CliftonStrengths Community Update for July 2020

Austin Suellentrop, CliftonStrengths Portfolio Manager at Gallup, was our guest on a recent Called to Coach for the July community update. Austin shared some major developments regarding updates to learning offerings, including:

• how Gallup is shifting its learning curriculum to virtual
• the new gallup.com/learning site and the revisions and enhancements to the (former) Accelerated Strengths Coaching course
• the new Domain color scheme, the reasons behind it, and when and where you can expect to see it

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

We've put an awful lot of energy and effort into our learning offerings and to adapting our learning curriculum to be virtual. ... And the last 120 days has really just enhanced the speed with which we've done that.

Austin Suellentrop, 9:04

gallup.com/learning went live on June 19. It is bright and fresh and newly designed and got tremendous more depth and quantity of content on what learning offerings we can provide.

Austin Suellentrop, 12:14

The strengths-based approach to human development is at the core of impacting the global economy. ... all of us as coaches who are committed to the cause and who've devoted our lives to this, we believe that and we know that.

Austin Suellentrop, 26:23

Jim Collison 0:00

I am Jim Collison, and live from the brand new Gallup Studios here in Omaha, Nebraska, This is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on July 2, 2020.

Jim Collison 0:20

Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and independent strengths coaches share tactics, insights and strategies to help coaches maximize the talent of individuals, teams and organizations around the world. If you're listening live, love to have you join us in our chat room. It's actually right above me there. There's a link on our live page if you want to jump in there and let us know you're in chat. You can ask your questions there. If you're listening to the recorded version, you can always send us your, your questions via email, and many of you have been doing that -- appreciate it: coaching@gallup.com. That's really a one-stop shop for all your questions. Don't forget, if you're on YouTube, you can subscribe. Right down below Austin there is a little subscribe button. Click the notification bell; that way you're getting notified whenever we do anything new. And of course, you can listen to us as a podcast, just search "Gallup Webcasts" on any podcast player.

Jim Collison 1:05

Austin Suellentrop is our host today. Austin is the CliftonStrengths Portfolio Manager here at Gallup, and Austin, it's always a great day when I get to spend it with you. Welcome back to Called to Coach!

Austin Suellentrop 1:14

Well, again, always, always fun to be here. I appreciate you having me. Thanks.

Jim Collison 1:18

We have we made it to the second half of 2020, which is super great. We're looking forward to some exciting things ahead. I think we've been doing a lot of work here. Certainly, the last 6 months has been just as busy, if not busier, and we have a lot of things to update folks on. So give us -- get us started today as we think about an update.

Austin Suellentrop 1:37

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jim. Hello, everyone. Good to be here. Always, always fun checking in with this crew. You know, when, when I think about the last 6 months -- the last 12 months, really -- if you think back a year ago where we were, we were preparing for the sunset of Gallup Strengths Center. And the big move into Gallup Access was sort of right on the horizon. We were, we were prepping for that. And when we, when we went through that, that experience, sort of, I guess October of last year was, was really, I think the first big step in, in a series of big changes; in a series of work and effort we were putting together at Gallup to try and consolidate all of the different platforms we have, to try and make the experience of interacting with Gallup more streamlined and less places to have to go to get what you need from us.

Austin Suellentrop 2:29

And so I think about the last 6 months, we've been working at that more and more. And so I think we've learned an awful lot in terms of how to best do that, in terms of how to teach about what the new functionalities are, the new things that are coming, but also to hear feedback and adapt in the moment. So if I were to think about, sort of, I would like to begin the conversation today with giving you an idea of where we are now, a little bit of what we've done the last 90 days or so and then also what's, what's some longer-term things on the horizon be considering. And then we'll get real tactical towards the end about things coming in the next, you know, couple weeks, in the next couple months. We'll sort of wrap up with that.

Austin Suellentrop 3:10

So when I think about the second half of 2020, and going into 2021, I think a theme you're gonna, you're gonna hopefully continue to see from us is adaptation and improvement, and continued effort to learn, to gain feedback, and to make incremental changes throughout. So I think about things we're doing around focus groups, with independent coaches, with clients, with ecommerce buyers, people who just like to, who are bulk buyers online. We've been doing a lot of reaching out and having conversations with, with people who interact with us and buy from us in different ways, to better understand what, what you are looking for, what our clients are looking for, what kind of things they love about our platforms and our resources and our tools, and what kind of things we're missing that we frankly need to, need to improve.

