Discovering Your Career Path: Using Strengths to Find Your Passion

Called to Coach Webcast Series -- Season 11, Episode 33

Below are audio and video plus a transcript of the conversation, including time stamps.

Billions of employees already in or soon to join the global workforce -- whether students preparing for a career, workers starting one, or employees seeking to grow in their role or change roles -- are looking for career fulfillment. They're looking to "do more of where [they] feel empowered, alive, in flow, fulfilled, at peace." Purva Hassomal, Gallup's Learning and Development Manager for the APAC region, says applying your CliftonStrengths^® in your current career path, or as you start a career path or seek a new one, can propel you to a life of thriving rather than surviving. What are some practical ways to choose a career path, or to better align your strengths with a role you are already in? How can your CliftonStrengths Report aid you in this effort? What clues to talent can you uncover to help you gain insights on how to better thrive in your career and personal life? Join Purva and get serious about finding your passion.

Your CliftonStrengths profile, or your domains, don't tell you what you can and cannot do. Remember, these are not outcomes; they tell you your how.

Purva Hassomal, 17:52

One of the things that I love about the strengths mindset is studying your successes. ... [But] go deeper. What was it about the learning, about the mentoring, about the presenting that you enjoyed? Get specific.

Purva Hassomal, 25:37

Jim Collison 0:00
Hello, everyone. My name is Jim Collison. I'm Gallup's CliftonStrengths Community Manager, I'm here with Purva Hassomal today, and we're here talking about Discovering Your Career Path: Using Strengths to Find Your Passion. Excited about that. We'll make this available as a LinkedIn Live. We'll also produce this as a CliftonStrengths Podcast. And Purva, great to have you on. Welcome to LinkedIn Live!

Purva Hassomal 0:22
Hello, Jim! It is an absolute pleasure to be here with you. Thank you.

Meet Our Guest on This Episode

Jim Collison 0:26
I appreciate you being here. We need to get to know you a little bit -- a little bit. Let's take a second and do that. Tell us what you do for Gallup, and maybe the favorite part of your job.

Purva Hassomal 0:40
Oh, my God. I was with a group of leaders at one of our clients yesterday. And it was one of my most favorite type of workshops that we teach. They've already all had fundamentals on their CliftonStrengths. And they were really looking at, How do you leverage your strengths to become a better leader? And what I love about our work, and particularly about strengths, is we were talking about, How do you mold your career as a leader, based on where you thrive, on where you get energy from? And helping them shift that mindset that there's not one type of leader; there's not one type of environment. You can make choices, and you can also mold your career. And yes, there's going to be times where, you know, you have to do what you have to do. But knowing where you get your energy from and where you thrive, that's where you live your best life. And in a course, in a workshop, you can see that live. You can see the light bulbs. And so I'd say that's my favorite parts of, part of what I do is helping people see something different for themselves that's just gonna give them energy and make them happier in their lives.

Jim Collison 1:51
I love that. Where are you, where are you located? What part of the world would we find you in tonight?

Purva Hassomal 1:56
Right now, Singapore. I get to travel a lot with Gallup as well, so across the Asia Pacific region. I was in Malaysia on Monday, heading to Dubai, the Middle East, this weekend. And so I get to do with -- quite a bit of work. And Jim, as you know, I'm from Spain. So I've also been lucky in getting to go to do some workshops in Europe as well. So yeah -- I think it's my 12th year at Gallup.

Jim Collison 2:26
Well, it's great to have you on here. Love doing it in this time zone as well -- 9 p.m., or, yeah, 9:30 p.m., Central Time Zone, and, and love being here. For folks that are joining us live on LinkedIn, we'd love to have you, and Austin and Susie have already checked in. But why don't you check in -- put your Top 5 in chat for us. That'd be great. Just go down to the comments, put the Top 5 in there. Love to know -- with that, we got a question for you: And what strength maybe of those Top 5 do you feel like you're using in your career right now? So if you think about your Top 5 and how you're leaning into them, what's that doing? Purva, let me ask you that question, just to kind of prime the pump, as we're waiting for folks to get in here. What do you think -- tell us, tell us what your Top 5 are. And then, as you think about those, what are you leaning in with right now?

