Highlights From Your CliftonStrengths 34: Season 5 Wrap

Knowing your dominant talents can help you unlock the power of truly understanding yourself through how you get things done, influence others, connect with people and think critically. Learn more about these talents, how to access the CliftonStrengths resources to aid you in unlocking them, and what you can look forward to in 2020 from Jim Collison and Maika Leibbrandt on this Theme Thursday Season 5 Wrap.

Below is a full transcript of the conversation, including time stamps. Full audio and video are posted above.

Jim Collison 0:00

I am Jim Collison and live from the Gallup Studios here in Omaha, Nebraska, this is Gallup's Theme Thursday, Season 5, recorded on November 21, 2019.

Jim Collison 0:21

Theme Thursday is a Gallup webcast series that dives deep into the CliftonStrengths themes, one theme at a time. And today's theme is actually the Wrap Party. Maika, we made it all the way through! Maika Leibbrand is our host today. She's a workplace consultant here at Gallup with me. Maika, always great to see you. Welcome to a special Wrap Party for Season 5.

Maika Leibbrandt 0:38

Jim, thanks so much. Gosh, it's fun to be here. You taught me the concept of a Wrap Party, and it is important to celebrate, to look back, to figure out what we did and an opportunity to look forward as well. I'm in theme -- I'm in my cozy wrap for the Wrap Party today. If you're watching on the video, I'm quite comfortable.

Jim Collison 0:55

No be-boxing today. Not that kind of wrap party but a Wrap Party. Really, I think I started this maybe in Season 2 because I wanted to podcast one more time. Like it felt -- it was -- I was kind of sad it was over. We have done this year format changed. And we did 2 a week. And so we were able to get through it a lot faster. We'll talk about this here coming up as we as we preview Season 6. So sit hang tight. Little bit later, we'll talk kind of Season 6, but here in Season 5, because we did an entire StrengthsExplorer series, when I wrote that down, Maika, I actually had to go back and check the dates of the videos to say, Was that this year?

Maika Leibbrandt 1:37

I know. We did. We did two entire seasons of podcasting this in a year, where we had only been doing one because we started off -- and that, actually I might be misremembering this -- but I kind of think we'd been toying at the end of Season 4 with what are we gonna do for Season 5? And this idea of strengths-based parenting or families just kept coming up and, rather than force that into All 34, we were like, you know, what we really need is that foundational understanding of the StrengthsExplorer themes and how they show up. And that was a bold move. I think bold has been my -- when I look back on the whole year, "bold" has been the theme for me.

Maika Leibbrandt 2:15

And it was great! If you have not checked out our StrengthsExplorer series, check it out! We -- kind of like Theme Thursday, except we go through all of the StrengthsExplorer themes. You get the added benefit of hearing from two people who are very different ends of the parenting spectrum in Jim and I. But thinking about what what that really looks like. It does seem like it was longer than just this year ago.

Jim Collison 2:38

I know, I know. I -- again, I was thinking maybe like 2 years ago, Maika, for anybody who's new to Gallup, and may -- they know CliftonStrengths but they're like, what is the StrengthsExplorer? Give a one-minute, what what do we try to do with StrengthsExplorer, what is it and what do we try to do with it?

Maika Leibbrandt 2:53

So we know that the same concept exists and that's the concept of strength that you are going to get infinitely more power and joy and effectiveness out of areas that naturally occur for you, or what we would call "talent," than you are out of trying to accumulate or fix something that you don't have. And that that is no less true for children than it is for adults. The idea around StrengthsExplorer really came from, Let's study how this shows up in kids who literally don't have the maturity to be able to narrow those neural pathways or really define those talents in a more specific way that adults can.

Maika Leibbrandt 3:30

So StrengthsExplorer as a tool is not just a simplification of CliftonStrengths. It truly is a completely different tool, but it has broader definition. So instead of 34 themes, we look at 10. And instead of your your Top 5, you look at your Top 3, and our series, we went through all of those themes, being able to think about them. And you can see some similarities between the CliftonStrengths themes and the StrengthsExplorer themes, but we hope that in doing this series, we can really help educate people on what the tool is, so that you aren't left to try and map out CliftonStrengths and StrengthsExplorer and try to make sense of it that way. Because it it really is its own its own tool, its own research around that.

Maika Leibbrandt 4:13

And what I found to be really enjoyable was just having a research-based positive language that would help us talk about children. And so -- and it wasn't just for parents; it wasn't just for teachers. I think it's really for anybody who lives in a place where there are kids present, to be able to think about let's support each other as adults who care about children, because that's an investment that we're making in our in our future community.

Maika Leibbrandt 4:42

I also think that in my experience with strengths, so I started with CliftonStrengths when I was actually working with kids. The tool -- the StrengthsExplorer tool -- is designed for 9- to 14-year-olds. As long as it doesn't become a reading test, I've -- people have used it at younger ages than that. But I was didn't, I wasn't aware of StrengthsExplorer, and I was using CliftonStrengths for really, really young kids. Probably younger than we probably would advise. And in my experience, if I think back to, you know, 2005, 2006, when I was doing this, the biggest struggle that I had was just I needed to know what all 34 themes were. And I wasn't actually use -- I was not administering CliftonStrengths to kids; we were using that idea and were using that language. And as a leader of fourth- to sixth-graders here in the U.S., what I was doing was I was just grasping for a couple of the CliftonStrengths themes that I could remember in order to have a positive language to describe the potential of these kids I was working with. And the more familiar I got with all 34, the better I could do that.

