CliftonStrengths® Community Update for November 2020

Austin Suellentrop, CliftonStrengths Portfolio Manager at Gallup, was our guest on a recent Called to Coach. In his November Community Update, Austin spoke of some exciting developments in the CliftonStrengths world, including:

• A milestone in global completions of the CliftonStrengths assessment
• A new Panel, which will give Certified Coaches an opportunity to participate and give feedback
• What coaches can expect through early 2021, including December ICF follow-up conversations and the February Learning Series

A couple of weeks ago, we hit 24 million global completions of the CliftonStrengths assessment. And if you think about what that means -- 24 million -- just stop. Take a deep breath. Like that's a big number!

Austin Suellentrop, 1:33

We will be launching a CliftonStrengths for Managers Report in 2021. This will be ... tactical guidance on what they can be doing ... to leverage their strengths to both impact their performance as well as the performance of their teams.

Austin Suellentrop, 12:52

It's been a year. It's been a crazy year, ... a lot of things happening. We're ending with momentum, we're ending with energy in 2020. And as we go into 2021, man, we're ready to hit the gas pedal.

Austin Suellentrop, 13:54

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 our virtual studios around the world, this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on November 6, 2020.

Jim Collison 0:19

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. Link is just north of me there. Click on that; it'll take you to YouTube. Sign in. We'll take your questions live. If you have questions after the fact on anything, and many of you are sending these, you can send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app. Both iPhone and Android have one. Just search "Gallup Webcasts." And of course, if you're on YouTube, you can hit the Subscribe button and the Like button while you're down there. That always helps us on YouTube. Austin Suellentrop is our host today. Austin is a CliftonStrengths Portfolio Manager here at Gallup. And Austin, it's great spending the morning with you. Welcome back to Called to Coach!

Austin Suellentrop 1:09

Always, always fun to be here, Jim. It's always fun to spend time with you. The preshow conversation was exactly what I needed this morning to get me going. So I appreciate it.

Jim Collison 1:18

I appreciate you and the work that you're doing. We have some exciting things to talk about here. One of them, as we reached a pretty significant milestone, like, pretty amazing. Why don't you talk a little bit about it.

Austin Suellentrop 1:30

Yeah, so, thanks, Jim. I guess it's been a couple of weeks now -- ago, we hit 24 million global completions of the CliftonStrengths assessment. And if you think about what that means -- 24 million -- like just stop. Take a deep breath. Like that's a big number! And so I'd like to sort of point a little context around that number and help us understand, where, where, like, Where were we? And how fast did we get there? Four years to the day that we hit 24 million -- 4 years prior, we were at 15 million. And if you go back 4 years prior to that, we were at 7 1/2.

Austin Suellentrop 2:14

When I, when I went through my, my training to be a Certified Strengths Coach back in 2012, the first workshop I went to, with Curt Liesveld, he had typed up a handout. And it was some of the original Theme Dynamics content. And it was like the theme pairings and these packages. Curt had this beautiful way of being able to articulate how these themes work together. And at the very top, it said, "Based upon database of 6.5 million completions." I've still got that handout in my, in my desk, and some of those tools I still, I still look back at. 6 1/2 million then; we're at 24 million now. How did we get there? How did we get from 6 1/2 to 24 in about 8 years' time?

Austin Suellentrop 3:03

Well, it came from a couple things. It came from the beginning of the boom in our college campuses. Right? It became -- it sort of, we got, we got in on some, some campuses and started having a pipeline of students who just started taking the assessment more and more frequently. We've now got dozens upon dozens of colleges in the United States, in particular, that are leveraging strengths as part of their educational experience. That's created a firestorm and an energy.

Austin Suellentrop 3:35

But that's probably a smaller chunk than what's really driven it, and what's really driven it are about the 10,000 or so coaches out there who are using strengths as part of your coaching initiatives, as part of your training plans and programs, your development opportunities with clients. We have reached this because Gallup is using it with our clients, and you -- our coaching community -- are using it with your clients. And it's so exciting. Because when we decided back in 2012 we were going to start certifying coaches to be Gallup-Certified Strengths Coaches, this was the dream!