Purva Hassomal 3:16
So by the way, reminder to everyone, if you've got a moment, grab your CliftonStrengths Report. I've got mine right here, which is my nth millionth copy that I've printed out -- I'm a hard-copy person. My Top 5 are Woo^®, Communication^®, Positivity^®, Maximizer^® and Activator^®. And I think the word I've heard most, actually, since I was a kid, that has kind of matured in the way I use it is energy. And when I think of my talents and strengths, and I remember Curt Liesveld once talking about kind of the energy trio. Woo is that social energy, the people type of energy. Positivity is the emotional energy. And Communication is the verbal energy, the story energy. And he says when you have all three, it's a bit like a booster.

Purva Hassomal 4:14
And it was only then that I made sense of that word that people would share with me when they saw me doing something. They said, You have this particular type of energy. But I was never able to take that and leverage it in my career till I saw my CliftonStrengths. Because then I could see a use for it. Before I was like, Well, what do you mean? So I don't know if that resonates with everyone where, you know there's, there's something that you've known about yourself or people have known about you since you were younger. And then when you got to see your CliftonStrengths, all of a sudden it was like a translation tool. Oh, this is actually something that can be powerful, something that I can use in my work and in my life.

Jim Collison 4:56
Yeah, I think for me, you know, Arranger^®, Woo, Maximizer, Communication, Activator are my Top 5. And I think I didn't really understand the Arranger bit until I started doing this, where there's 1,000 things going on. I mean, even as we're talking right now, actually, behind things, Reilly hangs out with us. And she's clicking on these things down here, right? She's clicking comments down. She's making, you know, she's making notes for me behind the scenes; she's starring the questions that are coming in. So tonight, if I miss something, it's because we don't have producer Reilly. But I really, with the, with, with Arranger, I really love kind of the challenge of managing all these things at once, right? And it wasn't until 10 years ago, till I started doing this webcasting, that I really began to figure out.

Strengths and Your Career Path: Thriving vs. Surviving

Jim Collison 5:46
And by the way, thank you, for everyone who's putting their Top 5, we make this available on YouTube if you're listening to this as The CliftonStrengths Podcast, you might want to come over to our CliftonStrengths channel on YouTube, and you can see as folks are checking in, you're watching this with me. Like Lise says right here, she says, I'm -- she has Arranger 5 -- she says, I'm using all 5 right now in my role every day. They help me navigate a very ambiguous role, right? Relator^®, Positivity^®, Individualization^®, Strategic^® and Arranger for her. It's great. Keep checking in with these. Purva, I want to ask you this question: Why, why are strengths critical in identifying this, this idea of this career path? What are some of the keys that they give us? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Purva Hassomal 6:31
Oh, my God. I'd say, if I have to have a concept to explain it, it's your CliftonStrengths, both in life, and particularly your career, are going to help you lean towards thriving versus surviving. And so I'm going to ask everyone on the chat. I love how interactive everyone is; I've got my eyes on it as well. Take a moment and just think about what it feels like when you're thriving. And if you want to help me out, I'd love it if you can just type in a few words in the chat. What does it feel like when we're thriving? What are the words you would use to describe that? Jim, what does it feel like for you?

Jim Collison 7:15
Yeah, for me, thriving is this sense of contentment, which is, I was just talking to my daughter about this tonight at dinner. I said, When these moments happen, and I feel content, I have these moments of peace. I have these moments of satisfaction, where this is enough. Yeah, that's, that's kind of how, you know, that's kind of how it feels for me. What about you? How do you, how does that play out in what you, what you're doing?

