Build A Well Rounded Team, Not A Well Rounded You – With Jim Collison
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This Episodeâs Focus on Strengths
In this episode, Lisa speaks with Jim Collison. He manages a technology team at Gallup in Omaha, Nebraska. He also champions the community for Gallup Certified Strengths Coaches, so heâs the poster child of the movement for many strengths professionals.
Youâll find this podcast particularly interesting if youâre ready to implement strengths-based coaching with your team. Jim gives specific examples that will get your wheels turning. He offers ideas for building a stronger team. He shares stories from his strengths based parenting experiences. And he shares examples of how he applies natural talents on the fly. He does this every year as he manages large teams of interns and only has a few months with each person.
All the while heâs partnering with other people to maximize the productivity on the team. Jimâs Top 5 Talent Themes from the Clifton StrengthsFinder are Arranger, Woo, Maximizer, Communication, and Activator. Heâs a great example of someone who doesnât waste time wishing he had more of his âlesserâ talents. Instead, he pairs up with those who bring the talents that are tough for him to call on.
Where It Started For Jim
Every personâs strengths journey begins in a different place. Jimâs started at home, which led him into a career where he gets to apply his top talents and encourage othersâ every day.
He tells the story of how he took the StrengthsFinder Assessment, and was so excited, that as soon as he got home, he said to his wife, âYou take this too! Letâs parent this way.â This had a profound influence on his life and the way they parent each of their unique children.
He confesses that he thought one of his sons was apathetic. He got an enlightened view and changed their whole relationship once he looked at it through a talent lens. By looking at their children, and understanding what their individual strengths were, Jim and his wife were able to support each one and encourage growth in a positive way.
8 Things Youâll Learn In This Episode
While finding his strengths had an immediate impact at home, it was much slower at work. Heâs still evolving 10 years later. Jim says itâs a âlong-haulâ approach, and that you have to live it. Here are some of Jimâs TIPS:
- Live it.
Dig into your own top 5 talents, and strive to understand them at a deep level. You need to âlive that life and walk that walkâ every day. You have to invest in each talent theme to turn them into strengths on the job. - Team View.
Create a Team Grid that includes every team memberâs top 5 StrengthsFinder talent themes. Use the grid to get a big picture view of the overall strengths of the team (and where your team lacks strengths). Remember, you want well-rounded teams, not well-rounded individuals. This is a great process for seeing who you need to lean on for different responsibilities and initiatives at work. - Manage Head Butting.
Utilize the Team Grid as a conflict management tool. For example, if you have two team members who are in conflict, you can use this knowledge of the conflicting strengths without them realizing thatâs what youâre doing. Tell the two people â I understand, Bob, that you are adaptable and can go with the flow. And, Anna, I understand that you need structure. As you two interact on this project, please remember to take that into account.â Both people will feel understood and more open to compromise. Set up the potential conflict and ask them how this shows up at work for them. - Work Around Weaknesses.
When it comes to projects, donât spend time trying to improve your own weaknesses. Instead, spend time building partnerships by looking for someone who has strengths that are complementary to yours. Then, this is the big part: ASK. Ask the person to work with you on your project. If you donât ask, the answer will be no. Youâll be surprised at how often people jump at the opportunity because youâre requesting help in areas they love working in. This will lead to a well rounded team. Thatâs so much better than trying to fight your way to a well rounded you. - Live Into Talents In Small Bites.
If you oversee a team, Jim says not to undertake huge strengths initiatives out of the gate. Itâs not because he doesnât believe in them, itâs because they almost always fail. Instead, take little bites at a time. Little changes are not as noticeable, and are much easier to achieve. People donât resist the small bites. They add up to a lot of momentum over time. - Align Responsibilities To Strengths.
When it comes to specific assignments, pay attention to what your team members enjoy doing, and give them those tasks. When you give someone a job they want to do, the management part becomes a side thing. What youâre really doing is giving them opportunities to let them soar. - Get Out Of The Way.