Austin Suellentrop 4:14

The dream was that we would build a constituency and build a network of people who were as passionate as we were about strengths and about human potential that could help us spread that message and help us embed strengths in more organizations than we could reach ourselves. And 24 million is a big number. Right? It's, it's a, it's a sign of the progress we've made. It's not where we're stopping. Right? We're not happy and just satisfied with 24 million; we're thrilled we got there. We'll hit 25 early next year, right, the pace at which we're going -- a couple hundred thousand people are completing the assessment every month, right, and that's just, it's just so exciting.

Austin Suellentrop 4:57

So I wanted to start by acknowledging the progress we've made, by thinking about how far we have come, and what does allow, but more importantly, what does that mean? What does it allow us to do, now that we have 24 million people in our database? First of all, we can start to quantify, start to measure a bigger impact on human development. Right? More than 3 times where we started in 2012, that number of people have taken the assessment. We can now see an impact on how people are developing in more businesses, in more communities, in more organizations around the world. It's also allowed us to study people more, right? Earlier this year, right, [Jim] Asplund and I came on Called to Coach. We've published, we've done a lot of work around this latest test-retest research. That comes from being able to have more people in our database over a longer period of time.

Austin Suellentrop 5:52

So the 24 million number gives us more confidence and more validity to our science, and makes us -- helps us to improve the work we do and the tools we create. So that's exciting. It also allows us to study larger groups of people in different segments of the population. So we can now have a larger group of people in our student population that we can study. It allows us to start cutting and slicing data from a D & I perspective, that's such a hot topic right now, and understanding, How does strengths show up in different segments of the demographics? How does strengths, how does strengths show up differently in different industries? Questions that we should be asking to make sure we understand this.

Austin Suellentrop 6:32

By growing our database and by growing the reach of CliftonStrengths, we can study that more, we can have a better understanding of human beings and how they operate and how their talents show up, which only makes us better as coaches. Right? So this 24 million number, it's, it's one thing to hit a, to hit a round number, and it's exciting. And I sent an email out internally to all of our stakeholders at Gallup saying, Hey, we hit 24 million! And that's fun. But what it means is more fun. What it means in the progress we've made and the growing reach of CliftonStrengths is what gets me most excited. Right?

Jim Collison 7:09

Yeah, it -- Austin and a tremendous milestone.

Austin Suellentrop 7:12

Yeah, it really is. So I, I'm psyched about that. I think that, that is to me, in 2020, when I think about everything 2020 has done, that's a highlight I'm gonna walk away with, right, that we crossed this threshold.

Austin Suellentrop 7:31

So what else have we been working on? What are the other exciting things that are coming? This has been a year, I'd say, where we've really focused, and we've really ramped up our effort on trying to get your feedback on what's working and what's not working? What do you love about working with Gallup? What frustrates you? I've held more focus groups this year than I, than I ever had before. I've had more one-on-one conversations with coaches than ever before. And I've learned an awful lot; we at Gallup have learned an awful lot.

Austin Suellentrop 8:01

And one of the things I've been telling you, for months now, I've been, I've been hinting that and talking about that we have created now -- it is in the process of being created is our first-ever Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach Panel. Right. So we are actively right now building that Panel. All of our Certified Strengths Coaches in English, that have English as their primary language, right, have received an invitation to join that. We're getting really positive results from the response rate on that. So if you, if you're one of those coaches who wants to join the Panel, look for that email. There's some, there's a mention to it in the newsletter this month; it just came out.

Austin Suellentrop 8:37

So I think that's something I want to make sure our coaches understand, that that Panel is partially designed for us to better understand you as a community -- to better understand where you are, who you are, so we can study, we can better understand, you know, how to best support you. But also, the main driver is to give us an avenue for ongoing frequent feedback from our coaching community, like, a mechanism we can go to to ask you questions and get your responses. And that Panel is really exciting. Again, we've talked about this, Jim, before. It's not just Jim and I building a survey monkey and sending it out and trying to gather information. It's gone through the rigor of Gallup's Panel-building process; it's gone through all the scientific sort of hurdles and things we have internally, the thresholds and the mechanisms we put in place.

