 And Kathy is actually certified from Gallup in strength-finding and strength-coaching. Kathy has 30,000 throws in strength-finders. Even, you know, as someone like me that kind of grew up in strengths and rack space, when I finally went through her training, I felt like I learned so much about how I used my strengths and how I could better use my strengths. So I'm really happy that you guys are here. I think it's applicable to every company, to every team. If you're working, even if you're a sole proprietor and you're working with someone remotely, I think you can still benefit from the methodology that is strength-finding. So please put your hands together and help me welcome Kathy Kirsten. I jumped at the opportunity actually when Lorenzo asked if I would do the Master Series because I geek out about strengths and I wanted to come share that with you and kind of give you a good understanding of why you should understand what your strengths are and how you should use them. And so a little bit about me. I took the Strengths Finder for the first time in 2006 when I became a Racker. I worked at rack space for a little over six and a half years. Five of those years were in the HR department working with the strengths program, but whenever I took them, I had similar response to them as Lorenzo did. What are these five words and what kind of box are you trying to put me in? And then once I sat in a room with teammates who saw the world very differently than I did and they had very strange top five strengths on their cards, I realized, oh, there's some power to this. And then I was an account manager at that time and I decided that I wanted my career path to move into the area of training. And so whenever I went to the Racker Engagement Team to be a trainer, they actually selected me to be a Strength Coach and I wasn't so sure about it. So when I went to Gallup University in 2008 to receive my certification, I became a believer because I spent three entire days talking to people about their strengths. And I realized more than anything, more than Myers-Briggs, more than disc, more than what colors parachute, more than, you know, colors. There's a million different personality tests. This one gets down to the innate complexity of human behavior. And I'm fascinated by that and it's probably because of my strengths. I have Maximizer in my top five and I'll share my strengths throughout the presentation. But it really turned me on and made me think, wow, there's really something to this. And then when I went back to Rackspace and for the next five years, with other Rackers, I realized, wow, this is unlocking potential in people's lives and helping them see themselves in a way they never have before. So today's presentation is called Start with Strengths because I know that you folks are business-minded and you're at Geekdom for a reason. You want to start a business or you're starting a business or you're just in a collaborative community hoping to be paired with some people that make something great, right? And I want to give you some insight on how you can be a great part of a wonderful partnership or a collaborative group that does something great. All right, oh, oh, I'm going to use Prezi, so I hope I don't make you seasick. We are actually changing the hashtag. So if you're a tweeter, you can hashtag Strengths Master. And if you would like to follow me, shameless plug, I'm Kathy Kirsten. All right, now we're going to get down to business. So our purpose today, using the Strengths Finder framework, and who's taking this assessment? Oh, yes, this is going to be awesome. Okay, so using this framework, we're going to talk about how you can harness your understanding of the human talent for business success, okay? You guys are already ready. I don't even have to sell it. You know your top fives? We're good. All right, let's get into this. Gallup has this thing called the Gallup Path. Now, I have lots of examples of companies, but I'm going to talk about Rackspace because it's familiar with everyone, and particularly Graham Weston's view on how Rackspace runs and why it's so successful based on the Gallup Path. And the Gallup Path, which is a behavioral economic model for organizations in case you can't see that, and it says microeconomics. You can actually find this on the web. Just Google the Gallup Path and you'll see it. This starts with strengths and ends in what? Stock increase. And who loves stock increase? So let's talk about starting with strengths. Let's actually zoom to the middle first. In the middle, this is where the magic happens at Rackspace. If you know anything about Rackspace, been there, visited the campus, talked to Rackers, you're going to hear two things. I love my job, and we love our customers. Fanatical support for employees, fanatical support for customers. And really that the tech terms, the technical HR speak, is engaged employees and engaged customers. What are engaged employees? Yell them out to me. What makes an engaged employee? Passionate, participant, caring, happy. Not a clock puncher. Not a clock puncher. So I agree with all those. You're all correct. And they deliver, or they give, discretionary effort. What's discretionary effort? More than is required. Discretionary effort is that extra oomph. That staying late because the customer needs extra help past five o'clock. That waking up in the middle of a weekend to go jump on phones because a truck hit a data center. That's discretionary effort. And that's what engaged employees are. What are engaged customers? What makes an engaged customer? Give you feedback, and most of the time it's to help you improve, right? Great idea. What else is an engaged customer? They come back. High loyalty. Absolutely. And what do they do with their friends, family, neighbors, that kind of thing? They refer you. They sell what you're selling. They are unpaid salespeople, right? And in Gallup knows, and they have found that these links, engaged employees lead to engaged customers, will lead to sustainable growth because of those reasons. Loyalty, less likely to churn, more likely to promote you amongst their friends, family, colleagues. They also know that leads to real profit increase because it's less spend on every customer that you get. And that leads to stock increase. Now, this part of the path, this starting here and above, how much control does a company really have over those things? Very