Austin Suellentrop 4:02

So we've been doing a lot of that. I think that's one of the things I've really appreciated about the craziness of the last, you know, 120 days is I've been able to be at home and connect with people via Zoom on a more frequent basis than maybe I ever had before. So I've been able to build some better relationships with, with people in that sense; it's been really great to share a screen and see when people click and say, Hey, why is this there and why can't I go that place? We've been doing a lot of that. And I think you'll start to see some of the changes and some of the implementations of that feedback here, here in the next couple months as we start to implement more and more of those changes

Jim Collison 4:37

Austin, I don't know why going -- for some of us, you know, we started working from home -- I don't know why it took that to get that kind of innovation going. We could do that in the office, like it doesn't necessarily, right. It's funny, the change, the kind of the change in location kind of prompted that right. We got better at it, and so like like you said, we we've been taking -- I all, I too have just been saying, when people have been reaching out to me, I'm like, "Can I just call you?" Like, let's not do this via email. Let's just, let's just chat via video. So I think I've talked to more people via video than, than I ever have.

Austin Suellentrop 5:08

Well, absolutely. And I think one of the, one of the things I've experienced in that is, frankly, I have, I have more, I've fewer excuses as to why I couldn't. So I had fewer excuses as to why I couldn't hop on a call. And the people I'm talking to have fewer excuses as to why they couldn't hop on a call. You're already on call, on video calls 6 hours a day -- many of us are, anyway. So hopping on a video call with me to talk through it has been a, it's been a fun experience. So I think that's been something I've really benefited from.

Austin Suellentrop 5:36

And one of the things, so one of the big things that we've implemented that came out of that kind of feedback loop was something we just put into practice towards the end of June -- June 22, I think, is when it kicked off, was sort of our coaches orientation program. So, so if you're a Certified Coach, you should have received a series of emails towards the end of June that were sort of the new norm when somebody becomes a Certified Coach -- a "Welcome" email with some great links to resources and tools and an onboarding video and some tremendous sort of "welcoming people to the community" content, links to exclusive content for coaches. We've developed an entire landing page that houses a lot of those questions that, that newly Certified Coaches are asking of us.

Austin Suellentrop 6:23

In the past, the only way you really could get to that was to ask us or to go to Jim on Facebook with a question or, or something like that. And we've been able to, you know, one of the pieces of feedback our coaches have given us is, it'd be great to have this all in one spot. Be great to have a dedicated place where I can go to get that. So our team behind the scenes has been working really hard. Andrew Bridger, one of our partners in marketing, really led the charge on this. And he did a masterful job at putting this together. And so we were able to get that to market end of June. That's one of those things that came directly out of the feedback from our coaching community that we were able to take, put some resources behind, ideate back and forth. And this is sort of Version 1 of that. I think you'll, again, you'll continue to see that evolve and you'll continue to see that enhanced as we get more and more interaction with it. It will be one of those things that our, our new community members, as more and more coaches get trained and join our community, that they'll be able to sort of to have as their normal experience with community, which will be a wonderful thing.

Jim Collison 7:21

Austin, let me say that English-only to start with, so if your preferred language was not English, you didn't get it [the emails]. So don't panic if you didn't get it. If -- and it really is a summary, that, those 4 that's 4 sets of emails that we send out, is really a summary of a page that has all that information to begin with. So we've been sharing it. Dean shared it a little bit; we've been getting that link in the coaches newsletter, some other things available there. If you have any questions or you want to get more information on that, you can just email us: coaching@gallup.com. No, actually better use the certification link. So go to certification@gallup.com, and we can send you that link back out.

Austin Suellentrop 7:58

Yeah. And one of the, one of the things -- and it seems so simple, but it makes a big difference -- one of the things that is a part of that is in all those emails that we send you, your discount code, your promo code is included in those emails for your reference, because that's one of the questions we get asked all the time is, "Where do I find my promo code?" And, frankly, we didn't make it easy for you to find that for a long time. It required you, if you didn't get that first email, it required you to ask us. We're trying to share that with you as many times as we can to make it top-of-mind for you, A) so that you know you have it, that you can -- that, and, you can take advantage of it. But also if it's, you know, whatever time it is that you're needing to make a purchase and you can't track it down, you can go to this email, have it on, on hand in file, right.