Purva Hassomal 7:43
It feels like going down a really fun water slide. There's that energy, there's, you know, a little bit of the nerves, but it's a good nerves, and you feel safe. And, and it has that sense of a high, right, when you're thriving. For some people, it's kind of those pieces of kind of doing something that you know you're good at or feeling calm in that. For some people, it's flow. And I want to see kind of how people react to you. I love this. So, energized. Oh, I love Chermaine. It's the feeling of alive! Yeah, Jeff, I also felt that it's flow. And Amanda, you're right. It feels empowering when you're thriving. That's a big piece around it. It can also feel like very peaceful and, like you said, Jim, very fulfilled. You're at the top of your game.

Purva Hassomal 8:36
Now flip it. And I want everyone to think about what it feels like when they're surviving. We've all had those moments in our career and in our life where we feel -- for me, it feels like I'm swimming, and I'm kind of tired. And I'm like, Oh, you know, I can't, I can't do it much longer. And I'm trying to keep my head above water. I'd love to know from our group, what does it feel like for you when you're surviving, at work or in a career? What are those words? Jennifer, that word drained is exactly what came to my mind. Yes, anxious, helpless, restless, like we're seeing there. Apathetic. It's like, I just don't want to do this anymore. Yes, and Angela's saying, kind of, it feels like swimming upstream. And so when you think about this concept of Why is CliftonStrengths so important to my career? When you start to understand your CliftonStrengths, for me, it's a roadmap as to where can you thrive in life and in work, versus where are you going to survive?

Purva Hassomal 9:55
And here's the reality: We're all going to have elements, parts, times where we have to survive. Right now, just before we started, Jim was helping me get my technology set up, I'm surviving. It's not my forte; thank God, he's here. When I have to do Excel, kind of looking in through data, you know, I'm surviving, I'm doing my best. But I've been, I've had the privilege and I've been aware of my strengths enough to go, right, How do I increase the amount of time and the places where I thrive in my career? Can I do more of where I feel empowered, alive, in flow, fulfilled, at peace? And what I've noticed when you start making those choices -- and today, we're actually going to dig in, how you use your CliftonStrengths to do that, by the way; that's what I'm so excited about.

Purva Hassomal 10:46
But the outcome is that -- I do a lot of work on burnout recently. We've released a lot of research on burnout as well. And one of the things I've realized is, when I'm thriving, when I'm using my strengths in that area, I actually am able to manage burnout better, and it affects me a bit less. So for example, if I do 3 things where I'm surviving, it's harder for me to get tired, anxious, stressed. But I can do 10 things where I'm thriving. And I can also be more aware of how I manage kind of that energy. So I think it's fundamental.

Picking a Career: Aligning Your Strengths With a Role

Jim Collison 11:26
Oftentimes, I tell the story, when I first, when I graduated from high school, I joined the military, and I picked a job, specifically because I knew I wasn't good at it. And I thought I would learn, right. And as I got through that experience, I realized, Oh, I kind of made a mistake here. And I think, Purva, as we think about this idea of choosing careers, where we go into work, you know, what are some, what's some practical advice that we can give as we think about aligning our strengths to our roles? What can we do to prevent old Jim from picking a bad, like, from picking a career I may not be good at? Now, I was 18, so I'm gonna cut myself some slack, right, a little bit. Because I didn't know very much then. But can we talk a little bit about that, that, How can, using our strengths, how can we maybe cut that off at the pass or maybe prevent it from happening?

