CliftonStrengths Strategic Thinking Domain: Teams and Managers

We discover how the Strategic Thinking Domain relates to your manager and your team in this Season 6 episode of Theme Thursday. When we improve teams through owning our CliftonStrengths, we improve performance. When we improve performance, that's how we get to the kind of organic growth that allows us to have stronger economies, a stronger world and better wellbeing. And great managers hold the key: As they move from boss to coach, they help team members understand who they are already and hold them accountable for being even better, maximizing the team's engagement and impact. You might even be a manager in ways you never thought of! So join Jim Collison and Maika Leibbrandt for Season 6, as we focus on teams and managers -- including a new talent-mindfulness challenge at the end of each webcast. Strong themes, stronger teams.

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

Today, we'll talk about Strategic Thinking. That means that anytime you need to influence other people, you're going to do it best through your brain.

Maika Leibbrandt, 8:33

Your talent is unique. And that's the hardest thing for people to understand and to accept is that you thriving might mean going about something differently than it's ever been done.

Maika Leibbrandt, 22:56

Having frequent person-driven conversations, rather than calendar-driven ones, ... might be the single smartest engagement decision that a manager can make.

Maika Leibbrandt, 23:36

Jim Collison 0:00

I am Jim Collison, and live from our home studios, this is Gallup's Theme Thursday, Season 6, recorded on July 23, 2020.

Jim Collison 0:20

Theme Thursday is a Gallup webcast series that dives deep into the CliftonStrengths themes, one theme at a time -- this season developing teams and managers with CliftonStrengths. And today we kick off the Strategic Thinking Domain. If you're listening live, love to have you join us in our chat room. It's actually, there's a link right above me there if you're on a live page. Click on that, take you to the YouTube instance. And you can sign into the chat room, join us there. Like the page and subscribe while you're there as well. If you have questions after the fact, you can always send us an email, and many of you are doing this now: coaching@gallup.com. But don't just do it because many are doing it. If you actually have a question, we'd love to hear from you and do it as well. I know some of you are tempted, but don't do that. You can subscribe to us on YouTube. If you'd like to do that, there's a little subscription button right below Maika there if you want to subscribe. And if you want to listen to us on any podcast app, just search for "Gallup Webcasts." Maika Leibbrandt is our host today. She's a Senior Workplace Consultant. And Maika, it's been a couple weeks. And I know for podcast listeners, they don't care, because they just landed here. But welcome back to Theme Thursday!

Maika Leibbrandt 1:15

It's so great to be back. This, this feels like home and is home for both of us. So great to be here!

Jim Collison 1:20

It is, indeed. With this season, we've been doing the domain by domain. I'll just remind folks that if they're listening, we have a kickoff and a wrap for each of the domains. And so if you want to dig into those, they're available for you. But Maika, it's a different kind of episode. What do we have on tap?

Maika Leibbrandt 1:37

Right. Today's one of those bonuses for Season 6. And as you mentioned at the top of the show, Jim, this season really is all about managers and teams. In my work working with them, consulting with managers or teams or even when an organization wants to look organizationwide, often the fastest way that they start to approach strengths is to look at their, their team's strengths all in one picture or one grid. And usually the simplest way to start to understand and unpack that grid is across our 4 Domains of Leadership.

Maika Leibbrandt 2:06

So we are in our fourth of 4 (chronologically) Domains of Leadership. Today we're going to talk about the Strategic Thinking Domain. And hopefully what we help you really uncover today is thinking about that domain as a whole. Now, as we continue throughout the entire rest of our season, we will, we'll go back to what we've done so far, which is looking theme by theme, and really solving that problem of, instead of just saying, "Oh, well, that's a Strategic Thinking theme, so it means they think." What we help you solve is the answer to the question of "How?" How do these people think? How do they thrive? How can they show up in a team? And how can a manager or fellow teammates really honor and make the most of those themes one by one? But today, it's all coming up for discussion as we're going to talk about all of the Strategic Thinking themes, all sort of as one giant group.

Jim Collison 2:56

OK, so let's back up a little bit. How does Strategic Thinking fit into the -- when we think about the ecosystem of the other domains, how's it fit in?

