder Colors – Your Easy Button For Success

The outlier is the Influencing domain. It's less commonly seen at 15%. This is an interesting insight because we see many teams that come in at 5% or 8% Influencing. Their first thought is "oh no!"...but actually it's pretty average for our corporate groups. The surprise is a good one because their first thought is that they should start hiring people who are loaded up on Influencing themes to even things out. As you can imagine, that's not what we'd recommend.

If you think of them as your easy buttons to high performance, then it doesn't really matter what the percentages are. Use the tool in your toolbag that gets the job done for you personally. Use your differences as your differentiators.

How Can You Take Action On Your StrengthsFinder Colors?

Once you have that information, then what? Well, here are three ways to think about your color lineups or the StrengthsFinder colors you see for the people on your team.

One thing that’s important to mention is that getting into the real detailed nitty-gritty of how to use these domains, or as I call them demands, is a more useful exercise once you have explored a lot of other elements related to StrengthsFinder. But, the question often comes up right away, so I’ll give you three quick things to think about:

1. Your thoughts
2. Your demands
3. Your filters

1: Your Thoughts

Number one: your thoughts. These are your thoughts and reactions to actually seeing these colors. The two most important things: 1) don’t panic, and 2) don’t stereotype.

So, for example, you have no red in your lineup? No worries. Don't panic. Everybody thinks, even if they don’t have Strategic Thinking talents in their top five. Have no blue? You might say, “Oh, no, I can’t even build a relationship? I’m a people manager. That sounds terrible.” Well, everyone has relationships, unless you’re a hermit living in the woods.

There’s a concept that came up from a senior practice consultant at Gallup, I think it might’ve been Jacque Merritt. The idea is that there’s not a brick wall that separates these four categories, it’s more like a chain link fence.

You might have one category that is highly present in your top five that makes you think, “Oh look, I’m missing one.” So, for example, I personally have no Executing talents on my top five, but I don’t say, “Oh no, I’m doomed. I don’t get anything done.” My company would go out of business if that was the case, so we know that’s not true. With this idea of it being more like a chain link fence, you can see how the concepts can flow into each other and you can make one color act like the other. So that’s the first one. Don’t panic. Your strengths look the way they look and they are perfect for you.

The other big idea is to not stereotype someone based on these colors. If you see something on a teammate, don’t stereotype them and assume they’re going to be a certain way, because they are going to combine their whole 34-strength lineup to create who they are. Don’t oversimplify things.

2: Your Demands

Number two: your demands. Gallup calls these colors the Four Domains of Leadership because they originated from Gallup’s study of team leadership. Their research found that the most cohesive and most successful teams had clusters of strengths.

There are 34 potential StrengthsFinder talent themes, and there are specific clusters in four areas. These clusters are useful for thinking about how each person might naturally contribute to a team and how a leader’s personal lineup of talent will impact their leadership approach. Those four domains (and the four colors) are relationship, influencing, strategic thinking, and executing.

I actually call them the four demands, because most performers at work have to do all these things, not just those of you who are people managers. So, rather than limiting them to be leadership domains, I like to call them demands because it includes people in team sessions in a way they can understand. And they can relate to them personally because they, too, have reports that have colors all over them and they also need to make sense of them.

Even when you don’t have a given color in your top five, you likely have that demand on you in your workplace. What you can do with this is ask yourself what talent you have that can act in a way that compensates for the missing color.

I mentioned earlier that I don’t have any Executing talents in my top five, but I definitely do execute. If I ran through my top five, I could think, “Well, how do these help me execute?”

For example, my Strategic Talent helps me sort out options really quickly so I can decide how I’m going to do things and how I’m going to take action. I can do that quickly, rather than getting bogged down in analysis or holding more meetings about meetings. It helps me take fast and decisive action. So, it helps me execute, but it’s actually a Strategic Thinking talent.

Let’s look at some others. I have Positivity, Individualization, and Woo in my top five. Those three really combine as a lineup to make me a person with a lot of relationships in my life, relationships that I’ve nurtured over a long period of time.

So, when something needs to get done, they help me find smart people who can get a given task done better than I can. Or, if I need to call on help from people, I inevitably have someone in my network where I can get a question answered easily. These are based on my Relationship and Influencing talents, but they still are helping me execute.

In the last example, I would use my Maximizer talent. That’s an Influencing talent by category, but it also makes me want things to be better all the time. It creates a strong drive in me to get things done, to realize the latent potential that I see all over the place — the things and people and processes that could be better if we just put a little more execution effort into them.

Even though Maximizer is not an Execution talent, it works like an Execution motivator for me. You might not have a given color that represents that domain or that demand, but you can certainly apply it in that way.

3: Your Filters

Number 3: your filters. These four colors are also like a first filter — they define how you see and approach the world when something happens to you. They are your initial reaction.