Purva Hassomal 12:22
So there's a couple things. And for those of you that are strengths coaches, by the way, you'll get this, and you can kind of feel free to go more advanced. For those of you that are new to strengths, hopefully, I make you curious, and you kind of get to know a little bit. But the first concept is understanding there's a difference between our talents, our innate abilities to have that potential for excellence and thriving. And there's a difference between knowledge, skill and practice. Right. And so anything that you add knowledge, skill and practice to, you're going to get better, right? Even the things where we don't have that innate talent. The difference is, when I add knowledge, skill and practice to an area where I maybe not have enough talent, I'm going to get probably good enough, maybe even get a bit better. But there's going to be a couple of things missing. And what's missing is what you described to me, all of you, when you are thriving. You know that difference between I'm doing something and I can do it, but I don't feel empowered. I don't feel that sense of aliveness, that rush, that energy, that sense of, I want to do it again, even though I'm so tired, right? That is what describes excellence and thriving. And there's that subtle difference.

Purva Hassomal 13:38
And so the first thing I think when we think about where we invest our time, it's going, yes, there's going to be areas in life where it is really important to have that knowledge, skill and practice, even if they're not where we're going to thrive. Because we need them in life. However, thriving is about ROI. We have limited time and energy. And the earlier we start, the faster we're going to accelerate into that thriving space. How do you make the right choices about saying, If I keep investing in this area, am I only gonna get to there? You know, to that kind of "good enough," and I feel ultimately like a hamster in the wheel, and I'm not getting that energy. And do I want to invest more time in somewhere where I can get -- I know it sounds cheesy, but that ideal of really doing something that you could be really great at and you don't even have to pay me for; that's how much I love it.

Your CliftonStrengths Report and Clues to Your Talent

Jim Collison 14:35
I had a, when I, when I was a freshman in high school, so I was, I don't know, 14, I failed my first year of English, like, you know, I just miserably failed it, right. And that's, you know, that's, that's a difficult situation to go through. And I'll never forget this. My high school English teacher wrote on a note that went home to my mom and dad that said, "It's going to take more than Jim's charisma to pass my class," right? Now, it's, it's funny because you think, you think about this: There was a clue to talent in that that I see now that I didn't see then, right, that I thought, it, you know, at the point I joined the military, I thought, I'll become a mechanic. And I really should have gone into technology or something that used my personality, so to speak. As we're thinking about trying to find those -- that's a little story about me, but for individuals thinking about looking for those clues to talent, what are some practical things, additional practical things we can look at that may hint to those things? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Purva Hassomal 15:41
Yes, perfect! OK, if you're someone who's taken their CliftonStrengths, I want you to grab your report right now. I'm gonna get super practical. And I want you to go to page 21 of your report. Trying to hold it like this so that you can kind of see it in the background; page 21 looks like this. All right, oh, there we go. And what I want you to do is take a look at both that periodic-looking table at the bottom and that bar chart. All right. I'm just gonna start off, I'm gonna give you kind of two frameworks to be, get really practical that you can take away after today and use this -- not just theory. All right. The first is your domains. And for those of you that know strengths, if you can help me out, take a moment and help us describe, What are the domains? Yes, we know there's 4 Domains: Strategic Thinking, Executing, Relationship Building and Influencing. But why do we use the domains? How are the domains useful?

Purva Hassomal 16:44
You, take a sentence and see if you can type in the chat, What is it about the domains? And as I get your descriptions, I'll give you kind of our thinking around the domains. When you look at the domains that you lead with, they tell you where you get energy; they're a clue to where you thrive. They're telling us what we lead with. If you look at kind of Jim's glasses, I always think of them as like the lens through which we see the world; kind of our initial perspective. Now, many people, the first thing they'll do when they look at the domains is they might go, like me, Oh my gosh, I only have one talent or no talent in a particular domain. Now, I head up learning and development for our APAC region. And I only have one talent in Strategic Thinking; Learner^® is kind of in the middle for me. If you were hiring me based on my CliftonStrengths, you wouldn't hire me. And yet, I am able to learn and think when I have to.