Maika Leibbrandt 3:03

Sure. So one of the great things about CliftonStrengths being a research-based tool is the ability to individualize. The chances of your results -- looking at Top 5 only -- being exactly the same as someone else's are about 1 in 33 million. But we can also look at which of the 4 Leadership Domains you fall into, or which, oftentimes you'll hear people say, "Which do you lead with?" Or "Which is your dominant domain?" Those leadership domains came about from later research answering that question of not who makes a great leader, but how do great leaders lead best?

Maika Leibbrandt 3:38

So if you've ever seen your CliftonStrengths 34 report -- and Season 5, by the way, goes through highlights of that report theme by theme -- you'll know how rich that 25-page document is. You'll probably also notice that we call out your dominant domain, which is one of these 4: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building or Strategic Thinking.

Jim Collison 4:00

All right, so we got that out of the way. Now when we think about Strategic Thinking, what should we be thinking about?

Maika Leibbrandt 4:06

"Got it out of the way." I'm so glad that was riveting for you, Jim. So individuals who lead with Strategic Thinking simply do their best work from inside their head. And they might be idea people or big thinkers. Sometimes they're the people who need research before they can make a big decision. The common thread through all these Strategic Thinking themes is the "thinking" element. There's, like mental sweat happens. It's an, it's an internal processing. And that leads to better outcomes when somebody with Strategic Thinking actually runs things sort of through their brain first -- better outcomes for them and better outcomes for the people that they lead.

Maika Leibbrandt 4:43

I think it can be easy to look at these 4 domains, especially if you haven't done your homework, and mistakenly assign a hierarchy to them. I'll work with leaders all the time who say "Well, I'm never going to move up in the chain of command if I don't have Strategic Thinking." And I want to caution you because if you even just pick up Strengths Based Leadership, a great Gallup book, you'll understand that these 4 domains aren't to say one is better than the other. And they're definitely not to say you need all 4 in order to be effective. They're meant to say, Hey, this is what's different about strengths-based development and strengths-based leadership is it's not just asking you to replicate how previous people have been successful. It's admitting that your greatest potential, your best resource is to lead in the way that's truest to you. And that you can be better as long as you're aligned to who you really are.

Maika Leibbrandt 5:32

Just because you default to Strategic Thinking does not mean you're the smartest one in the room. Or if you lead with Executing, it doesn't mean you're better taking orders from somebody else. Strategic Thinking offers something that the other domains do not. And to summarize what that is, I'd say it's mental exploration of something unseen. Now what could be, what has been, what detail have we not yet explored? Those are all very different things. They all kind of fall into the Strategic Thinking bucket. They absorb, they analyze, they dream. And on a team, somebody with dominant Strategic Thinking themes really is there to help stretch our performance beyond what we can see.

Jim Collison 6:13

Maika, let's think about -- before we kind of look at the actual themes that are in this domain, on the All 34 report, there's -- we have this, we have this section that says "leads with," right, "often leads with." And we do a little math calculation behind that. It's some fancy calculation that I can't repeat. We have it, but oftentimes it trips people up. When you think about, when you see that, right, maybe I don't have all my themes in Strategic Thinking; maybe I have just one or two. And when I say it leads with it, can you get some clarification? We talked about this when we launched the report, but I think this is a good time to just kind of explain it. What does that mean? Does that mean I can only do that? Does it mean -- just tell me what it means.

Maika Leibbrandt 6:52

OK. So two things: Let's talk about where it came from and then what to do with it. So as you read your CliftonStrengths 34 report, one of the -- two things came out of that report that we had never really released at that level before. One was blind spots, which people love maybe a little bit too much. But we added just some, really, I think, from our anecdotal experience, this is not that we went out and researched everything that could go wrong, but added some color to every single one of your Top 10. So we talk about, you know, how could this show up as a blind spot?