If youâre a manager and you give assignments, remember to stand back and let people do their jobs. You can help them with adjustments to keep them on course, yet thatâs about all theyâll need when theyâre in their strengths zone. Stay focused on the outcomes. Let them approach the âhowâ through their unique talents. This even holds true for remote teams. Here at Lead Through Strengths, weâre based in Austin, Texas, yet we each work remote from each other. The outcome is the focus of the work, and way the work happens in between is based on each personâs talents. - Keep Growing. Jimâs last tip is to go to the Gallup Coaching website and check out all the free resources. You donât have to be a certified strengths coach to access these helpful items that will help you grow as a leader.
Resources of the Episode
To get even more strengths tips, follow Jim on twitter @JimatGallup and the Gallup Organization @Gallup
Listen To Gallup podcasts that Jim hosts:
Theme Thursday â Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, and YouTube
Called to Coach â Listen on Gallup.com and Spreaker
Jim mentions three books that he recommends about strengths:
-- StrengthsFinder 2.0, by Tom Rath
-- First, Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
-- Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
Hereâs A Full Transcript of the 30 Minute Interview
Lisa Cummings: [00:00:06] Youâre listening to Lead Through Strengths, where youâll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. Iâm your host Lisa Cummings. And Iâve got to tell you, whether youâre leading a team or leading yourself, itâs hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work.
[00:00:20] And, today, youâre going to hear from one of my very favorite people at Gallup. I brought him on the show because managers are always asking me for new ways to spot talents of people on their teams, and this guy is so ninja at that. And, plus, heâs kind of a walking talent party, so he knows how to see talents in people, he knows how to fit them into the bigger picture, and he finds all the right words to really enroll people behind a vision. So, seriously, I have to think that people on his team must feel like they have a ribbon-cutting dedicated to them personally every day as they walk into the office.
[00:00:56] So, your guest today is from San Jose. Now he lives near Omaha, Nebraska where Gallup is headquartered, and maybe weâll get to learn a little bit more about the space called Silicon Prairie. A-ha, listeners, have you heard of that yet? As you might imagine, from a guy with Silicon Valley and Silicon Prairie connections, your guest manages a technology team at work. And youâre about to learn from him some wickedly brilliant ideas for nurturing the talents of each person on your team, and in yourself.
So, Jim Collison, welcome to the show.
Jim Collison: [00:01:30] Thanks, Lisa. Great to be here. Man, you put the pressure on from the very start, so I hope I can live up to those high expectations.
Lisa Cummings: [00:01:37] I know youâll live up to the ninja expectations. [laughs] As everyone knows whoâs listening, this show is all about exploring strengths, how to find them, how to leverage them. Now, you work at Gallup so youâre fully steeped in this world of strengths. Letâs talk about you nurturing your own. So, if we can go back, back, back, if you can remember what it was like when you first took StrengthsFinder. How did you react to the list back then?
Jim Collison: [00:02:01] Yeah, and let me kick it off the top five just so folks know that thatâs always the first question I get, âWhat are your top five?â And so I am an Arranger, Woo, Maximizer, Communication and Activator. All influence; I live life on the edge so to speak. Iâm always out in front wanting to be doing a lot of things. I think by talking, which is a little scary sometimes. But in meetings some of my best ideas come to me while Iâm talking, and so itâs part of the Communication piece and I love to be out front.
[00:02:30] It hasnât always been that way. There were inklings of that. And back, 10 years ago, when I first took StrengthsFinder, being in Omaha, being close to the corporate office here, I worked for a company at the time that was one of the first ones to do kind of a strength-based engagement as a company, and have everyone in the organization take StrengthsFinder. And back in those days the book was First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. It was those two books. Still available actually, if you go out and buy those.
[00:02:59] A lot of folks purchased their Strengths now through the StrengthsFinder 2.0 where they come to the Gallup Strength Center.com to get those done. But when I first took it, and I remember getting those results back, and thinking, âMan, wow. Okay. There are some things here that I need to kind of work with and think about.â And it was so profound in the sense that it gave me this framework in which to talk about myself and some of the things that I was good at, that I took it home.