Austin Suellentrop 9:27

We take Panel building very seriously. And it's gone through that. That's why it's taken us a little while, but it's in the process now; we're about to have that, about to have that out there. So we're we're really excited about that. And so it's the first time we've been able to do this. And if you, if you want to be a part of it, there's an opportunity for you to opt in as a Certified Coach. It is for our Certified Coaches only.

Austin Suellentrop 9:47

So if you're on the brink of becoming certified, right, if you're, you've gone through the training, but you haven't got your certification done, it's another reason to really push you to do that. If you're thinking about it, we encourage you obviously to consider that as well. So one of the, one of the things we're going to be doing with that Panel, one of, one of the areas of feedback we've really been focusing on this year is around code management and how Access functions. Gosh, Jim and Lee have done so much in terms of content on like the Access basics and doing webcasts with walking through how to, how to leverage the platform. 2020 has been a year of learning, right, and adjusting to the new, the new systems. I handled, or I hosted about 5 or 6 focus groups with Certified Coaches on code management in particular. And we're really excited that we've got some, some action happening now, right?

Austin Suellentrop 10:38

So in the first quarter of 2021, you're going to see some, some significant shifting and, and streamlining and changing to how code management works inside Access. We've gathered your feedback, we've pulled it together, we've tested and mapped things out. That's coming in the first quarter of 2021. We'll be able to start implementing some of those changes. Very excited about that.

Austin Suellentrop 11:01

One of the other things, one of the other pieces of feedback we received from our coaches in particular -- from our Certified Coaches -- was the subscription to Access, how it works, how it's set up, some of the functionality piece of it. We know that our Certified Coaches have a bit of a unique way of leveraging the platform. And that right now, we don't have a way to differentiate an offering for you. We have one subscription. It's either the consumer model or the subscription model. We're building a different subscription model. We will have a new offering in 2021, which will allow a more tailored set of functionality, a more tailored price point, a more tailored delivery for our coaches. That is coming in, in 2021 as well. So again, both of those things have come directly from the feedback you've provided over the last year. And we're excited to continue that feedback loop and continue to show you the progress we're making, the action that we're taking.

Austin Suellentrop 12:02

The third thing I want to mention in terms of what's coming next year, it's a bit more, I don't know, different, if you will, in terms of what it is. I, I've, I've started chatting about this a little bit socially with some of my coaching, coaching friends. We're gonna be launching a new product in 2021. We're gonna be launching a new CliftonStrengths Report next year. And it is really exciting, and centered around all the work we're doing, and all the work we have been doing, with managers. Right. If you think about the launch of the book, It's the Manager, if you think about our courses and our resources for CliftonStrengths for managers and teams, all the critical understanding we have about how important managers are to team engagement, to team performance, to individual wellbeing, right, all those things.

Austin Suellentrop 12:52

We will be launching a CliftonStrengths for Managers Report in 2021. This will be dedicated content for managers on how to leverage their strengths as a manager, really tactical guidance on what they can be doing day in, day out to leverage their strengths to both impact their performance as well as the performance of their teams. It's really exciting. That is underway. We have been writing that content; we've been working with the formatting in the building of how that report looks.

Austin Suellentrop 13:22

So one of the things that the Panel will have the opportunity to do is to be invited to participate in some focus groups, to be able to give us feedback on how we build that out over the course of the next couple months. So if we think about the next 60 days between now and the end of 2020, that's something we're ramping up our effort on. You're going to have the opportunity as a part of that Panel, if you're a member of that Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach Panel, to join us, to look at it, to give us feedback, to help shape how that goes to market in 2021. So really excited about some things we have on the horizon. It's been, it's been a year. It's been a crazy year, it's been a lot of things happening. We're ending with momentum, we're ending with energy in 2020. And as we go into 2021, man, we're ready to hit the gas pedal. And we're ready to get out there and help more people to help more organizations, help more communities.