little. Would you agree? Very little control over those things. Sure, there's levers you can pull. And Gallup is saying, start with your people. Start with your human talent. Start with strengths. Okay, so at Rackspace, if anyone has applied at Rackspace or have been a Racker like me and Lorenzo and a few other people in this room, as soon as you got your offer letter or maybe perhaps before you got your offer letter, you were given a strengths assessment because the strengths assessment is a shot in the arm. It's a shortcut into figuring out what makes you tick. I'm going to talk about talent and kind of the description of it in a second, but really helping find out what makes this person love their job, no matter what job it is. That's what their intention is on doing that. It's called identifying strengths. The second piece is, once you identify what makes this person tick, what brings them alive, what makes them deliver discretionary effort, it's about finding the right fit. Now organizations that are strength-based believe that every role requires talent. I'll say that again. Every role requires talent. Those businesses that have in the hotel industry believe that housekeeping roles require talent. Has anybody been on a Disney cruise? Yeah, I haven't either. Okay, but I've heard, sounds like misery, but I have heard that the housekeeping staff, and I've seen it on pictures of stuff, what do they do with the towels and the wash rags? Have you seen this? Characters. Is that in the job description? Do you think that's in the job description of we need housekeeping staff? Oh, and by the way, you need to turn a wash rag into Minnie Mouse. It might be a Disney, because Disney's intentional, right, there might be a Disney. Okay, so yes, think about it at the drive-thru window. Who went through drive-thru today? Starbucks, fast food, okay. Own up to it, it's okay. Okay, so was the person who serviced you? Nice. Did they smile? Did they make you feel better? Did you leave? Feeling, heck, they said good morning with some. I went back through. No way! Just because it was great. Okay, well, chances are, an engaged customer would. You might start going back to Starbucks every day at the same time, because that's your Starbucks and that's your gal or guy, and that's your barista, and they've got talent. Now, they did a great job hiring if they found someone like that, so few of us are intentional about doing it. We're looking for skills and technical piece, correct? Yeah, it's that talent piece. So right fit, figuring out what's great and getting you into the right fit. The third piece is giving them a great manager. So every person who knows their talent and the organization understands and is supportive of their talent, finding a role in which they can play it to the majority of the time, that talent, and then giving them a talented manager who's great at helping people motivate and develop based on their innate talents, then take them to engage employees. Does that make sense? Okay. That's why you need to start with strengths. Now, if you haven't read the Nautiskove Your Books, I'm fixing to give you the short and easy version. Okay, it's the Kathy Kirsten version, by the way. I am working on my second certificate with Gallup. My first certificate, coaching certificate is technically owned by Rackspace. So Gallup made me take it all over again. And so about a month ago, I went and spent a whole week in Washington, D.C. at Gallup learning about this. And I'm really glad I did because it was a wonderful refresher and it's been about six years since my first certificate. And they've come up with a lot of neat new tools for coaches to use. So it was worth my time, but I'm not technically certified. At the moment, I'm trained. So, but this is my version. It is out of the book, but I have to put my own little spin on it to make it fun. All right, so let's talk about talent first. Gallup says they misnamed this strengths finder thing. It's really a talent finder, okay? They have no idea if you are good at these things. They have no idea. It's an assessment. It's a computerized assessment. And it's only as good as the info you put into it. So if you didn't take much time, or you were trying to portray yourself as more competitive or more friendly or more warm and inviting, then that's probably the results you got out of it. However, for the geeks in the room about evaluations, it is obstative. So it's hard to, and I'm not saying that word probably right, obstative? Okay. And then, so that's what it helps. It puts you into variables that are hard to pick across. And then it asks you them 178 times and you have less than 20 seconds to answer each one. So chances are you probably had a really hard time gaming the system. And it's purposefully that way. So this assessment spit out your five talents. Okay? And those are your recurring patterns of thought and behavior. Thought, feelings, and behavior. That's all it is. You told the assessment, this is how I respond in these situations. These are behaviors I have. These are feelings I have over and over and over again. It becomes a strength when you have near perfect performance and inactivity. Now Gallup's got some really cool ways of describing this. There's one guy, he's on Twitter. It's CFS for Clifton, no, C, yeah, Clifton Strengths Finder Guy, CSF. He is a mastermind and he tweets about strength 24-7. He says talent is the soul. Strength is the role. Talent is who you are. Strength is what you do. This is your being. This is your doing. Does that make sense? So how do you take something? How do you take this raw material of talent that we don't have very much control over because it's a brain thing and make it into a strength? Well, you add investment. Okay, everybody has one of these now cast essay things, right? Flip it over. If you have a pen, you're going to need it. Write your name on the back of this. Just your first name. Yes, if you don't have a pen, use pizza sauce. Everybody got it? Done? Easy enough. Now put the pen in your other hand and write your name. So it took you a little bit longer. On performance-wise, how did you do? Because it's pizza sauce. You got it. Thanks, Tex. Okay, so something felt very natural to you. You... Did you even think about it the first time you wrote your name? It's something you've done millions of times. It's comfortable. It might feel good. You may not even... You don't devote