Maika Leibbrandt 5:43

But what StrengthsExplorer does is it not only gives you the language to talk about it, but it also gives you the assessment. And if you're interested in that, I think the best place to go -- is I'll grab it here on my shelf in just a second -- the book, Strengths-Based Parenting, because it includes both a StrengthsExplorer code for children, and a CliftonStrengths code for adults. And the resources within the Strengths-Based Parenting book are designed to help you think together, How do you parent best from your own adult strengths? And how might you be able to spot some opportunities for excellence within your child based on their own strengths?

Maika Leibbrandt 6:22

So it mirrors that idea of management that you have to understand that you have a style and that you're going to be best at obeying that style. But then it's also your job as a manager to adapt to the style of your of your team, pretty similar around around parenting of -- understand who you are, but then look through that lens at this child who you can very accurately be able to pinpoint and describe their potential in ways that might be different than yours, might be different than perhaps what is being commonly or popularly celebrated in your community, or in their school or wherever they are. And you can really say, Hey, there's something pretty great about this. I'm even kind of struggling to remember what we did in that series. But it was really great. You should check it out!

Jim Collison 7:04

Yeah, well, Mary was on. JerLene was on -- she came on in in the very beginning, and we wrapped it with Mary. Lots of resources around that. If it's new to you, and we should say it's English-only at this point, and so if it's new to you, we created a new hub on the new CliftonStrengths site when we moved, when we migrated from Gallup Strengths Center to Access, we didn't move that site: still strengthsexplorer.com, if you want to go check it out.

Jim Collison 7:32

But we have a brand new hub. If you go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths, and hit the search bar, and then just put in StrengthsExplorer, you can click that topic and it'll take you to our new StrengthsExplorer hub, which is really just all the material we created plus some that's there, Maika. It's available as, as a YouTube playlist as well. So if you go to youtube.com and search "CliftonStrengths," you can then find the StrengthsExplorer playlist, if YouTube is your way to do it. We're available on Spreaker and so if you -- that's where we publish these. But it's made it available as a podcast. So if you want to go out to if you want to go out to any podcast player and search Gallup Webcasts, you can find the StrengthsExplorer -- all one word, by the way -- there as well. So lots of great ways to get ...

Maika Leibbrandt 8:16

Our podcast is only English; the StrengthsExplorer tool is now also available in Spanish.

Jim Collison 8:21

Oh, English and Spanish. I did not know that. OK, good. Good to know. And so you might want to spend some time doing that. Maika, that was the first half of 2019! We spent a little bit of time doing that. One of the amazing stats that came from that was while we were gone, so we were gone for 6 months, Theme Thursday was downloaded 84,000 times during the time we were gone. Like unbelievable the the tale that you created. And I really, when I say "you," I really mean the listener who came back and continued to listen to these Theme Thursdays during that break. And of course it gets -- we have many more downloads when we're actually producing these, but I kind of wanted to say thanks. We disappeared, we created a couple videos or a couple teasers during the time. Don't -- don't leave, don't go away, don't unsubscribe, it's going to be there. And, and you stayed around.

Jim Collison 9:15

During that time -- and I think I want to try and show this, we'll talk about that -- we made a big with during the fall, we made a big migration for, for Theme Thursday on to our new site. And I've talked about it a couple times. Let me bring that up to our new CliftonStrengths site. So if you go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths, this has really been a, for me, a very underutilized tool that we created. We did get kind of caught up in the Access migration, trying to work through all those details. And we had tons of resources. Let me bring that up for you, Maika. You can help me with this part as we think about it.

Jim Collison 9:54

But we created a brand new tool for you to go out there, and it just as I think about -- we've talked about these hub concepts. It's going to become a little bit more important here in the future. But if you just search for Theme Thursday, you can see the Theme Thursday Webcast hub, and it will actually take you to a location where they are all found. You can search for them by by title and by subject. This is if you're like, you're wondering where do I go at gallup.com to get access to what we just finished this year with with Season 5? That hub is there. You can take this URL and bookmark it if you want: gallup.com/topic/ttwebcast -- kind of easy to remember. But you can bookmark that as well. Those resources are for you.

Jim Collison 10:41

Or, I think, Maika, one of the most underutilized tools we haven't seen really kind of take off yet, is we have an All 34 hub. So we spent a lot of time this year talking about the -- oh, I clicked the wrong button; let's try to get back to it. We spent a lot of time talking about the All 34 report this year. I'll bring this up on the screen here in just a second. And we created kind of an All 34 hub. Maika, as we -- your takeaways from really focusing on the All 34 report this year, any highlights for you as we think about, you know, either those the blind spots or some of those other things?