[00:03:28] And I remember, probably the most profound impact it had on me is I said to my wife, âHey, I took this thing called StrengthsFinder. You should take it too and then we should parent this way.â And it changed the way we parented. And we werenât parents that were necessarily driving our kids to do what we wanted them to do and some of those kinds of things. We spent a lot of time trying to really figure out who our kids were and this gave us an extra framework. And so we began to think about with our kids, with our own children, âHow could we do some things that would encourage them to do what theyâre best at?â And so, âHow could we start looking for those things?â
[00:04:04] And every couple of years one would get old enough and weâd have him take StrengthsFinder and so weâd get some more clues. As an example, my oldest, his number one is Responsibility. Well, once we knew that, I know I could trust him in just about every situation. If he said he was going to do it, he would. And even though as a teenager, maybe in his raw form, I knew the talent was there to be able to do it, so the trust level went way up with him. We were able to kind of say, âHey, we need you to stay home and watch the kids,â or, âHelp us with this,â or, âI need you to get this done.â And he would get it done and we celebrated those moments.
[00:04:36] So, it was things like that. It was like when my middle child, when we figured out he had Adaptability, and we had always thought that was laziness because he goes with the flow. We would say, âHey, what do you want to do?â âHuh, well, you know, whatever.â And weâd be like, âNo, make a decision.â The rest of us in the family are all very high Activators.
Lisa Cummings: [00:04:55] And youâre thinking, âYou must have an opinion. Give it to us.â
Jim Collison: [00:04:57] I know. Right on. And when we took the assessment, he was like, âOh, you know, that makes sense. Here Iâd been trying to drive this kid.â And so we had to do some backpedalling in our parenting and kind of unwind some things that we had done kind of putting pressure on him to do things that, frankly, he didnât want to do or he wasnât interested in, or wouldâve just went with the flow. So that was the profound impact for me. Well, it took 10 years to play out at work. It almost immediately took an impact at home.
Lisa Cummings: [00:05:25] I love that you brought the home example up as well because I donât know what it is, but when I do training events people think immediately of their home life and they can apply it there, but theyâre trying to stop it. Theyâre like, âAh, thatâs my home. I shouldnât be trying to apply it there. I need to keep thinking of it in a work setting.â And sometimes, as you were talking about your example with your kids, Iâm thinking, âOh, that is just so directly tied to whatâs it like to lead a team.â Not that theyâre children, but that youâre seeing it in people that youâre with all the time.
[00:05:54] Itâs so easy sometimes to spot that once you have the language with people on your team, and if, hey, if your home life is where you can make the connections most easily, do that first so you can get used to them, you can see what they look like and you can explore it a lot more easily that way.
 Jim Collison: [00:06:10] Yeah, and I think parenting gets you ready for management. By the way, I have five kids and they all push me to the limits at times. Yeah, I love them. Theyâre great kids, but theyâre kids. And a lot of the life lessons I learned that I brought to management, and that I still continue to bring to management. Iâm fortunate here at Gallup I work with our high school and college internship programs, and so I now have 40 kids in the system that I work with, and my own five kind of prepared me on how to manage those kids.
[00:06:36] Twenty years ago I did an internship at a church for the summer as a youth pastor, and it was a disaster. And I just didnât know what I was doing, and I wasnât very good at it, and I was intimidated by the kids. My own kids kind of taught me how to work through that. And someday maybe Iâll write a book The Best Management Lessons I Ever Learned I Learned From My Own Children because there are tons of things. If you can manage that, oftentimes a work management situation is a piece of cake.
[00:07:04] And so taking them home first and really working on those for a long time, and, of course, I came to Gallup eight years ago. And, youâre right, we practice everything we preach. In fact, we overdo it here in some regard. So, I literally have some of kind Strengths discussion every single day.
Lisa Cummings: [00:07:19] Wow.
Jim Collison: [00:07:20] In some form or fashion we are talking about it. And so we embed it here, and Iâve grown as a manager here as well. But it is one of those things for me that StrengthsFinder gave me the tools to really understand the person. And then when we come to the management piece itâs about, âHow do we put those? Iâve got all these pieces.â Itâs almost like Scrabble and Iâve got all these letters and Iâve got to figure out how to put them together in order to make a word. And the more strategic I am about putting the word together the more value there is in the word.
[00:07:53] Not every situation is the same and no two managing situations are the same. Once you start laying those first letters the whole board changes and youâve got to be constantly adapting and taking advantage of the letters you have and those things that youâve been dealt. A lot of people approach management from a, âWell, if I could only do this.â Well, guess what? Sorry, you canât do that right now. Youâve got to do with what youâve been given. So donât look back, look forward. And how can you take advantage of the team that you currently have, and really maximize their value?