Let’s use an example of a big reorganization at a company, and I’ll run through each of the four colors and talk about what it might look like if you were really heavy in that domain.

Relationship talents: Maybe you had a lot of blue Relationship talents, and a big reorganization gets announced. Let’s say you work for a very large Fortune 500 company and you’re going to have a merger or acquisition that will make your company double in size. You’re going to go from huge to gigantic, and you know that’s going to bring a lot of reorganization and questions about what is going to happen to different responsibilities at work, who does what, what teams you’ll be on, or whether you’ll be redundant.

If you get that announcement and you have three or four Relationship talents in your top five, most likely you’re going to be thinking first — your first filter — “Who is this going to affect? How are they going to react to the change?” Especially if you’re a people leader, you’ll be thinking of each person on your team who reports to you and how they’re going to take this news and what they might be thinking about it.

Influencing talents: Let’s take the example of Influencing talents. If you hear about a big reorganization and you’re a people leader, you might be thinking, “Okay, how am I going to communicate this to the team? What is it going to sound like? How can I cast a vision that will make people want to come along? How can I make this exciting? How can I get momentum for the change going?”

Strategic Thinking talents: If you had four or five red Strategic Thinking themes, your first reaction to something like that might be to go do some deep pondering. Or it might be to crunch some numbers and really consider what this is going to do. You might learn all you can, collecting tons of information. It’s a cerebral exercise. When something big happens, you go inside your head.

Executing talents: If you had three or four Executing talents, instead of thinking of this big picture merger, you would likely go straight from that 30,000-foot view of a merger down to the 3-foot view. How is it going to affect the operations? Who is going to do what? What will it look like at a task-level and a man-hours level? How will it affect the operations? What about redundant systems? How are we going to approach this great idea of what these two companies can become? And how do you make it practical and work for the everyday?

What if you’re heavy in one StrengthsFinder color?

You can see how all four of those StrengthsFinder color filters are really important for people to have in an organization. It’s great for all four to be represented on a team. But I also want to make sure that you don’t feel like it’s a bad thing if you are personally heavy in one color. This is a reaction I get often where people think, “Oh my gosh. I’m just a one-dimensional person. I have four or five in one color.”

Remember that the CliftonStrengths assessment is all about what comes naturally to you. Your natural talents are how you think and feel and behave at your natural best. They are your easy buttons for great performance. If you start lamenting what you’re not, you’re doing the opposite of Strengths-based development. You don’t have to covet the people that have the Skittles-mix with all sorts of colors in their top five.

What if you have all the StrengthsFinder colors?

Now, if you do have all four of the colors presented in your top five, you may have a hard time relating to the concept of the first filter — your first filter may not be strong in one of those areas like it would be if you had three, four, or five in one color. If you have the Skittles-mix of colors, I would suggest you just consider which of your top five talents speaks loudest when there’s a big change.

For example, for me, it’s probably Woo because I’m instantly thinking, “How are we going to message this? How can I make this change palatable or likable to people on the team? How can I make this exciting?” I also might be thinking things like, “Who else do I need to meet and learn from to become who I need to become to reach this next goal?” So, I would say that Woo is the loudest and my first filter. You might recognize one talent as the strongest, even if you have a big mix of colors.

Conclusion on the StrengthsFinder Colors

If you just took the CliftonStrengths assessment for the first time and noticed these colors and are wondering what they mean, you’re smart and you picked up on something very nuanced.

Just remember these three ideas:

1. Your thoughts: Manage your thoughts and your reactions to seeing the colors. Don’t panic. Don’t stereotype.
2. Your demands: You actually have the four demands on your personal leadership, or the four domains if you want to refer to them that way. Those are Relating, Influencing, Strategic Thinking, and Executing at work.
3. Your filters: Think of your Talent Themes and see if they offer you a first filter when major things happen to you.

Another Resource on StrengthsFinder Colors To Dig Into

We also recorded an episode called "Is it bad if I only have 2 CliftonStrengths DNA colors?" It totally applies if you only have 1 color, or you have 3 of 4 and you're worried about missing one.

If you want some other Strengths-focused tools to use with your team at work, check out your Resources Page. There you’ll find at least one handout that shows you the talent themes that fall under these four demands/domains, plus a lot of other tools related to StrengthsFinder and Strengths-focused leadership.

 

Here Is The Full Transcript Of The Show

You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and I got to tell you, it's hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work.

Today's question is, what do the Strengths Finder colors mean? Now this question comes up straight away, because smart people will see the cool DNA icons on the Gallup strength center dashboard, or they notice there are some colors on their signature theme reports, or their insight report.