Maika Leibbrandt 7:22

But the second piece was, there's a secondary algorithm that goes on behind the scenes, as you're taking the CliftonStrengths assessment, that is also taking into account not just the number of Strategic Thinking themes, for example, or the number of Influencing themes in your Top 10, but the intensity of those. And so it's not as easy as just counting how many themes you have that fall into either of those domains and saying that's your dominant domain. But when it says it leads with, for example, Strategic Thinking, or for me, it's Influencing, if you read my report, it says "Leads with Influencing." That's based on a separate algorithm, sort of behind the scenes, that takes into account really the intensity of, of how many of those themes you have.

Maika Leibbrandt 8:04

So when -- now let's talk about what to do with that. When you see that, I always draw people to page 21. Because there's a great explanation and a really cool periodic table of All 34, where it colors your Top 10 as darker or more saturated color and kind of fades out the rest of them so you can see, not just which domain is the most dominant for you, but which themes within that domain offer some color and some further insight into why that's so strong for you.

Maika Leibbrandt 8:31

If you know that you lead with -- today, we'll talk about Strategic Thinking. That means that anytime you need to influence other people, you're going to do it best through your brain. If you lead with Executing, anytime you need to lead other people, you're going to do it best by thinking about what needs to be done or what's already happened or what can we roll up our sleeves and do? So I think it has a huge element toward leadership. In fact, that's where a lot of the research came from. It was not just an attempt to simplify 34 themes into 4 categories. It was to answer that question of What do we know about great leaders? Do they have specific themes in common? The answer's "No." What they do have in common is that they know who they are and that they amplify that.

Maika Leibbrandt 9:09

So when you see the, really the first page or the additional information starting on page 21, really what that's helping you understand is if, if I get the pleasure of working on a team, and I legitimately do not have to be playing every single role in the organization, then you've got the opportunity to really be strengths-based. If you're a solopreneur, and you are wearing all the hats, you have to do things that are not going to be 100% in your wheelhouse. But in partnership or on a team, if you get the chance to lean in even farther to where your brain naturally defaults to, that's where you're going to get a whole lot of clues toward how you can orient the way that you attach -- the way that you attack a situation; the way that you think about a challenge; the way that you prepare for a meeting; the way that you ask for help; the way that you offer support to other people. If you can orient that to one of your domains, that's probably the simplest and first step at trying to, I think, live in a way that's more aligned with who you are. And hopefully, it's easier; definitely you'll see better results.

Jim Collison 10:17

That's super helpful, Maika, because I get that question a lot in that section of the report for folks who've only have their Top 5 available. And they go, "Oh, wait a minute, there's an All 34 report?" There is one available. You can purchase an upgrade, apply that to your account, and that unlocks that report and makes that available. We actually spent all of Season 5 talking about it. So we've actually created a webcast series, podcast series, all for you at this point; all available.

Maika Leibbrandt 10:40

Yeah. So I talked about page 21; page 20 is an entire introduction to that. So if you didn't follow what I was just saying, you can read it on your, on your report. You can also grab a coach who can help you make sense of this. Because we are talking about, I think, some pretty detailed ideas and some different abstract ways of considering talent that you may not have heard before. So don't feel like you have to do it alone. We've got CliftonStrengths Gallup-Certified Coaches all around the globe who are ready to help you.

Jim Collison 11:04

We do indeed. OK, let's dig in on the details. Which themes are a part of this domain?

Maika Leibbrandt 11:09

Yeah, you can find out more about this on that report, or in the book Strengths Based Leadership, where we talk about those 4 domains quite a bit. But there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 themes in the Strategic Thinking Domain: Analytical, Context, Futuristic, Ideation, Input, Intellection, Learner and Strategic. Every single one of these themes is going to think, dream, analyze and process slightly differently. And we'll explore that in detail, theme by theme, over the next few weeks.

Maika Leibbrandt 11:41

While you probably cannot tell people you're smart just because you lead with thinking themes, you can find a common thread throughout these talent themes. And I think, in general, no matter what the talent theme is, it's always a good habit to ask, How does this bring value? I think that's probably also a nod to one of our guiding principles: "Lead with positive intent." Strategic Thinking themes provide value by weaving a mental net around the work that a team is doing. So that, that net might be made up of ideas, of insight, of context that without the Strategic Thinking person there really can't be seen. But they can, when they are there, they can be felt as an additional value. Maybe that "net" is of perspective, even. Sometimes this net adds certainty.