Austin Suellentrop 8:40

So those are the kinds of things we're trying to enhance. To Jim's point, English-only at this point. But again, this is Version 1 of this as we continue to grow this out. I think sistering with that, sort of partnering with that, in terms of development, the last, you know, during this quarantine time and during this time where we've -- so many of us have been being forced to work differently, and being forced to interact more remotely and digitally, we've put an awful lot of energy and effort into our learning offerings and to adapting our learning curriculum to be virtual. And I'm remarkably proud of the ability and the team that we have had -- that we've put in place that's transformed our, our training offerings, our learning offerings to digital formats, into things like virtual instructor-led courses, the continued enhancement of our, of our fully digital interactive modules and things along those lines. You can, you can expect us to continue to invest in that and to continue to enhance the learning offerings we can offer virtually, not only for you as coaches, but for the clients you may serve, for the teams you may work with, and continue to put out more digital resources.

Austin Suellentrop 9:47

So getting off of a reliance on physical materials. That's one of the biggest sort of shifts. We were already wanting to go there. So we were already in an effort to cut down on shipping delays, to cut down on the costs of goods to be shipped across the world, to cut down on the green impact to our, to our environment of having to print and ship all these things. We were already working to get towards a more digital reliance for materials. And the last sort of 120 days has really just sort of enhanced the speed with which we've done that. So we're moving more and more towards a digital experience. So that is one thing we're really excited about continuing to invest in and continuing to enhance our offerings around.

Austin Suellentrop 10:27

I think a small thing that may go unnoticed, we don't call it out, I think speaks to what Jim is doing right now, which is coming to you live from a brand new studio in our Omaha office, right. It's been a tough time for a lot of organizations, for us included. And for many of you. We believe this is a, this is a dip in what we're going through economically, we believe this is something that we will come out of as a country and as a global economy. And what we're excited about is we're ready to hit the ground running when that happens. We're already running now. When things start to pick back up, from an economic perspective, we have invested in podcasting and webcasting resources. We've built a new studio. We're continuing to enhance those offerings to increase the amount of content we can put out. Because we believe this is a medium that is here to stay. And we believe that it's a community we want to continue to work with and serve.

Austin Suellentrop 11:20

So I think -- I want to make sure you all know that, you know, as we enter into the second half of 2020, this is something we've invested in, we believe in and we will continue to put resources behind. So I -- it's a testament to Jim and the impact you've made on the community you've built, but also to all of you who continue to use and take advantage of this platform as something we believe in as well. So I want to make sure I call that out as we think about sort of investments and things we're doing right now for our community. The, the last piece I'll touch on as we sort of think about the, you know, where we are right now is the new gallup.com/learning experience. So in the past, you know, as we were sunsetting old websites and moving things over to Access, you know, the, the move to our new purchasing experience, this was the next big step was getting our learning offerings onto, onto this new platform as well.

Austin Suellentrop 12:13

So gallup.com/learning went live on June 19. It is bright and fresh and newly designed and got tremendous more depth and quantity of content on what learning offerings we can provide; has dedicated pages and information on the virtual learning offerings we have. We're really proud of that. We're also really proud of the learning experiences that we offer there. Right. So I think that's another sign of the investments we're making to try to make your experience and your interaction with Gallup easier. Go to gallup.com. You can find it all there. You don't have to hit all these different sites like you may have had to in the past. So that's, that's one of the things, again, that's up and running now that's based on feedback we've been receiving over the years that we're able to implement.

Jim Collison 12:59

Yeah. Let me, in the store now, you know we had shop.gallup.com and store.gallup.com, when we were making that. The Shop now is, is, is referring over to, Shop is referring over to Store, there we go. And you shouldn't have to anymore have, have to deal with both stores, and the, and the stores are getting enhancements as well. If you've got -- one of the things, if you've got feedback or comments or are struggling with our store, there's some feedback mechanisms in the store to be able to get us that information. That's really the most efficient way for those teams, for those technology teams that are working on those platforms. So if you have questions on the platforms, they're not working, they're brand new to us as well and we'd appreciate your feedback. So there's some feedback mechanisms, whether it's using our chat, calling it in if that's available in your country, sending us an email. They would love to hear and get those feedback on that platform as well.