Maika Leibbrandt 11:16

So this Season 5 of Theme Thursday, really to talk about it in a nutshell, it's highlights from the All 34 report that we released in October of 2018 for all 34 themes. The other thing that I would use to describe Season 5 is it's shorter than previous seasons. We did 2 a week, it's only 20 minutes. I had the -- I'll probably bring this up again, but I had a really great pleasure of teaching one of our certified courses for coaches yesterday -- the first 2 days of what you need to -- coursework that you need to complete to be a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach is called Successful Strengths Coaching. And we have used, we've fully integrated that CliftonStrengths 34 report into all of our coaching courses as well. And what I realized a lot of these -- I was teaching it internally, so a whole bunch of coaches from one organization coming together. And a lot of their question was, How are we going to help people navigate this? Or how are we going -- "this," meaning CliftonStrengths in general -- how are we going to roll this out? What if we can't get to everybody in our organization? What if I don't know all 34 themes? How can I ever be credible?

Maika Leibbrandt 12:25

But what I realized watching these 14 participants go through for 2 days was just how much you can trust the user with this guide. So it's 25 pages. It's not designed to be read front to back, you know, next to your fireplace in the evening and be done with it. It's designed to think about it more like an expandable file folder of information. There might be times or challenges or moments of readiness in your own development where you're ready to -- where you need different aspects of that report. So what we really guided you through was a couple of the highlights that will help you understand one theme. So we talked about what the the power and edge, how you thrive with it, what are the blind spots? How does it sort into a team? What might that mean? How do you practice it?

Maika Leibbrandt 13:11

If you take that 25-page report and look at your own, you'll find a very similar flow across all of that. Now, you might not be ready for all those answers all at once. But I do think it is written in a way that is meant to be as handholding and interactive as a static document can be. And so what I love in moving -- there was a lot of fear, even in this this philosophy of moving from giving somebody only their Top 5 to releasing all 34 at once. And as you're using this, you might even experience similar concern or anxiety and, having gone through that, I've realized that the report is written in such a way that as long as you do a really good job of setting up the philosophy of strengths and helping people understand what the report tells you and what it does not, that you can release the need to be the all-knowing philosopher or professor, and you can let somebody understand their own talent.

Maika Leibbrandt 14:08

And I say that for a couple reasons. One is the report is highly customized. So some people don't realize that when you read your CliftonStrengths 34 report, your Top 10 themes -- your dominant talents in rank order -- your Top 10 themes, you've got the short definition. But then you've also got, if you're looking at your own report, there's highlighted boxes for all 10 themes that have unique ways of understanding how that theme shows up. And that's pulled from an awareness of where -- of your entire profile. So it's pulled from a bank of millions of possible sentences, and it creates this unique fingerprint.

Maika Leibbrandt 14:47

So if I'm looking at my No. 1 Strategic and someone else's looking at their No. 1 Strategic, we're going to see different personalized definitions on those first 10 pages -- well, it'll be page 3 -- looking at just Strategic, because we have other themes that are high, other themes that are in that black hole in the middle, other themes that are really low. So I think leading with that personalized piece sets the appreciation and responsibility in your client's hands, that this is really your talent. It's not something that I'm painting on top of you, and your exploration is right here. I'm going to give you the tools that you need in order to go where you need to go.

Maika Leibbrandt 15:27

And as I've been coaching with that report, I've realized that some people want to go to different areas. Sometimes I taught this entire -- it's a 2-day course -- I never even mentioned blind spots. And on day 2, that was one of the things that like 5 of the people said was a huge takeaway for them. I said, well, OK, that's, that's interesting. It's not where I took you but you found it in the report. Let's talk about what you, what you found there. And then as a coach, you can really meet the client probably where their greatest desire is and where their greatest opportunity for designing action truly will be.

Maika Leibbrandt 15:57

I will say, all of Theme Thursday Season 5, my introduction, right after Jim says hello to me, I stole from the first page of the CliftonStrengths 34 report. So if you have yours, you'll notice that my preamble, which is customized every time because I have Ideation and Communication; I can't do anything the same way twice. But it's some version of what's right there on the front page. And I'm afraid that a lot of people skip over it because it looks like instructions, and who needs instructions? But it is that understanding that we've given you your full profile here, that first page or the cover page is all 34 themes. You should understand that no one needs all 34 themes; that being able, coming from a place of maybe habit, maybe scarcity -- it can be easy to think, "Here's 34. I want them all! I'm going to focus on those ones that are, you know, middle-ish or lower down my list so I can really have them all."

Maika Leibbrandt 16:54

It's important for people to realize that having access to all 34 themes isn't going to help you do anything better or faster. It really is about understanding, unpacking and investing in those themes that you have toward the top of your list -- those that always describe you, which is what we would call your "dominant themes." You heard me say that at the start of every podcast for a reason: It's because I want that to stick in people's heads. I think once you've got that, right, and once you adhere to those guiding principles around, you know, strengths-based development: that themes are neutral; they're not labels; lead with positive intent; differences are advantage; and everyone needs each other -- couched in that understanding, I think that's all you really need to trust your client to lead their own discovery a lot more than we've been able to in the past.