Maika Leibbrandt 12:31

So I think about Analytical offering certainty by noticing and seeking proof, truth, data. Context offers certainty in a different way. Their certainty, it comes about by having this constant curiosity of what's happened before, and an awareness of how those fall into a timeline. Intellection provides a thoughtful approach to evaluating a situation. They provide certainty through deep exploration. Sometimes this mental net -- by the way, this is my words, you're not going to find this written in a technical report, but I think about it that way. Sometimes the mental net can provide efficiency. For example, in Strategic. Strategic quickly discards patterns that just don't add up and, and leads to a plan that quickly makes the most of the commonalities that the team is facing or the -- I think about Strategic also as conceptual or theme-based thinking.

Maika Leibbrandt 13:24

Input, in a similar way, can provide efficiency, constantly absorbing information, constantly gathering evidence. And when you need an idea, somebody with Input on your team has probably already done the idea gathering, so, so that part's already solved for you. Another thing that this mental net can add is creativity. Learner is always looking to learn something new, creating a fresh perspective, or a different, relevant, edgy discovery for the team. Ideation brings solutions that have never been thought of before. Or, I think, Ideation can juxtapose insight from one context to another. Both getting to creativity but doing it in different ways.

Jim Collison 14:03

Maika, in the context of a team, I hear this a lot as well. So my team is heavy in Strategic Thinking, like, we see a lot of these themes showing up. It's, it becomes very clear and very evident in a team grid when this happens. What do we do with that information? What -- how do we process that?

Maika Leibbrandt 14:21

Well, you ask first. It's always, always better, right, to turn these into questions instead of assertions or prescriptions. But you can likely prepare yourself really well for a team who sees beyond directly what's in front of them. Maybe this means they're curious about where we're coming from or where we're going. Maybe it means that you just pad time for them to think out loud together. It might also mean that they are going to show their involvement and their engagement by suggesting or exploring better ways of doing what we're doing.

Maika Leibbrandt 14:52

Practically, when I've worked with teams who have a lot of Strategic Thinking talent, one of the things that I find can be most exciting to them is the planning, the roadmapping or discussing the ideas around the action. And this is ideal for some teams and some functions and some jobs. Quite frankly, it can get in the way for other people or other jobs or other roles. So find a way to honor this mental space; give it the time it deserves. And don't be afraid to give that time an end note, because I think it's important for a team high in Strategic Thinking to feel like they've added value to the plan before it has to be executed.

Maika Leibbrandt 15:34

Know that when you're facing a team with a lot of Strategic Thinking talent, they're probably going to ask quite a few questions. And that disagreement is a sign of attention. Active curiosity really indicates that they're engaged. So invite it, thank people for it and learn what happens when it happens most, and create spaces for it on purpose.

Jim Collison 15:55

Maika, this season, we've been talking about teams and managers, so how can a great manager -- and by the way in each of the individual episodes, we offer questions that managers can use. But how can a great manager support a team strong in this Strategic Thinking Domain?

Maika Leibbrandt 16:10

Look for ways that you can share ideas within the team. And look for channels where people can really share kind of that mental space that they have together. Anytime that the team is facing a particular challenge, make sure that you've added an opportunity to say, OK, what is this? How does it relate to anything else we've done? Let's just take a little bit of time and tear it apart before we get going. Encourage team members to keep a journal of their ideas. That might sound like what I did in 4th grade; I had this really cool like diary with -- it had an amethyst cover. It was beautiful. But I hope that that visual sticks in your mind because it's actually what I mean: Find a way that those team members can jot down their ideas. They will likely have a running list in their head anyway. So being able to capture that will create some efficiency for them to even go through and be their own accountability person to say, OK, what needs to get shared, what needs to leak outside of my brain and into the team?

Maika Leibbrandt 17:06

Discuss future ideas, discuss questions, push team members to make the future that they can imagine as vivid as possible for other people to see. And find complementary partners on the team who are going to push each other to act on their thoughts and ideas. You might look for, Hey, how can I get all that mental greatness out of their heads and into their action?

