4 Keys to Authentic Recognition

On a recent Called to Coach, we spoke with Gallup's Strengths Evangelist, Paul Allen.

The strengths movement is accelerating worldwide. Paul gets on the coaches/strengths Yammer, Facebook and Gallup Exchange pages every day, and every day he see lots of people doing cool stuff. He congratulates Jim for all of his work on strengthening the coaching community through social media and the coaches blog.

What's some evidence of the strengths movement's growth?

Jim shares some milestones for the coaches community: the strengths coaches YouTube channel crossed over a million views and we're getting more views every day. We crossed over 10k subscribers on YouTube and Speaker. That's a very large number considering we don't publicize and ask for subscribers. The coaches blog has reached 1 million views. Last fall the blog was averaging 30-35k views a month -- in February of this year, we had 48k views.

Gallup had 950 certified coaches sign up for the Learning Series they offered for certified coaches. Last year only 350 coaches signed up. This year's Learning Series provided 7 hours of learning about strengths and coaching. Gallup also released the prior 2 years of Learning Series to all coaches, all available on our yammer group for free. Jim's goal for the year is "double everything."

Paul has been a student of technology trends for more than 20 years. Ten years ago, at Facebook's first developer conference, he heard Mark Zuckerberg announce Facebook would let 3rd party software developers to build apps on top of Facebook. In May of 2007 they had 20 million users -- now they have almost 2 billion active users. The platform brought many cool apps to Facebook -- it allowed people to get in on the ground of Facebook. Ancestry.com had an app on Facebook called "We're Related," they gained 1 million active users a week. Paul is excited for the day he sees this starts to happen with strengths -- the more people who start taking the CliftonStrengths assessment, the more coaches we will need to work with them.

We want the world to know if they want a high-performing team, if they want to be a great leader and manager of people, you need to bring a strengths-based approach and you need to bring a strengths coach from Gallup Exchange into your company to help.

Recognition and Strengths

When you're thinking about spreading strengths, especially in team's and organizations, it can all start with recognition. Don Clifton really cared about the growth of every human being, he spent his life helping people discover what they do best. In Don's book, Soar With Your Strengths, he discusses recognition in depth. He said people need to be called by their preferred name. The odds of the company keeping a new employee is improved significantly when they are celebrate and acknowledged by name the first few hours in a new position. Don encouraged that you should watch people. Watching is a form of recognition and appreciation.

A lot of workplaces have an employee of the month, or the year, but Don actually was really turned off by the idea that the wrong people get celebrated. There are 4 ways to make sure the right people get celebrated based on authentic achievement, not just who is most popular or political. The 4 keys to celebrate authentic achievement are: count it, rank it, rate it, track it. This increases the validity of recognition and people feel it is more genuine to receive. Learn more by reading Don Clifton's book, Soar With Your Strengths.

Paul Allen's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Learner, Input, Ideation, Intellection and Strategic.