Jim Collison 13:49

We've really doubled down in the Store space, trying to make that better. One of the things, Austin -- Ralph brings this up just about every time we talk about this -- is shipping, right? And shipping's super expensive around the world for us. Shipping's not -- and we continue to make as many of our products digital as we can. We're kind of on a race at the moment to get everything converted digital just as fast as we can. We, we, we know, and, and it's not, you know, staging product in those countries to ship locally to make it less expensive is -- it doesn't doesn't necessarily work for us, nor does shipping from the United States. So we're aware of that -- when you're out, when you're outside the U.S., buying physical products, it's difficult because it's expensive. It is. The shipping is just expensive; expensive for us, too, to be able to get it to you. So that'll continue to be, as we, as we make this, as what you're talking about, as we think about the roadmap going forward, we continue to make efforts to digitalize just everything that we can. So that is coming here in the next, in the next couple years. What else do we have on the roadmap going forward?

Austin Suellentrop 14:51

Yep. I think sort of if I were to think about a theme of what's coming on the roadmap, I think it's about getting tactical with strengths. It's about getting those really tangible, "What can I do with this?" questions answered. So I think the most common question or comment I've received in my, you know, decade-plus of working with strengths is, Hey, awesome, I love this stuff, but like, what's next? What do I do with it? And that's a question that we get asked from all sorts of audiences, whether it be coaches, whether it be managers or individual contributors.

Austin Suellentrop 15:25

So, a focus down the road, one of the things we're building out is, is giving more of a tool kit on how you can apply strengths in different settings. Thinking about, you know, what does it look like to use your strengths tangibly? You know, recommended actions for managers, recommended actions for front-line workers, recommended actions for, you know, nurses -- those kinds of thinking, where we can get really tactical with how your strengths show up in a specific setting, as a specific role, in helping give tools that can help us put our strengths into play, and help you as coaches help your clients see how their strengths show up every day. That's a kind of a theme. So that's gonna show up in a lot of different ways: It's going to show up in the kinds of things we publish, in terms of articles and content we write, but also in the kinds of things you'll see on Access, in terms of interact -- interactivities and trainings and tools and reports, and so forth. That's sort of the vision, a big piece of that.

Austin Suellentrop 16:22

And another big piece is getting, is building out what I refer to as our team insights. So if you're in Access right now playing around, and you see that your personal bar chart, if you have your full, your full 34, you see that sort of bar chart with your, your Domains, and which Domain you lead with? Well, you know, this year, we added that bar chart at the team level. We have a team bar chart. Well, what does that mean? What do I do with that? How do I put that into play, how do I put that into action? So building out recommended actions for teams and recommended guidance for a team with a unique makeup. How do you leverage that? How do you take advantage of that? Those are the kinds of things we're building into, into Access as a platform, into the tools and the nudges, and so forth, that can really help, help us get tactical with how we use this day in, day out.

Austin Suellentrop 17:11

One of the things I'm really excited to hopefully in the next month or two, I have out there ready and enhanced is a sort of Version 2 of our batch printing. So batch printing, batch reporting, being able to gather up 100 reports at once and how we can download those or print those. It was a really helpful functionality when we were still doing in-person workshops, back when that was a thing. Remember that time, Jim, when we used to have in-person events, right? That was a, it was a really helpful functionality then, but we're continuing to enhance it, continuing to add more functionality and make that more streamlined for our, for our coaches and our users.

Austin Suellentrop 17:46

Things that we're dreaming about on the roadmap that I think, you know, maybe a little bit further down the horizon, but are things that are being explored and experimented with right now are new data visualization techniques on how we can connect strengths and engagement. So if you have a client who is using our Q12 data, how do you overlay strengths information, strengths data for a team onto that to make sense of it? What are the connection points between our CliftonStrengths science and our engagement science that can really provide the team a meaningful takeaway? Those are the kinds of things we're trying to work on, that are coming. Again, don't have any hard dates on those kinds of things. But those are the kinds of things we're working on that that's what we're thinking about down the road.

