Strengthen your Team, Strengthen your Client
By: Carly Byrd, Program Coordinator
Recently, our entire company participated in a professional development exercise uncovering our natural abilities using the StrengthsFinder 2.0 from Gallup. After completing the assessment, StrengthsFinder coaches spent the day walking us through our individual strengths and how these natural talents shape our work and company culture. The results provided clarity and insight, but the overlying message was that ASG leadership cares about us. Investing time and funding into understanding how to maximize individual and team strengths work to meet common goals of success for our clients.
StrengthsFinder identifies four domains into which your strengths are categorized: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. You can view a full listing of strengths under each category here.
Executing: Individuals with these themes get things done with speed, precision, and accuracy. They put in the hard work now, so that when it is time to act, they are ready. When it’s time to put your Board’s ideas into action, these are the folks who will keep the train on track and moving forward your association’s plans. Not surprising, many of ASG’s team members top strengths fell under this domain.
Influencing: Is your board launching a new campaign or initiative? Individuals with these strengths have the ability to sell the big ideas. They are able to take charge, speak up and be heard. They are extremely helpful when you need to reach a broader audience, or meet a bigger goal. This can happen either internally with the team, or to external constituents. This domain is helpful when your association wants to make big changes and needs to get others on board.
Relationship Building: Broken down to its core, associations are about people. These strengths have an innate ability to factor in the human component into the equation. This domain is helpful in associations when you need to build bridges or earn trust among your membership as well as your leadership. They make strong relational connections that bind your members together around a cause, idea or each other.
Strategic Thinking: If your association isn’t continually improving or moving forward, it’s dying. When a plan needs to be made, or it’s time to go back to the drawing board, these strengths help accomplish that. The strategic thinking themes can take a need or problem within your association and find solutions.
The key take-away is that no strength is better than another. Each domain defines valuable traits that are necessary for any association. Each team member brings something different to the group that contributes to the overall success of the clients we serve. Uniquely, my top strengths were all found under the Relationship Building umbrella. I have always been told I wear my heart on my sleeve, and easily empathize with others so it was not a total shock. It did shed light, however, on how I interact with others, both professionally and personally. A large part of my role at ASG is being the point of contact for my client’s members, as well as non-members who call or email. With empathy as one of my top strengths, I find it easy to work patiently with personalities of all types, as well as show grace and compassion to individuals calling in with a problem they need to be solved.
If we all take inventory of what makes us who we are, we can act with more intentionality. We will excel by partnering with others who have different strengths that complement ours. Even though the associations we work for are all different, there are many opportunities to draw on our individual strengths to come to well-rounded approach to any need we encounter.