Jim Collison 17:39

Just remember, we created Season 5 to be a companion guide to the 34 report, and Seasons 2 and 3 of Theme Thursday we had a separate companion guide. In this case ... or for those you're coaching or your friends and neighbors, whatever you're doing, your family, pair those for their Top 5, for their 6 through 10 -- for any of those in there -- point them back to create playlists for, share the podcasts with, like any of those things you need to do to say, Hey, let me build your Top 5 here, I have 20-minute episodes that you can listen to in the car, on a train, in a plane, right, those kinds of things, and build that into the listening and, and that's why we created it. That was the whole intent was to make it a companion guide to the 34 report.

Jim Collison 18:35

We also have some resources available for you; I was showing this here just a second ago. If you're listening to the audio-only version, this may be a good time to come over to YouTube and watch the video on this one. But many times, we got a lot of questions throughout the year on What's a one-pager on how CliftonStrengths works? Tell me a little bit more, where can I get more resources on the 34 themes? What about the domains? We have an announcement about that coming up. Science of CliftonStrengths and the history, those are all available for you at the CliftonStrengths site. So gallup.com/cliftonstrengths, if you click on the About tab and Maika, what I wanted to highlight was really the 34 themes, since that's what we're talking about.

Jim Collison 19:10

We created a new place to come, and it's really kind of a hub for the themes. And so if you come to the page, the very top of the page, there's some there's some information about it. But the important thing is to scroll down a few -- you can read that if you want -- and then let's do because my my No. 1 is is Arranger, we'll pop over to Arranger, and we have a brand new page just for it. It talks a little bit about it; it's got some resources around it; there's the video, there is the kind of our standard video like where you have somebody talk about what Arranger is, some information about it.

Jim Collison 19:44

But one of the things I did want to highlight is you kind of scroll through -- and I won't ruin the surprise; there's lots of resources for you -- but if you wanted to get back to past seasons of Theme Thursday for Arranger, today, there, there isn't a super easy way to do that now. There's a green link at the bottom it says Watch Arranger Podcasts. And we've partnered with a company called ON24 to make those all available in one spot -- including the companion guides, I mentioned that earlier, are available for you there if you want to go download them by a theme. And I have the teams working on getting a entire season where you can get everything, you know, by season. We don't have that one ready yet, but by theme you can do that you can go out there. ON24 is going to ask for a little registration information, and then once you're in, companion guides, and the first 4 seasons are there available for you, so don't miss out on those resources, as well. Maika, anything else you want to add to that?

Maika Leibbrandt 20:38

I just think about, Don't don't -- you don't have to re-create this. It's it's here for you. And you also don't have to serve it up to people. You can just open the door and show them where they can find their own thing. But maybe the reason that we had so many downloads of Theme Thursday, even when we weren't producing them live this year, is this idea that you don't have to be the expert in order to coach somebody around strengths; you just have to be there, hold up a mirror to their potential and ask them some great questions.

Jim Collison 21:07

We also created a new resources section for you this this year, in 2019, actually inspired by the webcast, which was interesting. And so you can see we have a section -- many people are like, where did The Coaches Blog go? Well, here it is. We don't call it a blog anymore, you know, which I don't really like as much. But we are moving in that direction where we have articles and videos and webcasts. Many people are asking me, How do I get back to some of the Theme Thursday content that's available? If you go to that Resources section and click Webcasts, it'll take you to a page where the Called to Coach is. And then here's Theme Thursday by season. And you can go you can go ahead and click on that.

Jim Collison 21:47

One of the things I wanted to highlight, if we go view more, and we'll just pick one -- I think we'll pick Strategic, because that'll probably be the one that pops up first. Nope, we'll pick Restorative because we're going to fix it. If you've noticed, one of the new things for this season, and I hope you've taken advantage of it is we have 100% transcripts now available, which was a huge, huge ask. Lots of people were asking for that -- I was -- I get that comment all the time: Do you have transcripts available? So once you scroll past the audio player and the video that's there, you can look down and you can see at what spots in we're doing -- like Maika started at second 47.

Jim Collison 22:21

These are completely search, you can search on these as well, you can search in the page, just do a Ctrl + F and search right in page and you can find it right there. It's also searched to gallup.com. So you can find some things in there as well. Mark, who does our editing, has been kind enough also to actually make all the links work as well. So when I say gallup.com/something, whatever that is, the translator or the transcriber doesn't do that very well. He goes in and fixes that and makes all those links clickable. So if you haven't taken advantage off this season of searchable transcripts, links work, you can pass these on to people -- I'm a visual guy but many of you are readers -- as well, those those transcripts completely available again, new for 2019. We just started doing this for this season. Season 5 of Theme Thursday and every Called to Coach since the summer has happened. Maika, anything you want to add on this?

Maika Leibbrandt 23:13

While we're there, we just need a huge round of applause for Mark. I think Mark has not only done the work but figured out smarter ways that the work can be done and we couldn't do without you. So thanks to Mark.