Lisa Cummings: [00:08:21] Yeah. Oh, you sparked so many things for me there. And one I want to go back to and make sure I donât forget to hit on it, is to ask you about having these Strengths conversations every day. So, youâre good, you do this, youâre very steep at Gallup like I mentioned. But what happens a lot of times with the managers that I work with is, okay, just the other day Iâm leading a StrengthsFinder class for managers, and one guy says, âI have a team of skeptics and theyâre not used to me being like this. And what they are used to is a lot of acquisitions and layoffs, and those things tend to lead to bad news on the job.â
[00:08:55] So what he said was, âIf I started exploring their talents with these kind of questions that donât feel like the normal me, theyâre going to put their guard up and think Iâm up to something and think itâs like some sort of talent assessment to see who to lay off.â So what would you say? How could you introduce this if you have not been doing this well, like you do, Jim, and you want to open your team up to this process so that they donât raise an eyebrow and think, âWhat is up with this guy? What is he doing?â
Jim Collison: [00:09:23] Yeah, itâs super common in that. And the expectation a lot of people have is a one and done, like this is an exercise that you do one time and then youâre done, âIâve done StrengthsFinder. I have my immunization from it and Iâm good now.â
Lisa Cummings: [laughs]
Jim Collison: [00:09:40] And thatâs not the case at all. This a journey. For me, I feel like Iâve been on this 10-year journey with it and Iâm still figuring out things about myself and about people. And I tell people this is a long haul approach and you canât do things with people until youâve figured out some of those things in yourself. And so if youâre new to this, and youâre a manager, and youâre thinking, âMan, Iâd really love to do this with my team.â
[00:10:02] You know what? Iâd encourage you first go on a journey of your own. Like, really dig into your top five. We provide tons of resources that are available to folks that are for free. Now, we encourage everyone to have a coach. Lisa, youâre one of those coaches. You go in and itâs great to have those engagements. But thereâs a lot of work that you can do on your own as well. When we think about the reports that we have available and all the videos that we make available to folks about their top five and some of those things.
[00:10:27] So, I encourage someone to dig in and understand who they are. Really live that life and walk that walk first. And then, slowly, begin to look for situations with their team where they can begin to implement. And it really works best in an environment of the team grid. So if you can get your team to take their top five and put those in a grid and start to understand situations.
[00:10:50] I like to use StrengthsFinder also as a conflict management tool between team members, and sometimes that makes a nice time to break it out. And donât call it that, like donât say, âOkay, everybody, take out your StrengthsFinder team grid, and now letâs hammer you on this thing.â No, it gives you some keys, it gives you some guides, it gives you some questions to ask, that you donât even have to say youâre using StrengthsFinder to do that.
[00:11:16] For example, we talked about the Adaptability with my son and understanding that. You might have a situation where you have someone thatâs high in Adaptability and high in Deliberative or high in Consistency. So weâve got someone who could go with the flow and we have another person who likes structure and thought and think it out and plan it, right, from that standpoint. Youâve got two of those people on your team doing that and theyâre going to be running into each other. You donât have to call those out in the conflict management that youâre doing.
[00:11:43] You can just say, âOh, you know, hey, I understand that your abilities here to be adaptable and then, hey, I understand that you need structure.â And maybe, for the first time, someone will be speaking to them understanding who they are and affirming that, right? And these two can coexist, but they need to be kind of named first in a lot of cases. So, Lisa, it gives us the ability to have this kind of, almost like this, you said ninja early in the show, to have this kind of ninja-like second, or third, or fifth sense that allows us to have some insight into who these people are, and then give them opportunities to succeed based on those Themes, based on those Strengths.
[00:12:23] Everybody wants to succeed. If you show it as a proven winner, if you come out the gate and say, âHey, this stuff works. Iâm not going to tell you about it. Weâre just going to do it.â I think they have a lot better adoption. They may be doing it already once you start doing it that way. Then donât care what the labels are. They just want to be successful. So that, for me, so youâve got to live it. Youâve got to live it yourself first, and then take those in and help your team be successful with it. Everybody wants to be successful.