any energy whatsoever to writing your name at this point in your life. And suddenly, the switch of a hand makes you higher concentration. Not as great performance, perhaps. I mean, unless we have some people. Did somebody do it just as well in both ways? Man, that is talent. What's that called again? Ambidextrous. There's always one in every crowd, but the rest of us are not that good at it. So that's a talent. It's hard, right? And that's what this whole thing is about. That investment piece, you could learn to do it, but why would you need to? And is it going to increase your productivity to use that hand that you're not naturally using? You don't have to. That's the strength piece. So talent times investment. And investment is skills and knowledge. And through your life, you've been adding these things into your brain all the time at school and extracurricular activities. Your parents have been giving it to you. The work that you do now, the work that you choose to do, the projects that you get involved with, sometimes our managers help us with skills and knowledge, and an additive piece to raw talent and raw materials that make it a strength for you. Does that make sense? So a talent times investment equals a strength. And you have all 34 strengths. The Strengths Finder program has 34 strengths, and over 30 years' worth of research, they came up with hundreds of themes of talent. Hundreds. And they combine them down to 34. And quite honestly, I don't think they have everything. I think they have a really good start on it. But I think there's still things yet to be discovered that we don't have names for, right? And things that are innate and that we just can't even see them. I think they could add some more in. It'd be interesting to see how it develops. Only 10 and a half million people have taken this thing. So a very small part of the population has. Although a high population in this room has done it, which is really cool. So those are the strengths. There's 34 of them, and you have all 34. At the time when you took the assessment, those five were your most dominant. And Gallup says that 15, 1 through 15, that's your playing space. That area, those are the things that you're using constantly, but those top five are dominant. And Don Clifton said you can spend your entire life developing just five. And what this really is is brain stuff, okay? As children, when we were children, we had tons of synapses going on in our heads. Does anybody remember synapses? Yes, yeah. Neurons and synapses, then they're talking to each other. Yeah, like fireworks. I sat next to a doctor as an MD doctor at Gallup a few weeks ago, and he, like, geeked out on me about neuroscience and was saying at day 40 in the womb, your brain starts creating 9,000 neurons a second or something crazy like that. I'm probably annoying people with analytical strength right now because I can't remember that data completely. But you can Google it. And then it starts firing every neuron, 15,000 synapses out to talk to each other. And we are really, really, our brain is just explosive growth all through our young years. That's why children can learn four languages at the age of five. Much easier than you and I can at the age of 35, right? And then your brain does this remarkable thing in the teenage years, and it's called pruning. And it starts to prune away those pathways in the brain that are not required for you to get things done. And that's why Gallup even says you can take the Strengths Finder at that level. It's called Strengths Quest at that 14 to 18 level and have pretty solid results because your brain has already started pruning your behaviors and your patterns of thinking. Isn't that amazing? It's bad news, though, for us, you know, like can't teach a dog old trick, can't teach an old dog new tricks? Yeah, right? That's a pruning problem. You know, it's hard to change our ways. But you don't need to have Gallup tell you what your strengths are, okay? These are things that you know about yourself, whether you took the assessment or not. Many of you may have thought, wow, this is exactly what I thought. Like, Lorenzo thought someone was reading his emails and picking up on his patterns of behavior. Or perhaps you saw something that you were surprised by. Like, I did whenever I got strategic as number one. I had never been called a strategic person, but I ask what if all the time. And so I was quite surprised by it. But you know what? There are clues to talent. There's five of them. I'm going to go through them really quick. The five clues to talent. Number one is a yearning. You have a magnetism towards things that you are naturally good at. Who plays musical instruments in the room? Oh, a few of us. Okay, well, who is a computer geek in the room? Okay, so you were drawn, and some of you are both, you were drawn to that for some reason. It was a yearning. I know I was yearning to do public speaking in middle school. You experienced rapid learning. You computer geeks for a second. Do you ever remember not knowing how the computer worked? You do, sort of? Oh, a couple of weeks ago? Okay. But you learned fast, right? Obviously, I mean, it comes easy to you. It's rapid learning. That's where you experience the most gratification. That makes the third thing, right? Satisfaction. You stick with things that you enjoy. Things that you yearn to do, you pick them up. You're pretty good at them. Actually, you're better than the average person. And that also brings satisfaction because you're using those paths of least resistance. We talked about a second ago, synapsis in your brain, and it feels good to do it. Another piece is glimpses of excellence. Have you ever surprised yourself about how good you are at something? Or if other people told you, wow, you're really good at that, and you just thought, I'm just being me. I don't know. Am I good at this? But they have recognized it, so it's that recognition of there's a glimpse of excellence here. Let's pour ourselves into it. Finally, down here in the important part of the brain, is flow. Okay? Flow. Who knows what flow is? Yes, ma'am. Perfect. A state that when you're doing something you're so comfortable with, you experience timelessness and the world disappears around you. Yes, there's this TED talk about flow. And it's from 2004, and it's a Russian guy, and I can't pronounce his name, but you can Google it. Flow is a remarkable state of mind, and he had read about and researched a composer who literally can get into a state where he watches his hand compose music, and he doesn't know where it's coming from. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that relaxing for him? And yet, he's a master at it. All of us have those things. For some of us, well, some of you are playing video games. Right? Oh, y'all don't want to admit to it. I coach people all the time, particularly men who have video game problems, but, you know, it's flow. I can lose hours. But I experience it when I'm doing this. I experience it when I'm working with my hands, and I'm crocheting. I'm giving you some... I have grandma hobbies, y'all. I crochet. I experience it when I'm talking to other people on the phone. Ooh, I experience it when I'm thinking. Because I'm a thinker. And especially if I have a noodle, you know, a little tidbit of information. Ooh, I love to go research it, and I can lose myself. 15 Google stops later, right? Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And I'm, you know, on to something amazing, and I don't know why. Watching the Discovery Channel about penguins for three hours. Why does that matter in my life? It doesn't, but boy, I find it interesting. My brain is going, phew! You didn't know this about penguins! Wow, this is amazing! Do you find these things? I mean, it may not be like the way Kathy Kirsten sees them, but some of you can compete all day long. So if you're with Restorative, you can fix things. Actually, some of you with Restorative will break things so you can fix them. All right, clues to talent. And why does this matter? This is really interesting, Kathy, but why does it all matter? Well, Gallup Research shows that employees who play to their strengths in their role on a daily basis are six times more engaged. Teams that are strength-based are experience 12.5 greater productivity and 8.9 greater profitability. This is why Rack Space pays for this. This is why Rack Space invests lots of money to buy full 34 reports for every employee and then hire and train a bunch of, you know, talking heads like myself to go out and say, I love your strengths because there's a business means to it. And most of all, you want to love your job. You want to go to work in a place that you love and you get to play to your strengths with other people who love what they're doing and playing to their strengths and there's magic that happens there. You'll love your job, employee engagement. Are there any questions at this point? Okay. Are you tracking with me? Are you facing the job on personal strengths? Okay. Great question. The question was, I'm repeating for the microphone, is that should you hire based on people's strengths or should you hire in certain roles for certain strengths? Are certain strengths for certain roles? Is that correct? Yeah. Sort of like that. Okay. So Gallup will tell you, and Kathy's going to tell you, that strengths are how you get things done not what you're going to do. Their research shows that there is no secret top five recipe for CEOs. There is no secret top five recipe for salespeople. While people with woo and competition will be yearning to be in a sales role, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have it to be great in that role. Okay. So you should use the strengths finder or understanding of people's strengths and their innate talent and abilities to make sure that that is going to fit within the culture of the role, the team, the company as a package, but you will kill yourself trying to find the perfect recipe. Ooh. And you know why? Because one in 278,000 of us share the same top five. One in 278,000. One in 33 million share the same top five in the same order. So if you're looking for strategic learner input belief and maximizer because I'm awesome, you know? It's going to be really hard to find that exact same recipe for success or recipe in a person and those kind of odds. Now, one interesting tidbit. There are a few strengths that are more commonly up than others. Achiever, learner and relator and we can add strategic to the list. Those are in the top five of the database of the 10.5 million that have taken it. Okay. Command. Does anybody in the room have command in their top five? Raise it high. Come on, command. You are special because that's the least dominant strength in the entire database. It's number 34. It used to be empathy. I don't know how many years back. And now it's command, which I think says something good for the human population. Because having empathy 34 is pretty terrible. But, you know, command. Leadership skill. Questions. That was a good one, Ryan. Okay. Let's talk about this in performance. I'm going to share with you the speed reading example. This is Gallup's famous example on why this stuff matters to performance. They in the University of Nebraska did a study. And they had a speed reading course and they at first divided up their control groups by average readers reading at 90 words per minute. You see it? And then above average readers reading at 150 words per minute. Okay. They applied the same speed reading test to both control groups. What do you think happened? Do you think that the average readers improved? Yes. You're correct. They did. They improved their reading speed to 150 words per minute. Almost 100% improvement. Isn't that awesome? Go average readers. Okay. What do you think happened with above readers, above average readers? About 900. Anybody else have something to add to that? You're right. 