Jim Collison 23:24

Yeah, and he listens to every single moment of these as well and he knows when I when I give him some some praise and recognition. So Mark, you can reset your 7-day calendar at this point.

Maika Leibbrandt 23:34

Stop!

Jim Collison 23:37

Thanks for -- thanks for doing that. Maika, we -- this season, we started a talent-mindfulness exercise that became a part of what are doing for Season 5. I was super skeptical; I was super skeptical.

Maika Leibbrandt 23:48

We were both pretty skeptical.

Jim Collison 23:49

And it's done really, really well. It's done really well.

Maika Leibbrandt 23:54

This this season it's been -- it was a bold move. I mentioned that "bold" has sort of summarized this, but I also think your partnership has summarized my experience this season. Because there were multiple times where one of us thought talent-mindfulness just wouldn't work. Either you encouraging me, "No, keep doing it!" or me telling you, "Actually close your eyes and take a deep breath, Jim, this is going to be amazing!" I've gotten the kind of feedback that we've gotten about talent-mindfulness, in my experience, what I've received, has been more frequent and more positive than the season itself. When people talk to me about Season 5, they say that talent-mindfulness really brought something up.

Maika Leibbrandt 24:35

Somebody told me yesterday that I was almost responsible for making them crash their car, because they were having such a positive epiphany during talent-mindfulness. Now, what he told me, I was happy to hear it because it was how we designed it originally. And you know, when that kind of lines up, it's nice. He said, It didn't make me think about something that I thought I came to this for, because I thought I came to the podcast to learn about the specific theme, but it bubbled up something that really made a difference for me and I walked into work and addressed it right away.

Maika Leibbrandt 25:02

And our entire idea around talent-mindfulness was born over bacon with my -- our good friend JerLene, when JerLene and I were talking about what could we do that would help people make strengths not just an initiative and -- I'll also be super honest -- I had gotten into Peloton this year, and I realized that health for me or working out had become a habit, and never in my life had -- had it become a habit. It always had like an end goal. And I thought I remember asking JerLene and ordering more bacon, "How can we -- how can we make strengths a habit? How can we make it something that you practice and that you come back to over and over again?" So when I pitched this idea to Jim, I'm pretty sure it was a hard swallow but you, you, you let me go for it. And then it turns out, what happened to you -- like when was the moment that you realized this was going to work?

Jim Collison 25:55

So we were going through an exercise live and I disappear when we do that. And you were talking about this, of visualizing this, you know, a bunch of lights, I think, was it -- must have been Ideation.

Maika Leibbrandt 26:07

It was Ideation.

Jim Collison 26:07

Yeah, it was Ideation. And I just started doing it. And we got done and I was, I was like I was moved. I was -- it was one of those things I, for the first time ever in using some kind of -- I've never been successful with meditation because I tried to make it about nothing. And what I realized is I needed to make -- for me, I needed to make the meditation about something, and to visualize some things. And it's actually a technique I have used to calm myself or to center myself or to focus myself is to take a moment, close, take a deep breath -- always starts with a deep breath -- and to visualize these, these lights popping up or just brightening of the lights were one of those kinds of things, which was a visual technique for me, which was a little life-changing. I'll just I'll just admit that I have used that over and over and over and over again.

Jim Collison 26:57

Not sure I saw that coming with Ideation, in other words, so like I did not -- while in while the talent-mindfulness was not always necessarily specific to the theme, it was, in this case, a real eye opener or an eye closer, I guess, for me, in getting that done. And so if you didn't like the talent-mindfulness sections, and that's OK. But give them -- maybe give it a second try and and put yourself in a spot. Put yourself in a spot where you can where you can do it. Don't do it in your car. But Maika, I think we've been most surprised by the popularity of those and and how well they've done and so hopefully, you've used those. We're in some discussions about what we do exactly with those, maybe make them a little more convenient for you in some ways, although I kind of like the fact that they got to get through a theme to get to them at this point, right, in some regards. But, but yeah, Maika thank you for kind of making the effort to just push through on that. I think if you would have cleared that with me 3 weeks before we started, I might have went, Eh, I don't think so.

Maika Leibbrandt 28:06

That's not business enough. You know what I -- what it's, I think it's changed the way that I teach too, because I realized that, and I'm not gonna pretend to know a thing about mindfulness in general or about meditation. We're not going to say that this is a science or and there are people who actually study this are probably -- we're probably getting all sorts of things wrong, if we wanted to be like, align it and say that this is meditation, I don't even know. All I know is I've taught before and I know that when you can force somebody to focus on what their own brain is telling them, even if it's for a little bit -- and by "force," I mean "invite." If you can create the space where people can listen to themselves, then they usually come up with better answers.

Maika Leibbrandt 28:53

And yesterday, I closed this class that I was teaching, almost with a mindfulness exercise, but it wasn't, I didn't ask anybody to close their eyes or to take a deep breath, because I was in the room and I could physically create that space for them in the way that I was standing, in the way that I was using my voice, in the way that I was using the space. And I just asked people, Hey, before we leave, I want you to, you know, imagine X, Y and Z. And I just guided them through answering a couple questions. And I asked him to actually write down the answers. And more than anything, it was just admitting that there is more than one way to encourage people to grow. And we tried it. And it seems like it worked.