Lisa Cummings: [00:12:52] And also if theyâve seen you begin to change, theyâve seen you begin to consider yourself in a different way itâs going to show up and youâre not going to be the guy who only ask them questions about the next acquisition.
Jim Collison: [00:13:04] Right.
Lisa Cummings: [00:13:05] Theyâre going to see that evolution as well, and theyâre going to say, âHey, youâve been a little different lately in the way youâre approaching things,â and then it will feel more natural anyway.
Jim Collison: [00:13:13] Yeah, and itâs a long-haul journey on this. This isnât, âOne week Iâm going to manage this way and if it doesnât work Iâm going to move on.â It really is a journey. I mean, itâs a six months, itâs a year, itâs two years. Itâs a way of taking a framework and changing the way you think about people and focusing on whatâs right about them instead of trying to fix their weaknesses, right?
Lisa Cummings: [00:13:32] Exactly.
Jim Collison: [00:13:33] And so it just takes time. Anybody who wants and one and done, I kind of say, âMaybe you should do something else because this is a lifestyle, not a program.â And so Iâd encourage folks to really get steeped in it first.
Lisa Cummings: [00:13:46] Totally. And probably you and I had a similar experience having looked at and lived ours for 10 years now. At the beginning you have these big insights, and then another layer, and then another layer. And here I am more than a decade later still getting new layers of insight about it because the more you apply it the more you see new things you couldnât see before until you lived in it.
Jim Collison: [00:14:08] Right on. A perfect example, like I did not understand my Maximizer for maybe six or seven years.
Lisa Cummings: [00:14:14] Oh, wow.
Jim Collison: [00:14:15] And I think really in the last two or three, and maybe in particular in the last year, have been an eye-opening experience for me where Iâm looking at, âSo how does that Maximizer, this idea of quality and sorting? How does that play out for me? And how am I maximizing it?â I know youâre not supposed to use the word in the definition. But how am I maximizing my Maximizer? And I think itâs still raw in me in a lot of cases. I think there are some things there that Iâm not taking full advantage of the Theme that I have.
[00:14:48] And so even 10 years into this Iâm still learning things about me, and just in my top five, that are eye opening. And how can I take advantage of that Theme, that talent inside of me, and really make it hyper-productive? How do I do that? So thatâs an example of, âHey, so you think 10 years, âOh, man, this guy has got it all together.ââ Heck, no. This is a journey of a lifetime. Iâm continuing to try to figure out how to take advantage of the pieces.
[00:15:15] The webcasting stuff that we do at Gallup, we have all kinds of it. I mentioned these resources on our coaches blog, so if you go to Coaching.Gallup.com. We create these videos every single week. Well, thatâs a Woo communication thing. And here at Gallup thatâs been something Iâve been allowed to do just in the last couple of years. And so thatâs not like, thatâs just all of a sudden came, âOh, I should be a podcaster, right?â Well, no, it didnât come that way. It took some years of discovery and trying things and some of those. Youâve got to kind of make some mistakes and figure some stuff out.
Lisa Cummings: [00:15:45] Yeah. Now, okay, youâre making me think of another thing that managers think of as an obstacle when they first get into that, which is like I look at your role and you manage a technology team. Yet, you are also known in our certified coaches circle as youâre our guy, and youâre there all the time. We would think thatâs your full-time job because you do so much of that and you do so much with these Theme Thursday channels and all the things that you produce.
[00:16:14] And so one thing I hear from manager is, âMan, from the practical side, this sounds really good but aligning the work to the talents,â beyond the relationship stuff you talked about, which is a beautiful element, then they want to think about aligning the work to the talents. But theyâll go, âOh, that sounds like a good idea but I donât know how to realistically shift responsibilities around. It seems real hard. It doesnât seem scalable." So how do you get it started with that? And how does it look? And youâre a great example because you live this out. Youâre doing things that wouldnât be in your job description, but they suit your talents really well. How does that all play out?
Jim Collison: [00:16:48] Yeah, in fact, I really have three jobs for Gallup. One is I built and manage all our internship programs. So we have technology internship programs for both high school and college. I do all our webcasting, which is kind of a full-time job, kind of all in itself from that standpoint. And then I manage all those resources which is kind of, again, those are like three full-time jobs.