Jim Collison 14:12

Austin, there was a lot there. I'd encourage, I'd encourage you, go back and listen to it again, actually, if you're listening to this on the recorded -- if you're live, we'll make this available. There's a ton of stuff there.

Jim Collison 14:23

One, and one of the exciting things is this Panel that has come out for us, this, this way of giving feedback. We've been trying to get all the news and information out to the Certified Coaches. And if you didn't, if you're a Certified Coach and you didn't see that, or you didn't read the newsletter (twice), or you didn't, you didn't, you know, you didn't get that, and you're a Certified Coach, give us a call. Call our customer support. You know, go into gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. At the very bottom, it says [Customer] Support, go through, click through any, any of the topics, and then call us or chat with us. They're ready to kind of give you that individual -- if you're a Certified Coach, they'll verify that and then give you a unique link. So --

Jim Collison 15:04

If you can't do that, email us: coaching@gallup.com and, and we'll get that routed appropriately -- actually, strike that. Send it to our certified email address. So certification@gallup.com By the way, Certified Coaches, any questions around certification? Send us an email there: certification@gallup.com. We'll get right back to you.

Austin Suellentrop 15:22

Jim, Lisa asks a great question. I see that in the, in the chat room. We have a book out there, right, Strengths Based Leadership. And when we talk about managers, right, that there's an element of managers, their job is to manage, right, the, the, the day to day, and then there's an element that's leadership. How is this different than Strengths Based Leadership? Right. And I think that's a really important, very valid question. Strengths Based Leadership is really, the reporting we provide, is very centered around the 4 Needs of Followers, right. So it talks a lot about trust, compassion, stability and hope.

Austin Suellentrop 15:57

When we think about what we're building for managers today, it's much more aimed at, like, the at that day-to-day tactical aspect of managing, and how we're leveraging our strengths to drive performance and how to help people get their jobs done. So it's less of the 4 Needs of Followers oriented, and more about sort of the tactics and the day-to-day management aspect of the job. So, completely valid question. As we bring it to the, to market, we will make sure and differentiate when would this be helpful? When would that be helpful?

Austin Suellentrop 16:28

Look, as a manager, there is absolutely aspects of your job that are both managing and leading. And we've, we've understood the uniqueness there. And we feel like that, that Strengths Based Leadership report is really great at the 4 Needs component. It's been remarkably helpful for a lot of people through this, this disruption of 2020 to focus on the 4 Needs of Followers, myself included. It's been something I've leaned into. This report is aimed at a different intent, at a different aspect of the role. So hopefully, Lisa, that helps, and happy to chat with you if you have any, any deeper questions on it.

Jim Collison 17:02

That'll be evolving as we as we publish here later in the spring. Becky asks, data on location and languages of the 24 million would be awesome. We actually, not a lot of that data is going to be available to you. We do have, on numbers, we have a 21 million report that I have put in the Certified Coaches Facebook group. And that would have a breakdown of the theme frequency by country. Language is a little more complicated. And we are actually -- Austin and I were talking yesterday, we're going to spend a little bit more time with the 25 million, just because that's kind of a more, for a lot of people, that's kind of a more recognizable milestone.

Jim Collison 17:44

And so since that's going to be coming up here so quick in the spring, we're going to be putting some effort into releasing kind of like a report around that, with some data for you guys. So for now, if you want to see the countries, I'm sorry, if you want to, if you want to see the countries that are, that are available with that, you can look in that 21 million report in the Facebook group. If you're a Certified Coach, and you're like, "Wait a minute! I'm not in the Facebook group." By the way, there's another, a Facebook group out there that's not ours that you think is, and it's not. So ours will say "Official" on it. Send an email: certification@gallup.com. And we'll get that back to you.

Jim Collison 18:18

We, we do have, just, coaches, Certified Coaches, our certification team has never been busier than they are right now. We have a lot of things going on. And then I did a bunch of work late summer to find a whole bunch of coaches who we'd lost via email. So be patient with them on the Certified Coaches, on the, on that email address. They're a little backed up; they're a little behind. We're working hard to get that taken care of for you. But they're a little bit behind at the moment.