2900 per minute. Is that right? No. That's not right. Yes. Yes. That's right. That's right. So with comprehension, which is amazing, this sort of proves that your potential for growth is not in your areas of weakness. Your potential for growth are in your areas of talent, existing talent. That's taking raw talent and making it world-class. Isn't that interesting? You all are like, I'm like, wow! You all are kind of, eh. I think it's amazing. Okay. Let's play a game. We're going to play Stand Up If. I'm going to ask you, if this describes you, I want you to stand. We're going to go easy and safe on the first one. You twist your Oreos before you eat them. Stand if you twist your Oreos before you eat them. That's nice. Have a seat. You remind the elevator that you're still waiting. You do. I know. Why do you do that? Okay. You organize your closet by color. Oh. Okay. Good. Now that's wonderful. It's more efficient that way, isn't it? You talk to people on airplanes. Me too! Can we sit together? If I see you in the airport, I'm coming to find you. You frequently compete with unaware people. It's you! And what I mean is, his type of brain is the kind of brain that you don't even realize you're in competition about something. Sometimes it's like I'm going to eat faster than they are. I'm going to finish my plate faster. I'm going to get down to the bottom of the stairs faster. He doesn't rhyme, but man, he's a little bit faster. I actually had an executive admit to the fact that he judges people's leadership skills by how fast they walk. What? That's because he's got competition in the top five. Isn't that amazing? You have taken apart electronics to see how it works. Did you put them back together again and they worked? No! That's interesting. That's a glimpse of restorative. You typically read more than three books simultaneously at a time. That's learner and input stuff that's coming up there. Do you finish them? No. That's the downside. Eventually, that's the downside. It could be the dark side of strengths. You are skeptical of anything presented without data. Good. Interesting. You can tell me later on if my PowerPoint is driving you crazy. Let's play start-up. I want to put this into real-life scenarios. I already have a volunteer. Sally Robertson, come on down! Give her a hand, everybody! Have a seat. We're going to get you a microphone. You might need to turn that on. Hi, Sally. I would like to introduce Sally. Sally, tell them about yourself. Okay. Now I left. It's actually been a year and about two months. I'm going to go ahead and have a glass of water. But now I do consulting and I mainly do coaching. I have coaching for management or also I also do coaching for startups. So if you start to compare to I also help them kind of do their project. The main equal channel. Well, thank you for being... Sally is our CEO. She's our founder. This is start-up Sally. So start-up Sally, tell me. You have top five strengths. I do. Okay, good. What are they? Ideation. Ideation. I'm going to grab Sally's behaviors on this really quick. Okay. This is out of the Strength-Based Leadership Book. It's also mentioned in some of the Strength Spiner materials. It's online. If you take the Strength Spiner 2.0 it automatically maps it for you. It's pretty awesome. But what I'm going to do is show you where her strengths fall. Every strength belongs in a bucket whether it's in executing, influencing, strategic thinking or relationship-building strength. Now, understand these buckets. We have them in one. We add flavor to all of our strengths and that's how they can play in different areas. But Sally, what's number one for you? Ideation. Ideation. I don't have these things memorized so I'm putting them... I'm using my cheat sheet. And I'm going to do Sally in red. Ideation. Ideation is the talent of ideas. Fascination with ideas. Many times for you... Is it that you love the great idea and you can think about it? Tell me what it feels like in your brain. It feels... Well... If I see an idea I just kind of get hooked on it and I just want to go in and research it and I want to see how... How can you make that work? How can you create that and just make that better? Okay, so do you love brainstorming? Is it energizing for you? We use it a lot actually, yes. Oh, you use it. Brainstorming. I've heard someone describe ideation as bubbles in their brain. Ideas in their brain are like bubbles in champagne. Isn't that beautiful? Amazing mind. I don't have ideation at all. Okay, so ideation. What's the next one? Learner. Learner. That's a strategic thinking as well. So we're going to put it right here. Learner. Learner is... Sally's in red. Learner is the strength that loves learning. And learning for strength for learners is not a means to an end. It's more of a journey. It's not about what you're learning. It's the process that excites you. So you find yourself enjoying taking in new information. Yes? Okay. Great. Okay. What's your next one? Arranger. Ooh, that's executing. An arranger. That's the strength of prioritization. Arrangers have a natural knack of seeing priorities in different elements and then moving them around. Turned up really high. They can be prioritized all day long to find the most efficient use of their time. Oh, yeah. Say it again. Oh, your closet. Are you one of the color coders? Oh, wow. So you have a color code, then you rearrange it. I do. Oh, wow. And your shoes. And your shoes. Yes. Arranging the shoes. Okay. In the real world, arrangers are great team builders because they are naturally arranging people to play to their strengths for their abilities and skills. It comes naturally to them. Okay. What's your next one? Input. Input. Another strategic thinking. Input is the collector strength. Do you collect? Say it one more time. Exactly. And then now they're online so they don't have to They're not taking up space. Good. Shoes. Shoes. Okay. I'm sensing a theme. Maybe this is Sally's shoe startup. Okay. Those are awesome shoes. Okay. So input. Who has input in the room? Okay. Many of us have experienced some negativity around input. Matter of fact, until I took the strength finder, I only had one word for this and it was called pack rat. And it was not a strength or I didn't know that it was a strength. Now I call myself resourceful but prior to, it was pack rat. And I had negative ramifications all my life because my mother and father, you know constantly clean up your room. Why are you keeping this junk? You know, like I'd find an interesting rock and then suddenly I have two and I'm like, wow, this is a collection of interesting rocks. I had this person, a person very recently, he's an attorney and he went to the gym one day and he opened up his bag and it fell off the it fell off the bench. Thank you. And when it did, about 40 acorns fell out. And he said, see the thing is, when I run and I'm running and I see an interesting one I just pick it up and I'm like, wow. You know, and he says, God's amazing the way he builds these things and these things are just yeah, he just kind of like puts it in his pocket. That's input, okay? Alright, not Sally's input though, hers is all healthy. Okay, what's the last one? Achiever. Achiever. Another executing. Achiever and you love achievement? I do. Do you make lists? I do. Uh-huh. And it feels good to cross