Jim Collison 17:27

We also hear this a lot. What happens then if it doesn't show up as frequently for the team? A team sees the report and it's like, "Yeah, yikes!" You know, how can we respond to that? Or how should we respond to that?

Maika Leibbrandt 17:39

Defuse the "Yikes!" Because it just is -- it's not good; it's not bad. Examine the factors that lead to a specific problem. I think all too often we are, we hold ourselves accountable to making a judgment call on whether that's good or bad, all too quickly. If you see a lack of talent or a ton of talent, you don't have to react to that as positive or negative; you can follow that reaction that you have and get curious about it, you know, use it as evidence. If I see not a lot of Strategic talent, and my reaction is "Yikes," well, what's behind that? Are there specific examples where I feel like we needed this? Are there specific deliverables that the team is in charge of where maybe there's some latent worry that this is going to get in our way? And then talk about what are we going to do?

Maika Leibbrandt 18:28

You're not going to rewire people, and you certainly shouldn't hire somebody just because they're high in, you know, themes that the team isn't. What you can do is you can examine factors that lead to a specific problem on purpose. Really, the difference in having fewer Strategic Thinking themes is just that they'll, they'll have to think as part of their process instead of thinking without being told to. So just make it part of what you do on purpose.

Maika Leibbrandt 18:50

Maybe it's finding time every week, every month to discuss and identify where are we right now and what are our future goals? Taking time to examine large projects with outside stakeholders; discussing how every member of the team can contribute. Make idea gathering something that you do and something that you compliment, something you celebrate. And then you might also consider having the team end their meetings with a shared understanding of All right, what are our next steps? Who's responsible? And what kind of impact is that going to have? That third question of "What kind of impact?" is a way that you can, I think, supplement those Strategic Thinking habits, but still honor where the other talent really lies.

Jim Collison 19:33

How could Strategic Thinking, from, from an idea, from a domain standpoint, how could that maybe get in a team's way?

Maika Leibbrandt 19:40

If it becomes more important to consider "What if?" than "What next?" you don't move forward. And if moving forward matters, then that can get in your way. But don't assume that it's going to or that having a ton of Strategic Thinking talent is automatically going to throw your team into analysis paralysis. Remember to look at a large amount of talent with awe, with inspiration. It deserves it. Really what we're looking at is what makes people great. I think all too often we say, "Oh gosh, there's so much" -- as if it's something bad. What we really need to be looking at is, How can we honor this? Because we've got a highly concentrated patterns of thought and feeling and behavior. Let's make the most of it.

Maika Leibbrandt 20:23

You might help the team navigate any potential blind spots by asking, what's our most important goal? How will we know if we're making progress? When are we dreaming and when are we doing? And how do we clue others into the difference? Where do we get our best ideas? Where and when do we go outside for research or for insight? And analysis like this is always best done with a coach. Even if you yourself are a coach, having an outside perspective who knows a little bit about this tool, I think can help you really quickly accentuate the, the productivity that you hope strengths will help you create. So you want to see the power and truth one person at a time before you look at the entire group. And a coach can help you do that. But then, of course, spot How does that group of individuals come together to form a great team?

Jim Collison 21:15

We spent some time this year talking about moving from a boss to coach. So a great manager in that role, how could they begin to do that? Just exactly what you said.

Maika Leibbrandt 21:25

I think you have to start with your own strengths. So if I'm the leader of a team, and I want to be less like a boss and more like a coach, which -- spoiler alert, that's what people need. That's where we need to get to. You've got to understand first, what are you bringing to the table? What is the lens of talent that informs how you think, how you process, how you create relationships, how you work. Then talk individual by individual about their talents, and then check out your team. So we have some great conversation outlines in our Gallup Global Strengths Coach course. We even talk about a phased approach of How do you introduce a team to strengths? So there's great coaching material. Your coach that you, you know, ask to come and help you can certainly help you do that. Or you could even just use our previous podcasts. Dive into any one specific CliftonStrengths theme that you're seeing frequently on your team, and wrap your head around the power of that talent before you have a one-on-one with that -- with the person.