Jim Collison 29:32

Yeah. Yeah. No, it was it was really good and we'll continue to work a little bit through here the holiday season and Maika and I will continue to talk about that and see what's available for you along those lines. We -- I want to talk a little bit about staying connected. We actually gained a whole bunch of new listeners this year. And many of you came midseason, or what have you -- I still get questions from folks. And I know that they're new because by the questions, they are And so I just want to tell folks, before we think about 2020, and that's what we're going to talk about next, there are there are at least 4 ways to stay connected with us in what we do here. And if you can pick one or do all four.

Jim Collison 30:13

One is subscribe to us in any podcast app, if you haven't started listening to podcasts yet, you might be watching this on YouTube. And that's not necessarily the most convenient way at times. But if you're a pod -- if you, we have other podcasts as well, and you can listen to it as a podcast, just go to any podcast app, search Gallup Webcasts, and you'll see all the ones that are available, some in Spanish, brand new one in Japanese that we're just releasing right now, so that we're pretty excited about that. We -- so, that's available there. Go -- on your podcast app, search Gallup Webcasts. I

Jim Collison 30:43

f you are a podcast listener, and you didn't know we're available on YouTube, just go to YouTube and search "CliftonStrengths." We have a whole channel there of about 1,000 -- more than 1,000 videos now -- that are available for you. Literally hundreds of hours of professional development for you. If YouTube is your way of consuming content, then we'd love to have you do that on YouTube.

Jim Collison 31:01

If you'd like to join us for the live programs you can follow us on eventbrite -- eventbrite.com -- I'm sorry, gallup.com/eventbrite -- no, that's not true either, geez, Mark's gonna hate me for this, gallup.eventbrite.com is the way to get that done. And you can follow us there, create an account, follow us there, you get an email every time. And I just released all Quarter 1 of Theme Thursday. And so you can subscribe and then you can -- the important thing is you register to get the email reminder because that's important to me. Two days before on Tuesday, we'll send you the reminder that says Hey, don't forget Theme Thursday is coming up!

Jim Collison 31:33

And then there's a calendar item you can download there as well and put on your calendar because I don't know about you, but I live and die by my calendar, Maika, and if it's not on my calendar, it's not real. And so put it on your calendar to make sure it's there.

Jim Collison 31:46

One last thing we invented and created in 2018 was a brand new CliftonStrengths newsletter all around everything CliftonStrengths, and there'll be a link to this in the show notes. This is where you're going to want to go back to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. And you want to want to go to that that Theme Thursday channel and you're going to want to find this Season 5 Wrap. That is there -- pretty easy to find. And we're gonna have a link to it as well. You should subscribe to that. So go out there, grab that link, it's in the show notes available for you for you to subscribe to the CliftonStrengths newsletter.

Jim Collison 32:16

OK, Maika, the point everybody's been waiting for. 2020 is nearly upon us as we're recording this today on the 21st of November. We still have 45 days, but it's coming. Very first Theme Thursday Webcast will be January 9, that's a Thursday. And same times -- we're doing 11 a.m. in the Central Time Zone. Maika, what are we going to do for Season 6?

Maika Leibbrandt 32:42

We're going to do all 34 themes.

Jim Collison 32:45

Again.

Maika Leibbrandt 32:47

So really what we're thinking about is all about teams, all about managers. That might feel like it's exclusively about business, but I think it's just gonna help you understand, How do you work with other people? We're not alone in this world. And so it's really about how do your themes show up? Or how does every single theme show up in the context of other themes? So as, as Jim has not-so-subtly mentioned, you can sign up at gallup.eventbrite.com. And all of Quarter 1 is already out there. And it's scheduled.

Maika Leibbrandt 33:18

But we're going to answer a lot of, I think, excitement and curiosity around the domains. So we're going to think about how every theme shows up within that domain, what a domain actually is, where did that come from? What does it tell us? What does it not tell us? What's the best way to use those, those beautiful 4 different clusters of Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking with with people who want to improve their lives. So CliftonStrengths has and always, always will be all about the idea of not just naming and understanding yourself but of performing a little bit better. As a strengths coach, it's not your job to help somebody feel better; it's really your job to help them do better. So we're going to talk about how that can happen within the context of teams.

Maika Leibbrandt 34:01

We're also going to dive into the fact that perhaps what has the greatest influence on a team is the manager. So we know that to be true from our research. It's also what we know to be true from our lives that whoever is leading that team, whether that team is a family or a community or a group, that whoever is sort of at the helm, or has the strongest influence around that, is is somebody that you need to invest in and understand. And that thankfully, there's a lot we can understand about what sets great managers apart from everybody else.