them off? Yeah. Do you write things on that you've already done just so you can cross them off? For achievers the day starts at zero every day and then it's just things to get done? Is it that way on the weekend? Yes. Yes, and so you have to get something done and if you don't get something done every day of significance, whatever that significance is in your mind, you feel down. So when you are very productive, how do you feel? I feel awesome. Awesome. Are you a workaholic? No, I have ten red bulls. Red bulls. I thought she said ripples. I'm like, are there ripples? That's new. Okay. Red bulls. Yes. So it's a high on life based on productivity. You're creating all this energy when you play to these things on your own. Okay, achievers. How many achievers are in the room? Okay, quite a few of us. Now the down dark side of that could be that you could be a taskmaster or workaholic, right? Yes. Okay, and that becomes unproductive for us when it gets in the way of our relationships, right? Whether it's with our team mates, with our partners, with our romantic relationships, with our families, that kind of thing. Achievers, you have to watch out. So that's Sally. Alright, Sally's in the strategic thinking and executing bucket. This doesn't mean that she can't play and influencing our relationship building. Actually, Sally's one of my mentors and has been a coach of mine since 2007. And so I feel like I have a great relationship with her, despite her lack of them in the top five. It doesn't mean that she's absent in these things. It means that this is how she naturally sees the world. She's a thinker and she's a doer. Sally, can you hire someone who knows your top five? If you know your top five, raise your hand. Okay, Miss Sally. Hire your C.O.O. Chair, Miss Cara, and sit next to Sally. Welcome to Sally's shoe corp. Let me see your shoes. Those are fabulous though. That's casual Friday or, you know, casual Thursday. Casual every day. Casual every day. They're sparkly. Okay, I have two microphones. Miss Cara, what are your It's right here. Lorenzo kept it. What are your top five? Miss Cara, okay. My first one is Lerner. Lerner. Okay, so Lerner, so what's your next one? My next one is What is my next one? I know all of you. She looks so close to me. No, she doesn't. Okay, achiever. Okay, so I'm going to put stars. I'm going to start doing stars. Change in adaptability. Okay. Positivity. Positivity. Sure. People with positivity wake up happy. Does she wake up happy? She does. She sees the world happy. Like, same over time? They're done. Okay, yes. They see the glass happy almost to a fault. Sometimes it's turned up too high. Like, the plate is going down. Okay, yeah. Our partnership at Sally's shoe company are going to be to bring energy. Okay, when she walks in the room she lights up the room. She has that effervescence that Sally can rely on. In meetings together, Sally could be like, cells are really down. But it's going to be okay. But we're going to be okay. But so many times they're going to double up on the power to say, wow, this is how we double power. We sometimes may step on each other's toes on reprioritization, but they're feeling this is like, they both work long hours. They both love to rearrange things and they want to be efficient as possible and work as fast as possible. And then they're both learners and they need time to think and they'll feel good together. You need to hire someone else. Okay, Sally. No, no, no, no, no, COO. Oh, you're COO. Okay, so now you need a... She was about to fire me. No, yeah, that was really bad. We're not firing. We're growing. It's been great. Okay, Sally, hire someone else. Text. I'm like, how about text? Because text is different. Are you? He is strategic thinking too. But let's bring it on up. Okay, have a seat. So you're our chief sales person. Sure. Because you're dressed like a sales guy. Hi, text. Tell everybody who you are. Can you hear me on this mic? For those who don't know. I'm text. I'm a member here. Okay, and I didn't even introduce Kara because I assumed you knew who she was, but for the people that are in the world on the web, World Wide Web, this is Kara. And she is... I'm the operations director. Okay. All right, text. What are your top five? Deliberative. Let me get a different color piece. Okay, I'm going to leave the CEO in red. Deliberative. Yes. Deliberative. Deliberative is the strength. It's an executing bucket, but it is the strength of being risk averse. Is that true? Do you innately pick up on risks? Absolutely. Tell me about it. I'm just trying to look at things from all angles, but see where there's going to be the whole text that comes up. Okay. Tell me what it's like for you to buy a car. Generally, I just... I've only bought a car once, so... And how long did it take? Not very long, actually. Really? Yeah. Well, the real reason was I knew someone else that was buying into your car and they were basically going to get pretty very low balled on what they were going to get for their car and I looked at it and I was like I know how much that car should cost. I know how much they're paying you. They're going to pay you. I'll pay the same price and you don't have to deal with the dealership and paperwork. Okay, so you took the lowest risk on price. Absolutely. Okay, I've heard people with deliberative say it takes me months, sometimes a year to buy a car. Consumer reports, research, test driving and they can't decide between that shifting thing or that shifting thing and I'm like, really? Because it's deliberative and you can get in a hole. Okay, what's your next one? Analytical. It's just an help. No, analytical. These are the proven to you people. Analytical, they love facts and data. Yeah? Absolutely. You don't like emotion? Not really. So when someone's telling you a story or a great idea what do you want to see? Where it's going, because it's just all over the place. I'm like, okay this is a nice little story you're telling me. Yeah. A nice little story. What is going to happen with this? Yeah. Okay. And do you get secret, now we're all friends, do you get a secret thrill out of proving them wrong? When you realize they haven't covered their bases on the data? No, the actual secret thrill I get is when I find things that are in the data that people aren't seeing. Oh, so new patterns jump out at you and you say, wow. So like if you run like statistical analysis on something and I'm