Jim Collison 18:44

Austin, also, I want to talk about 2 learning opportunities that are coming up. Right. And so this December, we're going to do a follow-up to the ICF a conversations we had in May, and actually ICF produced a report around Coaching Today. And so I just posted those 5 sessions to the, to the Eventbrite page. So if you go to gallup.eventbrite.com, 5 different time zones, 5 different -- well, 4 different regions, one in Spanish. If you want to take advantage of those, head out to gallup.eventbrite.com. You can sign up for those and they're follow-up conversations to kind of the state of coaching today. I think it's going to be very, it's going to be a very enlightening conversation as we look at some Gallup coaches. You want to add anything?

Austin Suellentrop 19:22

Yeah, so Jim, when, when were those initial sessions done that you did?

Jim Collison 19:25

May, May 2020, yeah, May 2020.

Austin Suellentrop 19:27

So think, think about where we were, both experience-wise in May, as well as emotionally in May, to where we are now, 6 months later. How much have, how much more experience do we have coaching in this environment, in this setting, leveraging virtual, having people's experiences, and maybe the, the energy and adrenaline that was pumping in May? Where are we now? God, it's a big 6 months. It's a big 6-months gap in terms of how people have worked through. And I, for one, am incredibly excited about those sessions, because I want to hear from our coaches, and I want to hear from the people who have been doing this, what lessons they've learned about over the last 6 months? What were the things they went into it expecting and anticipating and maybe preparing for that worked? And what haven't? What have they had to adapt and pivot on?

Austin Suellentrop 20:21

I know, when I think about my own work style in May, and the enthusiasm and energy I was bringing, thinking, "Maybe this will be done by the fall"; maybe when I get my kids back to school in the fall, everything will be better. And where I am now, right? And sort of the different mindset we've got with things. So I cannot encourage you enough to participate in those in December, there'll be some great learning in that.

Jim Collison 20:44

Patricia asks a very tactical question, "Do you share the same information on Facebook that you -- and LinkedIn? I don't use Facebook, but I'm very active in LinkedIn." We do. There's a LinkedIn group if you search "CliftonStrengths Trained Coaches." LinkedIn doesn't have the same functionality and allow me to post documents there. So it's a little bit different. And I can't do that, one of the reasons we chose Facebook, you know, 6 years ago, instead of LinkedIn -- I still I'm regretting that decision every day of the week! But that being said, if, if you've got any, if you've got some questions on a document that we would normally store in Facebook, and you want that, send me an email: jim_collison@gallup.com, and I'll see if I can track that down and get it to you.

Jim Collison 21:22

Austin, second opportunity that coaches have? Well, one, if you're not getting the certified, if you're Certified, and you're not getting the Certified Coaches Newsletter, I need to know. So same email address: jim_collison@gallup.com. I have made it my mission to get that newsletter to everyone, whether you like it or not! So --

Austin Suellentrop 21:39

And when I say that -- when he says that -- let's be clear: Jim is manually, when we get like emails that kick back to us (we send an email and it bounces back), this is how much Jim cares. Jim takes that list, he looks at the emails, and he manually follows up on every single one of them, and goes and tries to, tries to search for people on LinkedIn and connect with them. Right. So when we say we're doing what we can to possibly reconnect with our coaches and ensure if your email has changed, and we didn't get updated in our system, let's track you down and get it updated. We want you to be in the loop. We want you to know these things.

Jim Collison 22:12

Yeah.

Austin Suellentrop 22:12

So, so Jim, kudos again. I don't -- I know, I know you do it because you love it and you believe in this. But I can never publicly recognize the effort you make enough. So thank you.

Jim Collison 22:24

I appreciate that. I had to get a little counseling after the 1,600 that I tracked down, back in August, August and September. That, that was, that was a lot. The second one is the Learning Series. So you make sure, in February, middle, middle of February, kind of that week of the 15th, we will be doing the Learning Series. And so make sure you block that out on your calendars as well. That's -- all that information has been in the newsletters.