Maika Leibbrandt 34:32

If you want to read ahead and get excited, maybe over the holiday season for Season 6, I'm going to recommend a book that we've already gone through in Season 3 and that's Strengths Based Leadership. If you pick up a copy of Strengths Based Leadership, I think you'll find it's a much quicker read than it physically looks like because half of it is resources. But I really encourage you to dive into this because it will help you understand all 4 domains. And I will say just here's the Cliff Notes version and of all 4 domains: You don't need all 4 in order to be effective. We have also realized that our previous hypothesis, perhaps that the most effective teams have a balance of all 4 domains isn't actually true. What's even more important than that is the most effective teams understand the talents that are present there; they understand the lens that people see their world through. And they they go out of their way to respect, honor and celebrate the differences within their team.

Maika Leibbrandt 35:30

The other thing I love about this book is it profiles 4 leaders who lead with one each of those domains and you've noticed on your CliftonStrengths 34 report that we have a new algorithm that tells you which domain is dominant for you, so you don't have to guess. But we'll dive into really what does that mean? I will also just give you a little preview here. In Strengths Based Leadership, and this is something that I uncovered last year at our CliftonStrengths Summit, as I was helping one of our presenters design one of their sessions, and then somebody came back and asked me for my citation. And I couldn't remember which of our Gallup books it came from! It comes from Strengths Based Leadership, and we are going to use this, this section to really orient how we talk about all 34 themes. It is what strong teams have in common.

Maika Leibbrandt 36:21

So I just want to give you a little taste of it. It's, No. 1: That conflict doesn't destroy strong teams, because strong teams focus on results. No. 2: That strong teams prioritize what's best for the organization and then move forward. No. 3: Members have strong teams are as committed to their personal lives as they are to their work. No. 4: Strong teams embrace diversity. And No. 5: Strong teams are magnets for talent. So what I hope to do for you across all 34 themes is explore those 5 truths of strong teams and how that -- how every single one of the 34 themes might help understand the -- what needs to be present within a strong team. So I think it's gonna be really fun. We also are going to stick to a shorter format, right, Jim? You want to talk a little bit about that?

Jim Collison 37:10

Yeah, so same same deal, we will do to 2 themes at a time, 20-minute sessions, we learned during this season, that actually worked out really, really well. We're also going to move up some -- and and actually highlight and emphasize the domain pieces. And so there'll be an overview on the domain -- it will actually be a wrap of each of the domains as well. And so we're excited. That'll extend it out a little bit. This will go through August, as opposed to just being six months out of the year. Maika, I'm really excited because our Content Team has -- this is in coordination with our Content Team, and actually Called to Coach is also going to be in focus on teams and managers. All the writing that's going on around Gallup is going to be -- not all of it, but good chunks of it -- are going to be around teams and managers. So for the first time, we have kind of a unified content strategy going into this with our webcasts, with our writing, with what we're thinking about all really piggybacking on, It's the Manager. And so if you haven't picked that up, you might want to. That may be one you want to get a hold of right away, Maika will bring that up. It's in my office.

Maika Leibbrandt 38:12

You now have a reading list of 2 books, if you really want to be caught up for it, not just Theme Thursday, Season 6, but pretty much all Gallup webcast will be in alignment. And I think that's really, really powerful. That was the original idea around Theme Thursday was what if we could get our whole community talking about the same theme every week? How powerful of a dent could we make on our world? So thinking about really aligning everything that we're throwing out there and thinking about together. So there -- I will tell you, similar to the CliftonStrengths 34 report, if you pick up It's the Manager, don't plan on sitting down and reading the whole thing cover to cover. Allow yourself to skip around and dive into chapters that are most applicable to you or to your clients and then make a conversation about it. This book really is more of a conversation starter than just something you want to digest. So I would encourage you to do that.

Jim Collison 39:01

It's going to put all -- all things Gallup: everything we're communicating, everything we're talking about in in building -- the Content Team is building a hub around teams and managers. So it's been an area that we've been hinting around and thinking about and we're going full force 100% effort, or as Deadpool would say, maximum effort, next year on on teams and managers. So we're pretty excited about that.

Jim Collison 39:26

Speaking of teams and managers, as we think about that happening in the workplace, and really anywhere, right, we want to definitely emphasize the the Gallup at Work Summit coming up. We've had lots of questions about that, like, Where did strengths go? Actually, it's still a gigantic part of the summit. Not in the title anymore, but we do strengths and engagement at work. There's a lot of things that go into the workplace and of course, strengths is the the cornerstone of what happens there. And so, if you've been thinking about the summit, and you were like, Oh, I don't I don't know it. Where'd the strengths stuff go? It is still a gigantic -- in fact, it's still going to be most of it -- as we as we add more content, I don't think, Maika, we're taking, and you're a big part of this, we're not taking anything away; we're adding to, Right? Would you add anything else to that as we think

Maika Leibbrandt 40:13

Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Collison 40:14

Let me let me just say this June 3 ...

Maika Leibbrandt 40:15

That's what I was going to add.

Jim Collison 40:16

(June) 1, 2 and 3, go to gallupatwork.com to get more details. If you're listening to this in December, the the discount for everybody ends early January. So you want -- if you're going to sign up to get the, to get the discount, you want you want to register in December. I just want to make that really, really clear as people -- but anything else that you want to add to that?