like, whoa, the standard deviation on this is way off. Yeah, right. Let's go find out why that's working out. That's cool. Okay. All right, Tex, what's your next one? Next one is focus. Focus. Oh my goodness. Okay, focus is influence, right? No, it's cheaper. Focus. People with focus want to zero in on things. You would prefer to zero in rather than multitask, is that true? Absolutely. And you get your best work when you are focused? Yeah. Is it hard to break you out of your focus? It's ill-advised. It's ill? Well, okay. You have to tell me more about that. What do you mean, ill-advised? Well, it's ill-advised just simply because like once I'm in that focus and it's very much the kind of I'm in the flow and but at the same time, once that's broken the effort I have, it frustrates me to have to put in more effort to get back to that. Right? Yes. But on the, like you said, like on the negative side of that there are definitely times where I looked up and be like it's 10.30 at night and you should leave the office. Yeah. Where did the last eight hours go? I don't know. They can tend to be impatient with tangents, want to stick to the plan. My imagery for it is railroad. You know, like railroad one track stay on that track. Okay, what's your next one? Individualization. Okay. That's the, that's the influencing. Yay! Individualization. You see every person as an individual. You want to help people feel unique. You see uniqueness in people? I see more as finding a way to translate what people are trying to say. One of the things I learned when I was in business school was that a lot of what happens in communication break down is that someone has has an idea they're packaged in such a way that the person on the other end doesn't understand it because they've been packaged differently than what person on the receiving it wants to understand. That is a beautiful description of it. If you think about individualization versus a strength like consistency individualization is like is equal to customization consistency is standard operating procedure. Okay, and we have those people in our lives who are like, no one should get special treatment around here. We should all be treated the same. That's not him. He's like, no one should be treated the same. Everyone's unique. Our packages are unique. Our products are unique. Everything's unique, you know? And you see those it naturally jumps out at you. That drives some people crazy. But it's a beautiful strength. So did you have another one or is that all five? Last one is Achiever. Achiever. All right. Okay. So what do we know about Sally's shoe company? If we're just looking at their top five strengths they're going to be doers and thinkers. They need feelers. They need feelers because what does this mean to their customer relations? Provide great customer service because they get things done and that's when you pack your customer just once you get things done. And it might be really smart things that get done. But there be some glue. Now Kara's got some glue and that's what that relationship building strengths are. It's the glue that makes individuals a team or it's that piece where I suddenly feel like I could call you friend. That's that relationship piece. Influencing piece that's selling ideas internally and externally. So this team their natural patterns are going to be thinking about smart things and then doing them. Thinking about them and doing them. And maybe not talking to anyone about them. And if you can imagine at Rackspace the reason this stuff flourishes is because we can have these conversations and say, hey look, you developers over there you code and program people. I'm an HR. I can barely understand the geek thing. So you're doing all of this and we don't know about it, right? Like you built that beautiful web panel control thing and I had no idea it's been in existence since 2011 and I needed to know, oh we forgot to tell you. You know like, of course, why do you know we were in this little dark room? Funny story, there's strengths. There's a strength called woo. It stands for winning others over. And I have it as number 10. And there was literally a room at Rackspace with a circle and a line through it like the no smoking and it said woo. Like, don't come in here. Scott's laughing and Scott's got woo too. And so sometimes I just kind of want to do it like hi guys. You know, they're like in there with their little you know. So when we think about hiring our next person we have enough of a theme here to say, whoa, talent diversity. Some patterns of thinking diversity. Not necessarily hiring people for relationship building, but man we really need some of that to help this group think as a team and pull them together to be the glue, as well as we need someone to help us sell our ideas internally and externally. And that's what the influence can provide. Does that make sense? Yes ma'am. So I have a question for the mechanical standpoint. If this is your startup and this is your team and you do the strengths behind it and realize you have many needs in these two areas what do you do when applicants, do you actually say hey, we haven't done the strengths behind it but you take it as part of our interview and application process and practically speaking how do you do that? Yes, okay so the practical application of this knowledge and then creating diversity into your team is not to use the strengths finder as a selection tool. Gallup has selection tools for that purpose, for certain roles. Matter of fact they have an entrepreneurship selection tool. It's called Entrepreneurship Strengths Finder. It's different, but it's for entrepreneurs and sidebar and I'm annoyed by that. But the thing is is that you say this is the domain I'm looking for. Now, relationship building has got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine strengths in it. It could be another positivity but it needs to be some of this in their way of being. Now, you could have them take the strengths finder beforehand and say let's talk about these in the interview process or you could just ask strengths based questions. Do you prefer to work alone or in a team? Do you prefer to spend most of your time with people or not? That kind of thing and try to dig it out and say one question is what is the longest relationship you've had in your life and who was your greatest mentor and then listening for things that are talking about