So, here's the short answer. There are four of these potential categories and Gallup calls these leadership domains. And they are BLUE, and the blue ones are relationship talent themes. YELLOW, those are influencing talent themes. RED, those are strategic thinking. And PURPLE, those are executing. Cleverly, I think it was accidentally but it comes out cleverly, those words make the acronym rise so it makes it easier to remember.

R I S E for relationship, influence, strategic thinking, executing.

So, once you have that information, then so what?

[1:26] Well, I'll give you three ways to think about your color lineups or the StrengthsFinder colors you see for the people on your team. One thing that's important to mention is that getting into the real detailed, nitty-gritty of how to use these domains, or as I call them demands, it really is a more useful exercise to get into once you have explored a lot of other elements related to StrengthsFinder. But even though it's more useful to cover this and really dig into it later, the question comes up right away.

So, I want to get your question answered and give you three quick things to be thinking of. Those three things are; one, your thoughts, two, your demands, and three, your filters.

So, number one, your thoughts. This is your thoughts and your reactions to actually seeing these colors. And the major point here is, don't panic if you're looking at your own, and don't stereotype if you're looking at someone else's. So, for example, no red in your lineup. No worries. Everybody still thinks even if you don't have strategic thinking talents in your top five. No blue? And you say, ‘Oh, no, I can't even build a relationship? I'm a people manager. That sounds terrible.’

Well, look, everyone has relationships, unless you're a hermit living in the woods. But in that case, you probably wouldn't be hearing this podcast. So, I'm going to say everyone listening is probably in a relationship of some sort.

[2:53] The other thing here, there's a concept that came up from a senior practice consultant at Gallup, I think it might have been Jackie Merritt, I'm not 100% sure where the credit goes for the metaphor. But either way, the concept is that there's not a brick wall that separates these four categories, concepts, or chunking. It's more like a chain link fence. So, you might have one that is highly present in your top five. And you might feel like, ‘Oh, look, I'm missing one’.

So, for example, personally, I have no executing talents in my top five. But instead of saying, ‘Oh, no, I'm doomed. I don't get anything done. My companies would go out of business, if that happens.’ So, we know that's not true. So, this idea of it being more like a chain link fence, you can see how the concepts can really flow into each other, and you can make one act like the other.

So that's the first one. Just get right on your thoughts. Don't panic. Yours look the way they look, and those are beautiful and great and perfect for you. And if you see something on a teammate, don't stereotype them and assume they're going to be a certain way, because they are going to combine with their whole 34 lineup to create who they are, not to mention their knowledge and their skills and their experiences. So, don't oversimplify with these.

Number two, I said your demands, would be the next one. Gallup calls these the four domains of leadership because these four colors originated from Gallup study of team leadership. And the research found that the most cohesive and the most successful teams had clusters of strengths.

Now there are 34 potential StrengthsFinder talent themes, but then there were these specific clusters in four areas. And these clusters are useful for thinking about how each person might naturally contribute to a team, and how leaders’ personal lineup of talent will impact their leadership approach. And so those four domains are these four colors and the idea of relationship, influencing, strategic thinking and executing.

The thing is, I actually call them demands, and I call them these four demands on your personal leadership because most performers at work have to do all these things, not just those of you who are people managers. So rather than limiting them to be leadership domains, I like to call them demands, because it includes people who are going to be part of your team sessions in a way that they can understand how they relate to them personally, because they too have reports that have colors all over them, and they need to make sense of them.

Now, even when you don't have a given color in your top five, you likely have that demand on you in your workplace. So, what you can do with this is ask yourself what talent do you have that can act that way? So, I mentioned earlier that I don't have any executing talents in my top five, but I definitely execute. And so, if I ran through my top five, I could think, -

‘Well, how do these help me execute? Well, my strategic talent, it helped me sort out options really quickly, so I can decide how I'm going to do things, how I'm going to take action, and I can do that really quickly, rather than getting bogged down in analysis, rather than holding more meetings about meetings. So, it really helps me take fast action and make decisions quickly and decisively. And that helps me execute. But it's actually a strategic thinking talent.’

Okay, let's look at some others. I have Positivity, Individualization, and Woo in my top five. Those three really combined as a lineup to make me a person with a lot of relationships in my life relationships that I've nurtured over a long period of time. So, when something needs to get done, it helps me find smart people who can get a given task done better than I can. Or, if I need to call on help from people, I inevitably have someone in my network where I can get a question answered really easily, because I have such a good lineup of friends around the world. And so those combined to do that, but those are relationship and influencing talents. But they still are helping me execute.

Okay, in the last example, I would use my Maximizer. That's an influencing talent by category. But inside of me, it also makes me want things to be better all the time. So, it creates a deep kind of strong drive in me to get things done to realize this latent potential that I see all over the place of things that could be better and people and processes who could become more if we just put a little more execution effort into it. So even though it's not an execution talent, it's like an execution motivator. So, you can see how this happens. You might not have a given color that represents that domain or that demand, but you can certainly apply it in that way. So that's your number two, as you think about your personal demands on the job.