Austin Suellentrop 18:29

And I've got a list a mile long that I -- of dreams and ideas and things we're considering. And those are the kinds of things that we want to be getting feedback on as we do more focus groups and as we do more, more of these conversations with you, as we do more surveying and getting input and feedback from our community. These are the kinds of things we're gonna be kicking around. I think we have some things that are a little more tangible on the horizon. So if you think about the next month or two months, there are some things that are coming, and the big one that's coming in the next 30 days is the introduction of our new CliftonStrengths Domain colors. Right.

Austin Suellentrop 19:05

So we've been talking, we've been talking about this for almost a year now, right, that these were coming. But here it is, it's time. We're excited for these new Domain colors to arrive. And so, beginning in August, so less than a month away, we'll start to, we'll start to transition some of our content to the new Domain colors. So where will you see them? gallup.com, anything on gallup.com. So you think all of the strenths marketing content, all of the articles and things along those lines on gallup.com, anything around that, the new Domain colors will be introduced in the month of August. CliftonStrengths for Students will have the new colors introduced in August. Gallup Access itself -- so you log into the platform and you have your landing page that you look at with the DNA strand and the periodic table that shows up. Those will all get updated in the month of August as well, as will any reports you run through Gallup, through Gallup Access. So when you go to download your report, and access, you'll see the new Domain colors there as well.

Austin Suellentrop 20:05

Also, during that time, and that sort of, you know, during the month of August, all of our resources that you could download in Access, including Digital Kits, and things along those lines, any of that that is in English will be updated with the new Domain colors during the month of August as well. So that by -- by early September, all of that will be transitioned to the new Domain colors. After September, that's when we'll start hitting on our translated content. Right. So that's when you'll start seeing us working through any of those downloadable resources that are in other, in other languages, right. So we didn't want to delay the launch of these colors to get all of our, all of our other language content translated. We wanted to get the English stuff out first, and then we will start tackling all of our non-English content as well.

Austin Suellentrop 20:51

So by early September, those, those new colors will be here, and we're really excited about that being able to expand the usability of our reporting and of our color palette to all of our users -- colorblind included, rather than sort of our current color palettes. So we're really excited about this. And it's something that it's hard to believe it's only a month away.

Jim Collison 21:10

Austin, if folks have printed material in the old colors, do they have to change them to be compliant?

Austin Suellentrop 21:16

Great, great question. Absolutely not. There is no expectation on our end that you have to discard any old content. Those colors are still valid. There's, there's going to be a lot of people who, that's how they associate our colors, and that's how they associate their strengths. And there's nothing wrong with that. We still have a huge inventory of physical goods ourselves; there's no materials ourselves in those colors. It's not like we're going to snap our fingers and all of a sudden, we strike the world of those old color Domains, right. This is a transition. And this is the introduction, and it's part of why we wanted to tell you, you know, last year, in 2019, that this was coming this year, and we've been trying to keep you abreast in the Coaches Newsletter over the last couple months that this is sort of the timing we're looking at. And we know change is tough -- difficult, and none of us like change. This, I think, is a positive change. I think the branding, the look and the feel and the freshness of the new colors will help, help sort of liven up some of our reporting as well. So we're excited about it. But no, there's no -- nobody should feel any pressure to have to implement these new colors Sept. 1.

Jim Collison 22:21

Digital Kits are included in that right. So if you're on the digital kit, you'll get that upgrade you get.

Austin Suellentrop 22:26

Another one of the benefits of having access to Digital Kits rather than paper kits, right, is as we make changes like this, we will flip a switch and the Digital Kits will be in the new color scheme.

Jim Collison 22:36

And if you haven't purchased that Digital Kit, if you're on a paper kit, we do have a discount available for you in that. Send us an email coaching, or certification -- I love the coaching email address for some reason today -- certification@gallup.com. It's because I say it 1,000 times, and we can get that discount code out to you. I think one of the things I want to say, because I handle so much feedback, is be patient with us during this 3rd and 4th quarter on these colors. One, I never anticipated 4 colors being the focus so much attention and focus on that. And then two, we're going to be, it's a challenge for us to get it into every place. And so don't expect it necessarily ever, you'll probably find it. There's probably some dark crevices in our infrastructure where it may, it may stay out there a little bit longer than we anticipate. So be patient with us through that. If you do find it, let me know. If you find it, let's just say maybe like in October, if you find it, let me know. And we'll track that down. So appreciate your patience on that one.

