Woo Strength: Build A Genuine Career Brand

Woo Strength: Get Known For Your Talent

I constantly get questions about how to align your CliftonStrengths talent theme of Woo with your career. So in this series, I break down one strength per episode — so that 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.

Today, the talent theme of the episode is Woo strength.

You’ll get three layers to chew on:

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

Career Branding For The Woo Strength

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 just like most of my StrengthsFinder training clients, where you don’t see your teammates and customers every day. That’s why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding - because it’s how your teammates, customers, and vendors go look you up before a meeting - to see 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 Woo strength:

• Charming
• Social Butterfly
• Interactive
• The One Who Knows Everybody
• Initiating
• Life Of The Party
• Welcoming
• Instant Connector
• Well-Networked
• Ice-Breaker
• Gregarious
• Engaging
• Great Conversationalist
• Entertainer
• Energetic
• Approachable

Red Flag Situations When You Lead With The Woo Strength

These are the cultures, interactions, or situations that feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone with the talent theme of Woo. 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 become detached at work.

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

1. Weeks in isolation where you don’t get social interaction — if you lead through the Woo strength and you work from home, be sure to "get your people fix" through video calls with colleagues or by getting out of the house for social hour.
2. The need to continually deliver bad news or work with irate customers — if you lead through the Woo strength, you’re usually watching for a positive reception from that person. If you’re in many interactions per day where people don’t like you or your answers, it will be extremely draining.

3 Fresh Application Ideas For The Woo Strength

These are ways to apply the talent theme of Woo 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 Woo strength, put the talent to good use with one of these options:

1. Onboarding New Hires: Consider how this person could play a role in onboarding new team members or customers. They will likely enjoy the opportunity to create a welcoming experience.
2. Making Strangers Feel Comfortable: Talk about responsibilities that include meeting a lot of new people — anything from software demos to creating a destination booth at a trade show to delivering presentations or doing customer tours.
3. Emcee or Experience-Creator: If you have annual events, like holiday parties or customer appreciation events, see if your team members with Woo would love to Emcee them or be part of designing a magical experience. Keep in mind that there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work with big events. Someone with the talent of Woo is usually more energized by the front-of-house type of responsibilities.

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

Here's Your Personal Branding Homework For The Woo 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 Woo strength all the way. You can really nerd out on the nuances on the Woo 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, so that you can add to the insights from your StrengthsFinder reports, and make a better match between your job and your strengths. If you're listening as a manager, then use this series for career development ideas, and even to get new clues about responsibilities like job roles, responsibilities and tasks that you could give a person with this talent theme, so that they can show up at their best.

If you're listening for yourself, because you have this talent theme, use it 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. Today, the talent theme of the episode is Woo, which always makes people want to go, “wooh wooh!”, and you'll get 3 layers to chew on related to Woo.

One is career branding. The second is red flag situations that you want to watch out for at work. And the third one is brush application ideas. What in the world to do with this thing to apply it to the job?

So, let's start with career branding. You probably already have a reputation for what you know. So, if you imagine your resume or your LinkedIn profile, I bet it's full of the what those are, things like job title, skills, knowledge, or expertise or the degree that you earned. Now what's missing in most of them is the how. And this is exactly 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 just like many of my StrengthsFinder training clients where you don't see your teammates and customers every day. Well, that's why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding. Because it's how your teammates, your customers and your vendors, go look you up before a meeting because they're going to see who they're about to talk to. So rather than only telling them what you know, when they look you up, you should also give them a peek at how it is to work with you.

So here are a bunch of adjectives that those of you with Woo can use in your career branding efforts, and right on your LinkedIn profile. So, people who lead through Woo, are often charming. They're social butterflies. They're really interactive. They're welcoming. And they're often the people who know everyone, like that person in the office, you know everybody. They’re instant connectors. They're really engaging. They're great conversationalist, and they're energetic. “You sound pretty awesome, don't you?”

Hmm. So now let's move to red flag situations at work. These are the cultures, the interactions, the situations that feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone with a talent theme of Woo. These situations might even make you want to quit a team. So, I'll give you a couple of these things to be on watch for because if these fester on the job for you, you might get the urge to quit or to become detached or disengaged at work. Bad news, right?

So here are two red flags for Woo. One is isolation. And if you spend weeks in solitude, where you don't get social interaction, let's say you lead through Woo and you work from home, be sure to get your fix through video calls with colleagues or by getting out of the house for social hour. Even if you're feeding this social drive with your friends, that's totally fine. Just make sure you get that part of you fed.

Another red flag for Woo, bad news bearer. This is if you are continually called on in your role to deliver bad news or work with irate customers. If you lead through Woo, you're usually watching or waiting for or wanting a positive reception from the other person. That's one of the drives in you. So, if you're in many interactions per day where people don't like you, or they don't like your answers, and then it feels like they don't like you, it's going to be extremely draining.

Okay, so those are the red flags to be on watch for.

And then finally here are 3 fresh application ideas for you if you have Woo or if you manage Woo. So, these are ways to apply the talent theme even when the job duties on the team feel kind of locked in. If you're listening as a manager, be sure to have conversations around these with your team member, so that way you can both be contributing to how these get used. I'm going to frame these from the perspective of the manager. If you're leading someone with the Woo talent theme put it to use with one of these options.

I'll give you three to pick from. One, think of how this person could play a role in onboarding new team members, or new customers. They'll probably enjoy the opportunity to create an experience that feels welcoming for other people.

Number two, talk about responsibilities that include meeting a whole lot of new people, anything from doing software demos to creating a destination booth at a trade show, or I mean, a destination booth meaning challenge them to create a booth that other people actually want to go to where you're not trying to get them in with some lame tchotchkes. Or challenge them to deliver a presentation or do a customer tour that creates an experience that is memorable.

Third one to consider, if you have annual events like holiday parties or customer appreciation event, see if your team members with Woo would love to emcee it, or be part of designing an experience that is magical or remarkable, meaning somebody would actually want to remark on it. So, keep in mind though, if you do this, there are a lot of things that happen with events that are behind the scenes. So, if you just say, “Hey, you own this huge event that isn't in full going to be exciting to someone with Woo, because they don't want to be hiding behind the scenes doing a bunch of that. Someone with the talent of Woo is usually more energized by the front-of-house kind of responsibility.”

So, keep that in mind with events. There are 2 different sides of that. So, there you have it. It's a quick tour for building your career through the talent theme of Woo or building a team member’s career if they have Woo.

So here's your homework. One, go take action on your LinkedIn profile if you have this talent theme, and make this a career branding thing that you do. Challenge yourself to write one sentence in the summary section of LinkedIn that captures how you collaborate as a teammate at work.

Two, think about these red flags. If you have this talent theme, are there any of these that you need to get in front of before they bring you down? If you manage someone with this talent theme, oh, is this something that you need to be on watch for because it might be sucking the life out of one of your team members?

And then finally, volunteer the talents through the application ideas. So, if you have these talents to give, volunteer them to the team. 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.

And with that, I'm your host Lisa Cummings from Lead Through Strengths. If you're thinking about doing a virtual or in person strengths event to kick off your strengths-based culture, head on over to leadthroughstrengths.com/training to see if our current offerings are a good fit for you.

Until next time, thank you for being part of this powerful strengths movement that helps people unleash the awesomeness already inside.