The third one is your filters. These four colors are also very much like a first filter, they really define how you see and approach the world. When something happens to you. It's your initial reaction.

Okay, so let's use an example of a big reorg at a company and I'll run through each of the four colors and talk about what it might look like if you were really heavy in that domain. So, if you had a lot of blue relationship talents, and you have a big reorg, that just gets announced. Let's say you work for a very large fortune 500 company, and you get an announcement that you're going to have some merger and acquisition kind of exercise happening here soon. And when it happens, your company is going to double inside, you're going to go from huge to mega gigantic. And you know, that's going to bring a bunch of remarks and questions about what is going to happen to different elements of work, who does what, what teams you'll be on whether you'll be redundant. All of those things.

So, if you get that announcement, and you lead through three or four relationship talents in your top five, most likely you're going to be thinking first your first filter. You'll be thinking about the people who is this going to affect? How are they going to react to the change? Especially if you're a people leader, you'll be thinking of each person on your team who reports to you, and how they're going to take this news and what they might be thinking about it.

Let's take the example of influencing talents. Now if you hear about a big reorg, and you're a people leader, you might be thinking, - ‘Okay, how am I going to message this to the team?’, ‘What's it going to sound like?’, ‘How can I cast a vision that will make people want to come along?’, ‘How can I make this exciting?’, ‘How can I get momentum for the change going for strategic thinking?’

If you had four or five red strategic thinking themes, you would literally be thinking your first reaction to something like that. ‘Might be to go do the deep pondering, might be to crunch some numbers and really consider what this is going to do. You might be learning all you can and collecting information, but you get the idea. It's very much cerebral exercise when something big happens. You go inside your head.

Now, if you had three or four, executing talents, you instead of thinking of this big picture merger, you would likely be going straight from that 30,000 foot view of a merger down to the three foot view.

‘How's it going to affect the operations?’, ‘Who is going to do what?’, ‘What will it look like at a task level and at man hours level?’, ‘How it will affect the operations?’, ‘What about redundant systems?’

‘How are we going to approach all of those nitty-gritty things that turn this great idea of what these two companies can become together, and how do you make it practical, and work for the everyday?’

And you can see how beautiful it is that all four of those filters are really important ones, for people to have in an organization. It's great for all four of those to be represented on a team. But I also want to make sure that you don't feel like it's a bad thing if you are heavy in one color. It is a reaction I get often where people go, ‘oh my gosh, look at this, I'm just like a one-dimensional person. I have four or five in one color.’

Remember that strengths-based development is all about what already comes naturally to you. Your natural talents are how you think and feel and behave at your natural best. They're your easy buttons for great performance. So, if you start lamenting what you're not, you're kind of doing the opposite of strengths-based development. So, this is naturally where people want to go, so you don't have to covet the people that have the Skittles mix, where you have all sorts of colors in your top five.

Now, if you do have all sorts of colors, all four of them represented in your top five, you actually may have a hard time with this concept I was just talking about with the first filter, because your first filter may not be strong, and one of those areas like it would be if you had three, four or five in one color. So, if you have the Skittle mix of colors, what I would suggest is just consider which of your top five talents speaks loudest when there's a big change.

For example, for me, it's probably Woo. Because instantly I'm thinking, - ‘How are we going to message this?’, ‘How can I make this change, palatable or likable to people on the team?’, ‘How can I make this exciting?’

I also might be thinking things like, ‘Who else do I need to meet and learn from to become who I need to become to reach this next goal?’ But they'll very much be around an influencing area. So, I would say that one is kind of the loudest and my first filter. So, you might recognize one of those, even if you have a big mix of colors.

So that's it! If you just took the StrengthsFinder survey assessment test, whatever you call it for the first time, and you notice these colors, and you were cluing into them wondering what they mean, yes, you're smart, and you picked up on something very nuanced. And so, I hope these three things will give you some easy ways to consider them just to get you started, just to whet your appetite or dip your toe in.

And those are your thoughts. Remember, manage your thoughts and your reactions to seeing the colors. Don't panic. Don't stereotype.

Two, your demands. You actually have the four demands on your personal leadership or the four domains if you want to refer to them that way.

And three, your filters. Think of your talent themes and see if they offer you a first filter when major things happen to you.

So with that, if you want some other strengths-focused tools to use with your team at work, check out leadthroughstrengths.com/resources . In fact, out there you will find at least one handout that references these four domains. And there are a bunch of other tools related to StrengthsFinder and strengths-focused leadership, and on noticing what works on your team so you can get more of what works on your team.

So, until next time. I look forward to hearing from you and how you and your team members will claim your talents and share them with the world.