Maika Leibbrandt 40:36

Strengths by itself doesn't have legs; strengths that lead you to a better cause or a concerted effort a -- as Dr. Lopez's research would say, a personally important or salient goal -- that's what really makes a difference. And as a community, we don't just do strengths because it's fun or because we like the t-shirts, although we do, but the Gallup at Work Summit takes that into understanding. So we'll be able to say, Where does strengths show up in relationship to everything else that faces a workplace? Now that workplace might be a school, it might be a church; it is really geared toward helping managers, HR leaders, business leaders think about, What do we know about what makes humanity work at work? And how can we truly move the needle on engagement on a global level?

Maika Leibbrandt 41:27

We think about a lot of our data suggests that everything that we've tried over the past 15 years has only made tiny little bumps. Maybe it's because we've been trying in pockets; maybe it's because we really need to unify and look at all of these pieces of what we know to be true about behavioral economics and how that shows up in the workplace, and think about the role that the workplace plays in the human experience. So we can go bigger than just strengths, but it doesn't mean that strengths is going away. In fact, strengths will be, I think, a specific highlight in some of our breakout content and definitely when you ask humans who lead thriving workplaces they will tell you that strengths is one of their strategies. Even if they don't use the CliftonStrengths tool, it really does come down to being able to understand and honor and challenge the people around you. And that is bigger than just strengths. So if you've got other questions about that go to go to the site: gallupatwork.com. We'd love to see you in Omaha in June.

Jim Collison 42:20

Yeah, June 1, 2 and 3. It's going to be beautiful. That's actually the best time of the year. We used to do it in July and it's just crazy hot. June, now a great time to be right -- right before the College World Series and we don't -- can I say that? We are -- the NCAA owns those rights. We are excited about having you here. So come out and join us and and get signed up before the discount ends. Everybody gets that discount right now. Certified coaches, if you're one of our certified strengths coaches, you'll get a code in January. That will allow you to apply that discount after that, but get signed up. Get registered. Tickets are cheap right now. Love to have you come in, be a part of what we're doing.

Jim Collison 42:59

Maika, just some final changes as we think about what's coming in. This will be the last webcast for Theme Thursday that I do here in studio B. So it's been a short life for Studio B. We moved from Studio A, which was across the the building in here, into Studio B. We kind of knew it would be temporary as we were, we were putting this together. But but we are doing some big renovations on the second floor. A big commitment to video and video content and audio content as well has been made, kind of based a little bit on what you've done here; what a Mike McDonald has done; what Dean Jones has done; you know, what Jeremy Pietrocini helped me get started here with this.

Jim Collison 43:37

And Gallup is doubling down on its video content. And so we've got some new studios, which is kind of cool, coming for you. They won't be ready till fall. But we've got some new designs going in some cool stuff coming. I'll be a little transient in the studio and people notice -- when I change, when I change locations, people notice. But we have some new things coming and we're excited about getting that to you, Maika, anything, Maika, anything else you would add to this as we kind of put a final bow on 2019 and Season 5 of Theme Thursday?

Maika Leibbrandt 44:10

Thank you, Jim. I think we should also think Andrew Bridger for thinking about how do we mobilize this and really move it forward in a way that can reach more people in ways that can be more effective. A huge thanks to Andrew and the Content Team that he's leading there.

Jim Collison 44:24

I'll say another name too, Bryant Ott, which a lot of folks will -- you'll never meet Bryant, in a lot of cases. But Bryant has been the mastermind behind all the strategy around what we've been doing, and has kind of been my partner in bringing in some of this podcasting stuff to make it the hub content that it is today. He was kind of the mastermind of changing a lot of things over. We still have a lot of work to do on our content. And so you'll continue to see changes here coming up in the future with a lot of the things that we do. And so if you like change, you're in the right spot. If you don't, listen to some talent-mindfulness exercises and and get used to it because it's coming; change is coming and we continue to improve. We appreciate your patience as we roll through these things as well.

Maika Leibbrandt 45:09

If you don't like change, you're in good company; nobody does.

Jim Collison 45:11

Nobody really does -- even we don't, to be honest. With that, we'll remind everyone to take full advantages of all the resources we have available. I showed them to you today: gallup.com/cliftonstrengths is available out there for you. Can catch the recorded audio and video of this content, plus hundreds of hours of content from the past. Still all evergreen, still available for you on YouTube search CliftonStrengths. In your podcast app, just search Gallup Webcasts and you can see those are available as well. If you want to see a list of courses that lead to any of our training, some of it can lead to certification through for coaching certifications, you can see a complete and up-to-date list of all that -- global, around the world: courses.gallup.com. That site's changing next year as well, by the way, we're kind of excited about that -- some new functionality coming around that. Don't forget to join us on the eventbrite site. I'll get it right this time: gallup.eventbrite.com I lost my mind there just for a second. And then join us in the Facebook groups: facebook.com/groups/calledtocoach. We'll see you in 2020, friends! We are excited about that. January 9, come out and join us live! Meanwhile, have a great Christmas, have a great holiday season, have a great whatever you celebrate in the month of December. We'll be back in January. With that, we'll say, Goodbye everybody.