Austin Suellentrop 23:34

Yeah. So I think the, the last thing that's coming, the last big change, the last big new thing that we're really -- I'm just jazzed beyond belief for this is the introduction of Gallup Global Strengths Coach. So Gallup Global Strengths Coach is the new name for our beloved Accelerated Strengths Coaching course. So we renamed the course. It is going through a, an enhancement and sort of a redesign, if you will, a little bit, and that new name is now out there. So if you were to go onto our new gallup.com/learning, you'll see Gallup Global Strengths Coach is listed, and it says "formerly Accelerated Strengths Coaching."

Austin Suellentrop 24:13

And that new name represents a bit of a shift in the focus on coaching that we've seen here in the last several years. It's designed -- the new course I want to begin by understanding, it is 95% the same experience that all of us have gone through, right. What we've done -- the 5% that's different is -- we've folded in updated research data points. So the data points and some of the metrics we've included in that course for the last 10 years, right, we've got new research, we've done new meta-analysis. We, I just launched last month, a new test-retest reliability research. We've folded in our latest research. We've also incorporated some best practices have after having taught this class for a decade and having, you know, you know, thousands upon thousands of coaches go through the course, we've learned some things from its original design. But the core of the course is still the same. It talks about the themes. It talks about, Name it, Claim it and Aim it. It gives our coaches the chance to practice and to understand the strengths-based philosophy.

Austin Suellentrop 25:13

So I want to make sure all of our coaches out there who have -- who are alumni of this course understand there is not a need for you to go back and retake this course. I know many of you love the new cool thing, and you love to be sort of abreast of the newest greatest things. I just want to make sure you understand it's, it's -- it's a very similar experience to what you would have gone through before, but it's, it's updated its look and in its design, and the color scheme, right. So the new the new Domain colors are folded in throughout this. The Digital Kits people get when they go through this course are the same Digital Kits you have access to right now. Right? So there's not going to be a whole lot of new tools that they're getting that you aren't getting access to.

Austin Suellentrop 25:53

But what it's doing, is it's helping align the conversation around coaching to just how critical having a coaching mindset is in the new world of work. That as we think about the impact that coaches have with an individual, with a team, with an organization, that it doesn't stop there. It impacts cities and states, countries and economies when we do this well. That the strengths-based approach to human development is at the core of impacting the global economy. And I think all of us as coaches who are committed to the cause and who've devoted our lives to this, we believe that and we know that. And so the reason you see the name change is we're making sure we're overt from the beginning to the world about this course. That's what this course is designed to do. It's designed to help us change the world. Not just this one interaction with a person, but how the ripple effect of that could have across cities and states and countries around the globe overall, right?

Austin Suellentrop 27:04

So I wanted to take a moment to make sure you all know, this is our prize -- this is our prize possession. We love this course; we love the participants who go through this course. Having taught this course many times myself, I will tell you, there is no more committed group of individuals that I've ever met than participants in our 4 1/2-day coaching course. Some of the most loyal and, and dedicated people I've ever met go through that course. They dedicate their lives to helping other people. And the new name is representative of us elevating to the world the impact this could have.

Austin Suellentrop 27:40

So I call it out here. We've put a lot of time and energy soliciting feedback over the years around this, not only from a content perspective, but from an overall experience. How do we give participants time to practice coaching as much as we possibly can? How do we fold in ICF principles throughout this as best we can? So that new course -- the name is out there now. We'll start delivering that course this fall as well. So we're really excited. These are the kinds of things we've been working on to try and enhance the coaching movement, to try to continue this momentum we've built and that we have going, so really excited about that; really excited for what the next 6 months to a year have in, have in store for us as well. Hopefully, it does not involve any more talk of pandemics, but it likely will for the short term, at least, for the next -- for the foreseeable future. So anyways, Jim, that's me talking an awful lot. I probably rambled more than I should. But I appreciate you having me on to chat through it. Love to answer any questions that are out there.

Jim Collison 28:35

Yeah. No, we'll take your questions from the chat room. A couple, Austin, just to review again, the change in colors was primarily due to ADA compliance, right and plus some other color compliance globally to make sure those with visual impairments could see those. Listen, we understand, change is always difficult. And anytime you change anything, including a studio, you get all kinds of really, really helpful feedback on it. And so, it's, it's, it's difficult. It's -- it's been -- and it's been a difficult transition, we understand that. So, it is changing.