Austin Suellentrop 22:45

And, to Jim, again, why are -- so some of you may say, Don't you normally do that in January? Don't you normally do the Learning Series in January? Why are you doing it in February? Well, very clear reason why we pushed it back a couple of weeks. We were asked by our coaches to push it back a couple weeks. There's a lot of things that happen in the month of January, in terms of, you know, strategic planning and organizational meetings and companies having big events and so forth, that we had a lot of conflicts on the calendar when we were scheduling it. So the feedback we received was Hey, can you, can you push it back a couple weeks so that we don't have those conflicts on calendars as much? That's really the driver in why we pushed it back.

Austin Suellentrop 23:22

We are really excited about the content we're going to have ready for you for that February Learning Series. Jim, Dean and I are all together with a group of people behind the scenes mapping out what those sessions are going to be. We're going to continue with the approach of different time zones, right. We did that last year and trying, trying to stagger it out to be offering different time zones to reach the different groups across the world. We're really excited about that.

Austin Suellentrop 23:47

We've got, a, hosts joining us from those different time zones. So you'll see some, some different faces involved in those learning sessions. And the topics are getting finalized right now, but we've got some really great stuff lined up. So again, it's one of those really great perks of being a Certified Coach to have access to that quantity of learning. And so, again, looking forward to it. Stay tuned for more of the final details, but it's, it's now information being sent in the newsletters. And we'll have "Save the Dates" out there soon.

Jim Collison 24:18

Patricia also asks, she says, "February is much better." Any news about the 2021 Summit, or is it too early?" It's not too early! Actually if you go to gallupatwork.com, details about it, everything we know is out right now. Plan to be in-person. The next question is, "Will a virtual option be available?" We don't know yet. That's probably too early. We're kind of, kind of waiting to see what's going to happen and what's going on. So if you want to follow the latest on everything, everything summit, gallupatwork.com is the best place to go for that right now. It is early; we're, with, with the pandemic, we are kind of week-to-week on that as far as just planning out and knowing what we can and can't do. Would you add anything to that?

Austin Suellentrop 24:57

No, gosh, the, the pivot to virtual last year with that summit was a big adrenaline rush for a lot of us at Gallup. And I think the feedback was so overwhelmingly positive that we're excited to actually have some time to prepare this year, in terms of, Do we need to be virtual or in-person, right? So I'm excited for what that, that's going to look like this year. Again, we're still finalizing plans. But we do have, as we get updates on that, it is all pushed right to the website.

Jim Collison 25:25

Hey, Donna had asked on the, on the newsletter, oh this is a good question, "Does the Coaches Newsletter come from Gallup or some other address?" It does come from a Gallup address; I think it's mail.gallup.com. So make sure you're whitelisting us, coaches, to be getting that email address. So that's a good, that's a good point. And then Marina asked, "Is there any way to check if there are materials translated into other languages?" Marina, you and I have been talking about this via email this week, speaking Hebrew. We don't currently have it, have access. All the supported languages for Gallup Access, if you really want to know what we have, the easiest way to do that is just go to, go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. Sorry, I lost my mind there for a second! That'll take you over to -- go to sign in. So sign in at Access, again, gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. That's what you should be using; it'll take you right to the Strengths Dashboard. Upper right-hand corner is a language switch. You can drop that down and see what's available.

Jim Collison 26:18

If it's not in Access, Marina, we probably haven't done any other content around it, just to be 100% honest; there's not a lot out there. So translations are really difficult and really hard. But if you want to continue that kind of conversation with me around that, we, we recognize there's a bunch of languages that we don't, that we haven't done, and we recognize that, but we always appreciate your commitment to helping in that. And of course, you guys, one, one of the, one of the things -- let me just really be cautious, and I've seen a couple of these recently. Please don't try to take our assessment and translate it yourself. That, that goes beyond the terms of what you're doing here. So if you have any questions on that, or you think you want to do that, or whatever, you can still continue to contact us. We can route that through. Translations are very, a very long process. They take, Austin, I think we are still working on some things. COVID set us back on some translations of things, and, and we're still working on it. It's just, it's a lot of hard work to get translations done.

