Leveraging Your Entrepreneurial Talents

On a recent Called to Coach, we spoke with Dominique Bock, a longtime entrepreneur and Gallup Certified Strengths Coach from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as part of Gallup's BP10 quarterly update. Dominique believes that what gets measured improves, and what gets measured and reported improves dramatically.

Our guest host was Todd Johnson, Senior Global Channel Leader, Entrepreneurship and Job Creation at Gallup.

Below is a summary of the conversation. Full audio and video are posted above.

14:31 Todd Johnson: For those of you who use the CIR [Coaches Insight Report] or have seen it, there is no judgment -- we don't say "yea"/"nay," "recommended"/"not recommended," -- we purposely don't do that. Is it a selection tool? It can be, but I love the way you use it developmentally. Have you ever used it in a hiring situation?

Dominique Bock: Yes. When we hire managers, for sure. But often when I receive a score, right away I know how I'm going to coach them -- for example, if I see a score that's really high in Relationship. Then I know that this person needs to be aware that she needs to be careful about those talents. And it's all about awareness, because when you're aware of your talent, the sky's the limit.

TJ: And you need to be aware of your blind spots. By definition, you can't see a blind spot. In the startup world, I've been at this about 15 years, and teams sometimes align around comfort and safety -- people who look like them, think like them, talk like them, act like them -- but it can be really bad for business.

17:03 DB: Because of [the BP10 assessment], I understand the "machine" -- myself -- so much, and I'll give you a way I explain this to managers. I use the example of playing cards. The more you play, the better you're going to be -- just like with talent, the more you talk about it and read about it and get coached about it, the better you'll be. Let's say we're going to go to Las Vegas and I have cards. And I know better and better how to play my own cards.

And I see people around me and their cards, and they have great cards for their roles. But they don't know how to play them. And people should be using certain cards, but they're not aware of the best way to use them. Then there's another person who may not have cards that are as good as the first person's, but they know how to play them. So that (second) person can win.

So this is the way I coach my people. We have the greatest machine, better than computers, cellphones. But we need to know our cards.

TJ: I've never heard that [illustration] used, but it fits perfectly.

23:57 TJ: In CliftonStrengths speak, we talk about Basements and Balconies. But I'm kind of hearing you talk about that in the CIR world too. Too high on anything can also be a challenge, right? I've coached some entrepreneurs who are so high on Determination that I can't get them off of a bad idea.

DB: Another insight for us -- let's say that out of 10 managers, 7 of them are high on Independence, and they can do everything by themselves. What having the BP10 scores does is to make people aware about their associations with other people. The magic is with the association. Who do you associate with, and what can they do for you? I don't do everything anymore. Now I feel so much "lighter" because I ask people to do things for me. I multiply my associations and [therefore], I multiply my actions.

TJ: I love that. I heard somebody once say that with the CIR and BP10, you're really just speeding up Mother Nature because you're going to learn that you can't do everything.

Dominique Bock's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Achiever, Responsibility, Connectedness, Relator and Strategic. Dominique's dominant builder talents are Disruptor, Determination, Risk and Relationship.