Lisa Cummings: [00:17:11] Have you cloned yourself and you just havenât told anyone that you really found that secret?
Jim Collison: [00:17:15] You know I wish I could but I probably couldnât even manage myself if I had a clone of me. Itâd be scary to see me from the outside. But that being said, I prefer in this, you know, I mentioned just discovering my Maximizer Theme over the last couple of years, and this is really where Iâm seeing this starting to play out. In that, for me and managing, itâs taking little bites of the elephant. Oftentimes we try to approach these situations and fix it all in one week, or weâre going to have these big initiatives and weâre going to completely change everything, and this is the way itâs going to be today, starting today. Those kinds of things arenât sustainable. They almost never work, these big initiatives.
[00:17:52] I like the turn the water up one degree at a time. And the Maximizer, Iâm trying to make a better decision today than I made yesterday. I try to bring it down to that daily level, âHow can I change what Iâm doing today that has an affect or is better than I did it yesterday?â And so itâs little tiny changes.
[00:18:11] As an example, our high school internship program started three years ago. We started with 18 kids, and we ended up with seven at the end for the summer. So the next year we started with 22 kids and ended up with 10 at the summer. This year we started with 40 kids and it ended up with 14 for the summer. So each year Iâm trying to bump those numbers up a little bit.
[00:18:35] I have a partner that helps me. I donât do all this stuff. I donât do any of this stuff alone. I have to have great partners. One of the things we think about StrengthsFinder right is teams are well-rounded, people arenât. And so we try to put together, I always look for people who have high Responsibility and high Discipline because I donât have any of that. And so, for me, Iâm all over the place and I need someone to kind of rein me in or make sure that what I said we actually do, whether the materials arrive on time or a lot of those kinds of things.
[00:19:05] So my success has been a lot of partnership. But we continually change little bits, little pieces. We adapt in real time to say, âOh, that didnât work,â or, âOh, that worked. Letâs do more of that. How do we increase this to get this to get more value out of this thing?â So, Lisa, I think itâs little bits at a time and itâs looking at, again, like I said, on a daily basis, âHow do I make a change today?â
[00:19:32] I was just looking at some of our YouTube infrastructure just yesterday, and I was like, âOh, I donât like the way thatâs laid out. Itâs not very scalable. So what kind of changes can I slowly start making that will make this a more scalable solution?â To do all the things that I have to do, I have to constantly think about scalability. Not just, âHow do I just do this alone?â but, âHow will I get this done? And then how do I drag as many people along with me as I can in the process?â
[00:19:59] Itâs a little bit, thatâs like the Huck Finn where heâs painting the fence. I try to paint the fence in a way that gets a whole bunch of people to come over and paint the fence, and then I give them responsibilities based on what theyâre good at, and we tweak those. I donât always get it perfect, but then we tweak it to kind of like, âOkay. I donât know if we do this and we do that, what do you think about that?â And oftentimes like, âYeah, I want to do that.â
[00:20:20] And when they come out from that perspective, man, you donât have to do that much management. When you give someone a job they want to do, the managing is a side thing. And so how do we do that? Yeah, I have 40 interns on the campus for the summer. Iâve got a whole team to help out with other people who want to help. And I have interns who want to be here. So it makes a big difference. I think take it slowly. Little changes day over day and be consistent with them.
Lisa Cummings: [00:20:45] Yeah, really smart because those add up so fast.
Jim Collison: [00:20:47] They really do. People overestimate, yeah, they overestimate what they can do in a month and underestimate what it can be done in a year. Itâs just one of those things. In 365 days of making, if you did one thing a day, if you removed one file a day from your computer, I took down one video that weâre not using. I can do 350 videos in a year. Thatâs a lot.
Lisa Cummings: [00:21:12] Itâs a lot.
Jim Collison: [00:21:13] So if I just did one a day, and if it took me one minute, how much is that really impacting my day? Now, apply that to your own situation. Sometimes when you look at this thereâs like 350 videos Iâve got to get rid of. Seriously? I mean, thatâs a lot. That might take me a whole day. Well, donât ruin a whole day. If you can stretch that out, or if you can do a little bit at a time, or you can think about scalable processes, those all really matter.