Austin Suellentrop 29:07

I will say for the colors: These colors we've vetted, tested and gotten feedback from, from a variety of different perspectives, a variety of different stakeholders. And the main driver was our current 4 colors are not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. They are out of compliance. They are not discernible for people that are colorblind on a grayscale pattern. You cannot clearly distinguish between the 4. So when we looked at options, and what could we do to change the colors, change the way we represent our Domains, to be in in alignment with our branding overall, to be fully compliant with ADA, to allow for both on-screen and printed compliance, as well as what we call sort of look and consistency, meaning can we use the same font on all 4 colors? When you have a yellow Domain like we have right now, in Influencing, right, we often have to use black font on that, to make it show up. When you use black font on that to make it show up, and then you try to use black font on purple, like we have for Executing, it doesn't show up on purple. So we have use white font on purple. So it creates inconsistency in how we have to create things, right. So one of those things was we wanted something that could be white font consistent on all.

Austin Suellentrop 30:27
So there are a lot of factors that go into this. Our team and our graphic design team that put this together, and they put together several options that were vetted and tested. And before we landed on sort of hit the nail, the nail on the head for all the criteria we were looking for, and again, we've been socializing them since November of last year. So I hope they don't catch any, they didn't catch anybody off guard in that sense, but they're coming next month. And we're really excited about it.

Jim Collison 30:51

Andrea had asked a question. While you said the new Global Strengths Coaching course is 95% the same, is there an opportunity to have access to the new meta-analysis and best practices?

Austin Suellentrop 31:01

Absolutely. Great question. So any of the research that we're folding into this is absolutely either already publicly available -- so it's either out there already -- or we will absolutely be able to produce and share with you, Here's what, here's the big things that changed. Here's what you can expect differently. In terms of that, again, that 5% that's different, most of it, I will tell you, you're already in the loop on. The vast majority of it are things we've already socialized, but the course itself, right, the design of the course hadn't been updated. So our course leaders were having to either go in and sort of teach it off the cuff because they knew it differently, versus how the course is designed. But Andrea, great point and great question. Anything that's included in that that would be distinctly different than what you you've gone through? Yes, we'll be able to share with you.

Jim Collison 31:46

Austin, what -- I think we've covered most of those questions. There's been some studio questions we'll cover in the postshow. Anyhow, lots of stuff. I know, it's funny. It's a shiny new object. So it's, it's super funny. Any other questions you've been getting from, from individuals? Any, any hot questions that, that we can answer before we kind of wrap this thing up?

Austin Suellentrop 32:07

Yeah, I think the most common question I continue to get is, is getting around sort of the ability for us at Gallup, what can we do to help, help our coaches deliver, deliver virtual learning, or deliver virtual workshops? How do we do this? How do we help you do this better in a, you know, when you aren't able to do it in the way you've always done in-person workshops, and so forth? I think one of the things I love -- Dean's done some great stuff in sort of best practices using Zoom and different platforms. We're finding that more and more of our clients, more and more of the people we work with, don't use Zoom, for a variety of reasons. So how do we get comfortable in different platforms? How do we get comfortable, sort of platform-agnostic, if you will, delivering virtual experiences?

Austin Suellentrop 32:56

I think that's something we're dedicated and we're committed to learning ourselves. We're really investing in our course leaders and our coaches to get better at the same thing. So I think we'll continue to learn best practices around that and be able to share that content with our coaches. That, that, to me, is the kind of thing you can expect to see in things like our Learning Series that we do every, every year for our Certified Coaches is how do we put together some really great developmental content for you around virtual experience and creating an exceptional virtual experience? That's the kind of stuff that, you know, I don't think we pretend to have all the answers on yet. We're learning a lot as well.

Austin Suellentrop 33:34

We have got some absolute experts in our, in our organization that are coaches, that are course leaders that are documenting that for us right now and helping teach us ourselves. So Jim's been doing the podcast thing for years and years and years, right. And he's great at it. Jim teaches other people in our company how to be great at this. What does it take? How do you do this? Jim works with our clients on teaching them how to do it. But it comes from his experience of having done it with excellence before. So that's what we're building right now internally, is we're building our comfort of excellence with delivering virtual content, with delivering coaching sessions via, via videocam, and how that is different than in person, how it's different than over the phone, and delivering virtual workshops with excellence and how that's different than maybe in the past we've done it. So I think that's one of the things we're trying to sort of gather, but I get asked that question a lot.