Austin Suellentrop 27:17

So, again, translations -- I'm highly sensitive to it, because we are, we, we understand we support a global community. And we understand we support a global movement with this. So we, we are committed to providing content and resources in as many languages as we can, that get leveraged and get -- and that will get used, right. And so early in 2019, or earlier in 2020, we were talking about French, Spanish and German, having all of our resources in Access translated into those languages. Right? COVID had other plans. And so we are working on those. They're not done yet, but we're working on the resources being translated in Spanish, French, and German, all the, all the content and the resources. The platform, as Jim said, the Access platform itself, you can see the, you can have that drop-down menu, see all the languages, right? The assessment, again, you can have that drop-down menu, see all the languages for the assessment.

Austin Suellentrop 28:08

The reporting, the resources, those kinds of things, are available in a fewer number of languages, because of the I -- the process of translating intellectual property, the vetting, the checking, it's a time-consuming and expensive process. We don't like to run that kind of stuff through machine translations that can be faster and done. We got to make sure embed it in a different sort of higher level. So it's tougher for us in that. Continue -- again, that's a piece of feedback. Continue to push on us to get things translated for what you need. That's how we know how to help prioritize, right? So great, great question. We'll, we'll continue -- I'm, I hope you all know me by now to know, I'll be as honest as I can be, and I'll give you everything I can give you. If it's not going to happen, I'll try and tell you it's not going to happen. But that's the kind of things we need.

Jim Collison 28:56

Austin, one of the, one of the -- I get this feedback all the time, especially in other languages, about the, us mistranslating certain words that were in there. And, and so, "Oh, it didn't get done right." We, we spend an enormous amount of time and effort and money to validate those words. What I think, what people don't really understand is oftentimes the words -- and even in English have, we've struggled with words. So some people think this is -- let me give an example. We used to call Consistency "Fairness." And I actually like "Fairness" better. Like I think it describes -- the word "Fairness" describes what Consisten -- the, the heart of Consistency better than Consistency does. That's what I feel. We chose to go with Consistency, and that's how everyone sees it. That happens in other languages. And I do understand like, you may have a better word for it. But actually, you have an opportunity as a coach to explain that.

Jim Collison 29:49

So whenever I, whenever I talk to people, I actually use this story of Fairness and Consistency when we're talking about it to people, and say, you know, we used to call it Fairness because of this. And then you get to start describing what this is. Because we know these talent themes, right? These rollup of talents are more than just a word. And so use your coaching, use your superpowers as a coach, and an opportunity in this. Don't get stuck on the translations; move past that and move on with it. Changing -- going in and changing those things in our systems is a long, long process. And I understand, so do your best to push through those with us. And again, if it's, if it's a word that, if we've described it in a way, and you want to do it a little bit different on that, get to the heart of what we're trying to do there with it in the language that it is.

Jim Collison 30:38

Austin, one more question, and then we'll wrap it. You sent an email to our BP10 community around what we're doing with BP10. Can you just kind of summarize that that email?

Austin Suellentrop 30:48

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So when we think about BP10, 2020 again, lots of things happening, lots of things changing around us. There was some word on the street out there about changes to the BP10. So I sent a note out to everybody who's gone through our training around BP10. We are still -- the assessment still up and running. Books are still being sold. The codes still work; the reporting is still the same. The tech, the website where you go to do it, nothing has changed in terms of what we offer around BP10. It is something we believe in. It is something that, when our coaches, like yourselves, leverage it, it has a great impact. We have had some wonderful conversations in the last week or two with coaches who are using BP10 in some really great ways. Right? So that is still being offered.