Purva Hassomal 17:51
So Myth No. 1: Your CliftonStrengths profile, or your domains, don't tell you what you can and cannot do. Remember, these are not outcomes; they tell you your how. And particularly when you start looking at your domains, they tell you your how to thriving. So when you, for example, take a look at mine -- and Jim, I'm going to ask you the same thing in a moment right now, and I want everyone at home to be doing the same thing. What you'll notice is I lead with Influencing. All right, you see that bar chart. By the way, do you know how to read that bar chart? We don't really explain it properly in the reports, so I'm going to tell you. Listen up carefully. The way you read this bar chart is you read it from left to right. You look at the order of the bars, and you look at the size of the bars. And if you notice (you might not if you only have your report), but what you might notice is that I have 4 talents in Influencing and 4 talents in Relationship Building. And yet, if you look at my bar chart, the Influencing bar comes first. And it's much bigger.

Purva Hassomal 19:03
Why is that? The bar chart speaks to one of the most important things in the report: intensity. If you look at your CliftonStrengths Report, you're seeing the rank order. But the bar chart speaks to intensity. And for me, that's key to where you thrive. So, for example, here, what you're realizing is, I can think and get things done. Everyone can think; everyone can influence; everyone has relationships, but I use those to support my Influencing and the Relationship Building. The domains that I lead with in that bar chart speak to where I get most of my energy, where I thrive. And if I now think back to my career, and I think back to choices that I want to be making, what we want to be asking ourselves is, What are the environments where I tend to thrive? Where I'm able to use that combination of Influencing and Relationship Building more than the thinking and the doing.

Purva Hassomal 20:11
The second practical tip is stop thinking about jobs in terms of the role or the job. Because if I had thought of that when I wanted to do learning and development, I'd have gone Gosh, I don't have Learner; I don't have Strategic Thinking themes. So how am I going to go into learning and development? And yet, I'm pretty good at it. But the reason is because, when you think of how I molded my strengths to that role, I thought about, How do I bring people and shift them towards a different mindset? How do I help people look at themselves, their behavior, and what motivates them, and I care deeply about that, and help them start to think in a different way? And Jim will tell you, I can be a little bit persuasive sometimes -- about the right things.

Purva Hassomal 21:01
And so that kind of allows, allowed me over the last 10 years to make the right choices, and maybe not move into different roles, not move into different industries, because I knew this is where I thrive. And I know I've given you the top level, but I want to hear what you think, everyone, about this concept. Take a look at your bar charts, all right. Take a look at where you thrive, what you lead with. And if you can, in the chat, what I'd love to hear -- and I'm gonna, Jim, I want to hear this for you now, what I want to hear is, How have you used your most dominant domains to thrive? How have they helped you thrive? Can you share an example or two?

Jim Collison 21:46
While folks are putting that in chat, and we'll show those up there, you know, you and I are very similar in our themes. Heavy Influencing, heavy Relationship Building. And I think a really great example of that outcomes that you're talking about is at Gallup, I've had three different, very distinct roles that all had different outcomes, right. I was a manager for a while; I did recruiting for a while; and I became the Community Manager or the CliftonStrengths Community Manager for a time. Sometimes those roles overlapped. Right. And they had, they had very different -- now they needed, I brought to them, that Influence and Relationship Building. Think about, about it as a manager: I want to influence people to get, to get things done, right, to do stuff. As, in recruiting, my job is to recruit people to come work for Gallup, right? In the community, it's my job to, to influence people to build community, right. Our goal is to build groups of people, and all the Relationship Building fit in with all that as well.

Jim Collison 22:50
But each of those allowed me to do things differently. It didn't mean I ran the community like I did when I was managing people. And I didn't recruit like I do with the community. They were very different outcomes, but run through the same lens. And so I love to use that example, because I think I've been fairly successful at all three of those, doing them differently. Right? But, but deploying the same heavy Influencing, heavy Relationship Building in those. And where I couldn't do it, I just got partners. Right? That's just, I got partners who could, who would come, who'd come along with me to help me out. As we're looking in chat, are we getting any, we getting any comments that you want to highlight out there in chat? What are folks saying?