Jim Collison 22:23

Maika, the, kind of the sweet spot is when teams do this, talk about it on a regular basis. So how do leaders help teams do it on a more regular basis?

Maika Leibbrandt 22:32

Yeah, I think it's that you got to have some kind of accountability to ask yourself that first. Maybe it is a talent-mindfulness practice. Maybe it is a great partner who you know helps you think and inspires you to keep that conversation going with a question mark at the end. So ask yourself, What's it going to take for me to really thrive today? Allow that answer to be different than the person right next to you, even if they're the most successful person you've ever met. Your talent is unique. And that is, that's the hardest thing, I think, for people to understand and to accept is that you thriving might mean going about something differently than it's ever been done. It means paying attention when you're in flow. It means paying attention when you lose track of time. It means when you've had a great day, you don't just celebrate; you get curious about what made it great. And then you keep asking people that.

Maika Leibbrandt 23:21

So instead of saying, "How are you doing?" To somebody with Strategic Thinking, for example, you might say, "What's been on your mind? What are you discovering? What have you wondered about lately? What have -- what do you think the rest of our team needs to do? What should we be considering?" That can be just a Quick Connect. We know that conversations matter; in fact, having frequent person-driven conversations, rather than calendar-driven ones, and making them kind of formally happen because we should, might be the single smartest engagement decision that a manager can make. If you want to learn how to leverage the strengths of the people on your team, just start by getting to know the people on the team.

Jim Collison 23:58

Yeah, and we Know that oftentimes, these engagements work best when they're led. People are leading them. We get leaders involved doing these things and thinking about them. And so, Maika, some great suggestions. We have spent the season working through some talent-mindfulness. And I'm going to say, I'm not sure, did we do talent-mindfulness for all the domains? This may be a bonus talent-mindfulness exercise.

Maika Leibbrandt 24:20

Oh, I don't know. I have no Consistency. So I do not know right now if it is in all the Domain Kickoffs.

Jim Collison 24:25

Let's go -- I'm a Maximizer. Let's go with "bonus." This is a bonus talent-mindfulness. We've been spending the season -- if you're new to Theme Thursday, at the end of each of the themes is a talent-mindfulness exercise. We ask you to use these things; like these, you can take them and use them in your own space in what you're doing -- either in written form or the audio, you can play the audio, you can share the links with people. We really encourage you to do that. Maika, in today's -- it's a good one, by the way; I peeked. Bonus talent-mindfulness. What do you have for us today?

Maika Leibbrandt 24:57

Bonus! OK, so one of the most talked-about things that we've done this season and in Season 5 has been this talent-mindfulness exercise. If you're new to it, give it a try. It's just meant to be a departure from what we've been doing so far, which really is learning, taking notes, committing it to your brain and thinking about how you're going to use it. What this is meant to do is support -- we talked about today -- that daily habit of paying attention to your own talent.

Maika Leibbrandt 25:22

So I invite you to give this the, the attention that it's really designed to deserve. Maybe take a deep breath. The reason we ask you to breathe is it just helps you switch your thinking, getting out of learning and into just observing. You can close your eyes if you like. This will take about 3 to 5 minutes, and I'll be here with you. Don't worry, I'll bring you back; you won't get lost.

Maika Leibbrandt 25:49

Today, we kicked off the Strategic Thinking Domain. But even if you don't have any of those themes high on your profile, you still think. Today's talent-mindfulness is a thinking warm-up. I'll help you sort through a few ideas and land on one that you want to dive into more purposefully. I won't take you through that one; this is meant to be sort of that "on ramp" to further consideration. This might be something you want to replay prior to being coached or to start your day. This might be something that you try every day this week before you make a "to-do" list. I encourage you right now not to write anything down until the end. Allow your mind to run free without constraint.