Austin Suellentrop 31:35

What I mentioned in the email was, Hey, we've paused some things we had hoped to do. We've paused some technology investments in BP10. We've paused some course offerings around BP10. We've done that, because, like most organizations impacted by COVID this year, we had to prioritize budgets and prioritize resources. And what we are offering with BP10 is still up and running. It's still, it's still a part of who we are, right. But we chose to allocate our limited resources to other things. And that's really what it is. If you have questions about BP10, you can reach out to me, right. I put my name on that email. I'm here in front of you now. You can reach out to me directly. I'm happy to talk with anybody one-on-one about your questions, your concerns around that. Again, it's just we're trying to be smart and very intentional with how we prioritize. I wanted to send that note out to hopefully put some, some people at ease around what our plans were so that we can sort of squash the rumor mill a little bit. But again, reach out to me directly; happy to engage you one-on-one.

Jim Collison 32:36

Yeah, you can also send emails: coaching@gallup.com if you've got some questions around it. Austin, any, any final thoughts before we wrap it?

Austin Suellentrop 32:43

You know, I've continued -- 2020 has provided me, personally, I think, a great exercise in, in reframing, like reframing what's happening. Am I going to allow what's happening in this world to dictate my mood and my energy and my outlook? I've got high Futuristic, high Positivity. I, by my nature, I'm thinking about what's next. And I'm excited about next year and the year after. It's much more fun than right now. But it's really challenged me to, to reframe everything I'm experiencing. And when I think about this community, our group of coaches, all of our coaches in education, all of our coaches that are independent out there running your own, your own organizations and helping clients, all of our coaches embedded inside of businesses, right. When I think about 2020 in my relationship, and what I, how I view that community, I am so remarkably grateful for the feedback, for the patience, for sometimes the real brutal, candid honesty that you shared, right.

Austin Suellentrop 33:51

But also, I'm so grateful for things like I experienced yesterday, when I joined the Theme Thursday webcast yesterday live, and the energy that I got from that and the enthusiasm I felt from our coaches talking about themes yesterday. I've been energized by the excitement and the energy that, that you, the coaching community, have shared with us at Gallup. So part of my enthusiasm and excitement for 2021 is seeing the progress we're making. But also hearing from you all the things you're hoping to do, all the things you're wanting to do, all the things you're currently doing. That when you combine all that with all the things we have planned at Gallup for the next year to come, oh my gosh, it's exciting. And I cannot wait for December 31 of 2020. We can, we can celebrate all the greatness of 2020, put it behind us and move on to '21. But between now and then, in the next about 60 days, we got some really exciting things to do.

Austin Suellentrop 34:52

And so I hope you join us for some of these focus groups. I hope you join us in the Panel. If you're not certified yet, I hope you take the leap and you do it. Again, Jim, always, thank you for inviting me out here. I'm thrilled, thrilled to do it and look forward to continuing to partner with you.

Jim Collison 35:07

Kind of my favorite part of my job is this 30-minute, twice a, every-other-month conversation with, and kind of open and honest conversation. It's one, it's one of the few -- well, that's not really true. But it's one of the few that I feel I can be really candid in and just say, Guys, we're all in this together. You got to help me, though. You got to help me help you.

Jim Collison 35:29

And so, along those lines, a reminder, if you want to take full advantages of all -- full advantage of all the resources we have available on Gallup Access, that address I mentioned earlier, a visit: gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. Really kind of bookmark that. That's the best place to have folks come in, takes them right to their Strengths Dashboard. While you're there, good idea to sign up for the CliftonStrengths Community Insight Newsletter. So we produce a monthly newsletter, what's going on in strengths community. It's actually at the very bottom of the page on, on gallup.com. So head out there today. There's some other -- by the way, there's some other newsletters that are available to you. There's an education one and there's a poll one. So head out there, you'll want to check that out, the very bottom of the page, just go to gallup.com search, or just go to the bottom and look for those newsletters. For coaching, master coaching, if you're thinking about becoming a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, we'd love to help you with that getting into 2021. And if you're interested in any of those, send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Join us on any social platform, just search "CliftonStrengths"; in most cases, that will get you right there. (That's one word, by the way: CliftonStrengths.) And thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this, if you found it useful, share it. It's a Community Update. It's meant to be shared. So share that with your community. Want to thank you for coming out today. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

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