Jim Collison 34:23

Austin, you made the mistake of saying giving an exact percentage, and now people are gonna kind of quote you on that for the next 50 years, probably. That 5%, which you just -- it was just an example, right? But repeat again for me the difference, when we think about what's, what we've added, and I'm pretty sure it's, it's experience, right? When you mentioned the ICF piece, you mentioned more actually coaching examples. It's not like there's new material that we --

Austin Suellentrop 34:50

Correct.

Jim Collison 34:50

OK.

Austin Suellentrop 34:51

Yeah. So, so let me, let me get really clear on this. A) The course is not finished yet. OK, so the course is in its final stages of production, but it's not finished yet. That's why it hasn't gone public yet. It's why I've haven't taught it yet.

Jim Collison 35:03

Well, it's kind of public. I mean, we've, it's available, the name is available on our site. We had to do that for technology reasons, but keep going.

Austin Suellentrop 35:10

So what's, what is different, there is a greater focus on actual practice of coaching. So if you were to go through this course versus your old, old course, you would get more time, minutes-wise, to actually practice coaching. You would get more time to learn about the specific themes. So we do spend a little bit more time on specific themes. And you'd get, we actually fold in specific ICF coaching competencies throughout the course. Those are the 3 big things that I would say are added, OK, plus that refresh of data and best practices and so forth, OK, that I mentioned. Well, how do you make up for that? How do you add things into a course without taking things away?

Austin Suellentrop 35:57

The big thing we have taken away from the course is -- are some of the videos that we played during the course, right? So in the past, there was a lot of, Watch this video; let's talk about it. Watch this video, let's talk about it. We would maybe watch a coaching call conversation and debrief it. That is either now done as part of the, the digital experience. So part of Digital Kits or sort of prework homework-type stuff that we can do using digital formats, or we just don't use the video, and we go into a demonstration in the room, or we, we maybe play a 30 -second clip of something instead of a minute-and-a-half clip of something, right. So those are the kinds of things, when I thought about best practices that we've learned, best practice from teaching that course was we didn't need as much video content. We need some but not as much. Right. So that's how we sort of got things out to make room for things that we wanted to add.

Jim Collison 36:50

Yeah, good clarification. There is a tendency to have a little FOMO on this, and I'm like, ah, I'm missing out!

Austin Suellentrop 36:58

Look, I've been involved in the design of this course. I want to go through this course!

Jim Collison 37:01

Yeah!

Austin Suellentrop 37:01

Like it's -- but I'm making sure we understand, you're not fundamentally getting anything that different. What I, what I am committed to, all of you, is I'm committed to showing you, best I can, I'm showing you here, here's, here's the new stuff. Here's what it looks like. You make an educated decision for yourself. If you choose -- we're not going to tell you you can't come. We're not gonna tell you you can't take the course again. I'm just making sure you understand there's not a need to. If it's that important to you, we'll just set -- I just want to set appropriate expectations for you that you're going to see a lot of the same stuff you saw before.

Jim Collison 37:33

Good. I think with that, we'll call it a wrap. Certainly if you have continued questions, everybody who's out there today in the chat room knows how to contact me, but if you still, still have continued questions, you can send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Don't forget to get access to all the resources: gallup.com/cliftonstrengths is available for you there. Don't forget to sign up for the CliftonStrengths Community Newsletter that's still available every month, just kind of in addition to what you're getting. If you're a Certified Coach, you get a newsletter; this would be for the greater strengths community. The bottom of any page there you can sign up for that newsletter. We'll send it to you once a month. If you want to, if you're very first time you're listening live, and you want to know, or you're listening to the recorded version you're like, How do I get in this chat room that sounds so important? And it is. You can join us live: gallup.eventbrite.com -- B-R-I-T-E -- gets us there as well. We have a couple social groups you may want to be involved with as well: facebook.com/groups/calledtocoach. Also on the LinkedIn group, just search "CliftonStrengths Trained Coaches" and I'll let you in there as well. Want to thank you for joining us today. We will definitely do a few minutes of postshow. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Austin Suellentrop's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Communication, Activator, Futuristic, Belief and Positivity.