relationships. Positivity, adaptability, connectedness, those people things. When you are well versed enough in those strengths about a conversation. Okay, that's great. Does that make sense? Any other questions before we move on? Oh, yes ma'am. When is it helpful to know what your top less or your bottom five are? Okay, so your bottom five are lesser themes and until they get in the way of your productivity you don't need to worry about them. Okay, so I have Empathyist number 34. That sucks. I wish I had Empathy. It doesn't mean that I can't be sympathetic. I can be sympathetic. I feel sorry for you and what you just went through because I'm picturing myself in that job but I'm not feeling what you feel when you go through it. Empathy is different but I can make people feel warm by being sympathetic. Does that make sense? I also have woes so I can use that in verses because I'm like I want you to like me. I want to talk and I'm going to find things out about you and that kind of thing. Not Empathy. Anything else? Okay, the question is how about the top ten? Oh, man if you can afford the top ten report, buy it. It's $89 on scallopstrengthcenter.com and it adds such a flavor. I feel like if you were to look at my top ten I'm a thinker and pretty much just a thinker. I have some doing but not very much and then I have this a lot of influencing skills and so coaching and training is perfect for my strengths and I feel great when I'm doing them because I'm thinking about doing things and making a plan and then I'm doing them. I'm talking about doing them with people. Does that make sense? But it added if I just looked at this piece I would think wow I'm just a thinker but when I open up that and I go oh but I need other people to get things done and it adds to the facet of who I am and you can purchase that through the strengths finder but it's important for me if you're really getting into this stuff but you could spend tons of time on top five alone. Anything else? We all give this group a hand. People go back and sit down I'm pulling my screen back up. So great Kathy. What do I do about this stuff? That's really interesting but what do I do now? So after you leave today what do you need to do with this information? Number one just be intentional about the use of your talents. You will find that if you can strategize ways to use your talents more often you're going to have perceived greater satisfaction. You'll be a happier person. I'm mostly a stay at home mom I left Rackspace a year and a half ago to invest more time into my preschool children. I do this consulting thing by the grace of God it's amazing. I love it but it's very part time and it energizes me when I do it but in between I'm like changing diapers and driving a taxi cab in a minivan you know who this is what I do to turn on my strengths I am intentional. With learner I pick new recipes with really complex ingredients new things and that's because I have to make dinner every night these children want to eat I mean good grief there's lots of expectations but that's how I turn on learner and I feel great when I do it input I'm constantly reading and I have the time to do it at this point. Strategic sometimes I just need to sit with a book and write things out like strategize with diagrams and spokes and wheels and like these are the ideas that I have in my head that's me using my talents to improve my energy. The next piece is taking it to your partnerships and your relationships whether it's at work or at home doesn't really matter to me I know here we're kind of in the business setting but who are you working with what are their strengths and how are you playing together because you become a fabric once you become a partner or a team and it is evident on how you're going to see the world and filter the world and make all your business decisions through those strengths and then finally is developing world class performance Gallup says if you can aim your strengths you can be world class in what you do matter of fact Don Clifton has this saying like you every person is better than 10,000 people at something so figuring out what that one thing is is your job figure it out because it's going to bring you great success through life and that's that developing world class performance they have this neat little name it, claim it, aim it rhyme that I love naming it is knowing your top five and trust me if you're ever in an elevator with Graham Weston and you get more than an elevator how about a business meeting with Graham Weston you're going to want to know your top five because he's going to ask number two claiming it it's that piece of how you interact with others around it if you have some strength to get a bad rap like self assurance or command or significance then you need to be able to claim it yeah this is true about me I may not like it but it's true and then finally but oh beyond it's true how about I love it and this is why it brings me great success and then finally the aiming at peace is I'm going to be intentional like my cooking example I'm intentionally using several of my strengths to be a world class performer at something does that make sense there's others around here in Geekdom that know all about this Pat Condon Lorenzo, Graham Evangelist of Strengths and would love to talk you through this and of course I'm available as well I'm a member of Geekdom as of two weeks ago so anyhow that's my spiel this is the presentation so what questions do you have at this point or at the end anything because I'm over time yes ma'am yes this is online just you can look up Strengths Domains it's also in books but you can get it on free free through the interwebs Strengths Domains I'll tell you which every single one and where they fall yes sir Strengths Quest is for 14 and up used in the college up to college level StrengthsQuest.com is where you can buy the assessment Strengths Explorer is from I believe age 10 to age 14 and it only results in 10 total Strengths and I think they get their top 3 yeah they get their top 3 so they look different than ours but they're similar there's competition, there's presence which is similar to influencing skills what else you got well thank you for being an engaged audience and coming to the world everybody big warm welcome thank you to Kathy Kirsten thank you to Nowcast for streaming and recording this so you'll be able to watch it over and over again pick up those gems