Maika Leibbrandt 26:36

Close your eyes, relax your shoulders, drop anything you don't want to carry with you for the next 3 minutes. Let's focus now on the past 24 hours. From whatever part of the day it is right now, to this exact point in your day yesterday. During that time, when was a moment, an experience or an interaction that you wish you could have done better? Something that sticks out to you in your mind right now as not having gone as well as you would have liked. You don't have to rank-order all of the "misses" that you had, but just pick one. It doesn't have to be the worst. It doesn't have to be the best. Just the one that floats to the top of your brain as right now what you'd most like the opportunity to redo. ...

Maika Leibbrandt 27:47

Maybe this is a time you were frustrated. Something that comes to mind. All right, with that moment in mind, two questions: Who was involved? And what did you feel? Now without changing or editing the reality of that interaction, I invite you to imagine scooping it up, scoop up that moment, and carry it to your desk or your table, or a place that you can work on it. Set that moment out in a space in front of you. And before you dive into it and really dissect that interaction, just consider two more questions.

Maika Leibbrandt 28:42

First, what will be the end or the outcome of a successful redo for this moment? Basically, how far do you want to take fixing this? And how will you know when you're there? And No. 2, What makes this moment important to you? I'm gonna read those last two questions again. Understanding that you're facing this, this interaction you'd like to redo spread out on your table, how are you going to know you've successfully redone it? And what makes that moment important to you?

Maika Leibbrandt 29:28

Now that we've centered your thinking on one specific interaction that you'd like to improve, and, more importantly, why that matters, you're ready to dive in. On your own, at the close of this coaching warmup, you can dive further into that moment that you've scooped up and spread across your table. It shouldn't take long. I invite you to set a timer for no longer than 10 minutes. And remember where you're headed. You're not fixing the world's problems. You're not retracing the past. You're just revising what you'd like to improve to the point that you have decided is success. You have it within you to adjust. You have permission to change course. You don't have to stay permanent or stuck. You're not a tree. When things aren't working, you can change them. That's your talent-mindfulness for today.

Jim Collison 30:23

"I'm not a tree?" Super great. Always appreciate those, and maybe a bonus; maybe not. And so we appreciate, Maika, I really appreciate those, just from a practical standpoint of being able to apply -- I mean this is really why we moved down this path is to be get -- get beyond the Name it, Name it and Name it and really get into this applying. And these talent-mindfulness exercises are available for you, again, at the end of each one. They're really exercises and application for you personally, and we'd love to have you share those as well. Maika, any final thoughts on our Strategic Thinking Domain?

Maika Leibbrandt 31:03

I'm just so excited to get into it. We're gonna do 2 themes a week. So if you're in the live audience, come back next week. And we'll start with Analytical and Context.

Jim Collison 31:11

Yeah, love to have you here. love to have you live. Just a couple reminders. If you want to get access to all the resources we have available, and you haven't been out there yet, you -- I'm sure you have, but go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. Lots of activities there; lots of articles. We've written a ton. We have a ton of podcasts. We mentioned 6 seasons of Theme Thursday. We've also have 8 seasons of Called to Coach and so we've got -- listen, there's not, you can't consume all the material. Well, maybe you could. I don't know. Maybe that's a challenge, Maika. Can you consume -- maybe we could give a badge for that or something. Oh, OK. We'll think about it. Available for you, that's out there. Don't forget, you can find us in pretty much any platform that serves up podcasts. So any podcast app, just search "Gallup Webcasts." If you're on YouTube search, search "CliftonStrengths." We have both a recorded and a live channel. Subscribe to both; now you get notifications whenever we publish something new. If you're in the live audience, if you're listening right now, it's July 23. We are actually super behind on getting things edited. So you might be wondering, "How come podcasts aren't coming out like they used to?" They are; they're coming, trust me. We'll overwhelm you in the fall. And so those are coming as well, but get signed up for them. If you have any questions, you can always email us: coaching@gallup.com. Join us in our Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/calledtocoach. And then if you want to join us on LinkedIn, you can do both, or you can do either -- doesn't matter. On LinkedIn, search "CliftonStrengths Trained Coaches," and we'll let you into that group as well. Want to thank you for joining us today. If you're listening live, stay around. We'll do a little bit of postshow with your questions. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.