Lisa Cummings: [00:21:34] I really liked how you mentioned making yourself scalable through the partnerships. Talk a little bit about that. How do you approach those partners when you think youâve found someone who has complementary talent to you, or something that you donât have that would really help the project or the business outcome? How does that all go down?
Jim Collison: [00:21:51] Yeah, itâs helpful for me because I have these Influencing Themes.
Lisa Cummings: [00:21:55] Yes.
Jim Collison: [00:21:55] So I always feel like it comes a little bit natural because I have Woo and my Woo is in overdrive 90% of the day. I never have a problem doing that. But often it always starts with a discussion, and it may always be a discussion based on⊠because Iâm a people-watcher. I love to watch people in action. So Iâll just sit, and maybe this is a little bit of a sickness, but when Iâm watching people do things Iâm always thinking about, âHow can I take advantage of that?â
[00:22:22] Like, somebody is up presenting and talking about something, Iâm always looking for keys, like, âWhatâs there that I could take advantage of? Like, if I needed something from them, what would be the best thing they could give me?â So itâs a constant Maximizer thought, like, âHow can I take advantage of the situation?â
[00:22:40] So, as an example, we had an intern here four years ago, I think it was four, four-five years ago. One of my interns just loved teaching. And so I used him to teach the other interns in his class when he was coming in, and then we kind of put him on the backburner. And when I started our high school program I kind of thought for a second, âI wonder if Zach would be good at this?â And so I just took him out to lunch one day and sat him down and said, âHey, weâre thinking about this high school program. What do you think?â And heâs like, âWow, thatâs kind of interesting. Let me think about it.â
[00:23:10] And I said, âHey, why donât you come by? Just come by. No responsibilities, just come by and see what weâre doing on a Saturday.â So he popped in. When we were done heâs like, âHow do I get involved?â Right? And so, one, you have to ask. Itâs super important. You canât do these things. People wonât come to you. Oftentimes you have to ask, or at least plant the seed. Give them the opportunity to do it.
[00:23:32] But, two, take every advantage of watching people. We call that kind of Strengths spotting, if they have the StrengthsFinder. I know sometimes when people are at their best. Lisa, you probably have a set of questions you can ask. I always say, âWhat energizes you?â And theyâll say a bunch of things. Like, âWhatâs your best day?â Thatâs another question. Like, âWhen youâre at work and youâre having your best day, what are you doing?â You can oftentimes get clues about their high talent themes by hearing about what theyâre doing, what energizes them.
[00:24:03] Then if you can tweak their job or tweak their role or give them opportunities, whether big or small, if you can give them opportunities in that area, oftentimes theyâll just start to soar. And, of course, thereâs always parts of our jobs, things that we hate, you know, that we don't like to do them, but you just have to do. Thatâs never going to go away. Right? Like I hate budgets. Never going to go away, so I have to learn to deal with them.
Lisa Cummings: [00:24:27] You canât even outsource it.
Jim Collison: [00:24:29] Well, in some cases you can. I try. Trust me. I tried to outsource as much as I can when Iâm not good at it. It is a situation where you can kind of just look.
Lisa Cummings: [00:274:37] I love hearing the story of Zach and the example of how you spotted it, and that you brought it to him. And when you brought it to him, at first he was kind of like, âOh, yeah, maybe.â But then he saw your vision, he saw what you were seeing in him and why heâd be interested and got really fired up. That is just such a beautiful part when you can put it in front of them, and then they go, âOh, yeah. How do I get more of that in my life?â
Jim Collison: [00:25:02] Yeah. Lisa, youâve got to be willing to give it away. Thatâs the other kind of side of this, is you canât tease people with these things and then be a control freak and say, âOh, Iâm just kidding. I kind of want you to do it my way, and if you donât do it my way I donât want you to do it.â That doesnât work. You have to be willing to let them completely consume it and take it on and guide them.
[00:25:23] I always equate management a little bit of a boat going down a river, right? And it can wander around the river channel. And as managers, I think if we want to keep the boat in the center of the channel, or the most optimal spot, you kind of have to tap it on the sides, little tiny course corrections. I heard a statistic data, a flight between L.A. and New York City, even while the airplane is on autopilot, the pilots make dozens or maybe even hundreds of adjustments to the plane while itâs making that, going to their destination. And if they didnât they would be completely off at the end.
[00:25:57] And so I equate management to like that. Sometimes it doesnât mean a whole course correction. We donât need to come up with whole new ideas or completely new ways of doing things. With people, sometimes we just need to tap on the sides a little bit. And so in a situation with Zach, I need to let him run down the channel, and then when I have some ideas just tap on the side, âOh, hey, Zach. Think about this,â tapping on the side, âThink about this,â getting him just right back.
[00:26:21] Now, in Zachâs case I do very little tapping, right? But with a lot of my interns, though we do a lot of tapping where we come in and say, âHey, hereâs a lesson for today.â And they always say, âOh, Jimâs coming in with a sermon.â But when we do that, again, itâs that little visual just kind of tapping on the sides keeping them on course. And I think those little taps, like people really donât feel them, theyâre like, âOh, okay. Thatâs cool.â Itâs those big shocking, âWeâre going to change everything and itâs going to be great tomorrow.â People donât like that. I prefer, from a management perspective, of coming at it knowing where their channel is, and then just tapping on the side to keep them in line.
Lisa Cummings: [00:26:58] What a great reminder because you want the Strengths stuff to be digestible and of interest to people, so if youâre trying to change the whole world you might actually turn them off. So do the little stuff. I love the metaphor to end with.
[00:27:09] This has been such a blast, Jim. I know people want more of you. Iâm definitely recommending everybody listening, go out to the YouTube channel where you can see Gallup has lots of great channels. The one that I think youâd really, really love is Theme Thursday because you can take your talents and your teamâs talents and dig in for an hour at a time. So check that out. Iâll put a link to that in the show notes as well. What else would you recommend if they want to get more of Jim Collison in their life?
Jim Collison: [00:27:34] Well, first of all, if you want more of Jim Collison you might be a little sick, so get that checked out.
Lisa Cummings: [laughs]
Jim Collison: [00:27:40] But, that being said, we have all of our stuff thatâs available as a podcast as well. So if youâre listening to this podcast, go into your podcast player, find search, and then search for
Called to Coach. Thatâs another webcast that we do. That one is kind of designed for coaches, but if youâre a manager and youâre thinking about â in fact, coaching and managing are very, very close in their skillset â and so you might be interested in hearing stories of other coaches that have used StrengthsFinder in a variety of situations.
[00:28:09] That one is global, so we do interviews in India, and in Singapore, and in Australia, and here in the United States, and we have coaches from all over the world. We even have a Spanish version available now if you want to get that in Español, so thatâs available for you. Just search Called to Coach, or search Theme Thursday, and either one of those will come up in your podcast player and then you can listen to the audio as well.
[00:28:29] If thereâs one web address to remember, itâs the one I mentioned earlier â Coaching.Gallup.com. You donât have to be a coach to come to that site. Itâs a big Strengths enthusiast site. We just started it with coaching in mind, but thereâs tons of resources and tons of material out there thatâs available for you.
Lisa Cummings: [00:28:46] So great. And managers or coaches, and when youâre tapping that boat down the river thatâs exactly what youâre doing, so what a great resource.
[00:28:54] Thanks, everyone, for listening to Lead Through Strengths. Remember, using your strengths makes you a stronger performer at work. If you always focus on fixing your weaknesses, youâre choosing the path of most resistance. And if youâre leading a team youâre subjecting them to that as well. So, claim your talents instead, and share them with the world.
Carmie is a professional writer and editor at Lead Through Strengths. Having spent 8 happy years with a nonprofit child organization as a storyteller and sponsorship relations team manager, she continues collaborating with others across the globe for the joy of human development and connection. Her days are powered by coffee, curiosities, cameras (film and digital), music, notebooks, and a cat. Where books are home, she’s home. She calls her Top 5 StrengthsFinder Talents “CLIPS” (Connectedness, Learner, Intellection, Positivity, and Strategic)–you know, those tiny objects that hold connected things together. She’d like to think she’s one.