Purva Hassomal 23:37
Yeah, so you're starting to see, for example, Lisa's talking about how her Strategic Thinking helps people see things from new perspectives, right? And so if you were to take that, and then you start to translate it into, Where do I go with my career, right? Whether I'm a university student starting out, whether I'm mid-career, whether I'm looking to transition into something for kind of later on in life, if you are able to help people see things from new perspectives, you could actually kind of pop that into many different roles and types of work. And that's part of what this is about is our strengths sometimes stop us from limiting ourselves to different types of roles.

Seeing Things From New Perspectives: 5 Clues to Talent

Purva Hassomal 24:22
Helping people see things from new perspectives, that could be in technology, where you help people see how a technology can help make their work or life better. It could be, for example, in learning and development, where you help see someone their, look at their development from a different perspective. It could be, for example, as someone in business that's kind of, or in marketing, where you're helping someone kind of look at a new product from a new perspective with the advertising that you're doing. And so, again, when you think about molding your career and making the right choices, the questions to ask yourself, with or without CliftonStrengths, is, What are the things in your life so far -- the activities, the types of things that you've done -- that have given you energy, where you feel that flow?

Purva Hassomal 25:13
And what I like to use for this framework, even without CliftonStrengths, is the 5 Clues to Talent, right? So when you think of that, those kinds of 5 Clues, where have you had yearning? You want to do it. Where have you had satisfaction? Rapid learning? Glimpses of excellence? And where do you feed and flow? And when you think of those areas, What do you then dig deeper? One of the things that I love about the strengths mindset is studying your successes. The more you can study where you've had those 5 Clues to Talent, and you ask yourself, well, you know what? I really enjoyed that meeting that I was a part of; I really enjoyed presenting that work. I really enjoyed going through that data. I really enjoyed mentoring that new person at work. I really enjoyed learning about this new technology. As you start with what it was, go deeper. What was it about the learning, about the mentoring, about the presenting that you enjoyed? Get specific.

Purva Hassomal 26:18
So, for example, a student of neuroscience, I bumped into him at a dinner the other night. And when he heard what I did, and he loved Gallup, right, positive psychology neuroscience, he was going, "I'm trying to choose my career." And he'd been in the lab and been doing a lot of research for kind of his master's. And he was looking at a lot of jobs that, literally, very neatly fit into that area. And I just said, "OK, take a step back. When you think of, for example, your, your whole kind of university and postgrad and master's, what were the parts of it that you enjoyed the most?" And he said, "Well, you know what? When I was teaching what we'd learned and the findings to the professors or the other students, or translating that into something usable." And I said, "What about that did you enjoy?" He said, "Seeing people get an insight that they could use to do something differently." Then I said, "When you think of the jobs that you're applying to right now, you have to ask that question. Are you able to use that in the jobs? Because a lot of the jobs you're applying to were going to be stuck in a lab, research-based, writing reports, but not really translating that," and that's where this person got their energy from.

Purva Hassomal 27:33
And so, again, very simply, with or without strengths, this, for me, is like a shortcut. It's like the DNA, right, where you don't even need to do that. But you can even do it without by asking, What are those activities? Studying that success. Looking at those 5 Clues. And then digging deeper. What about those environments that drove you? Was it the one to one? Was it the big group? Was it the data? Was it the words? Get specific.

Jim Collison 27:58
I love that. As you were talking, it just kind of reminded me, before I started doing what I'm doing with CliftonStrengths and the community, I ran a technology user group, years before this, that I really enjoyed. It was pulling people together. It was regional. So as folks here in the Midwest; it wasn't global, it was just regional, really enjoyed that. And I was on, I was on a regular weekly podcast with someone else, right? Two experiences that gave me the opportunity to say, Hey, would this be something I like and that I'm good at? Right? These, these, these glimpses of excellence that you're talking about here. I, I had some work to do to get better at them. But how great was that to be able to make that jump into that and, and then do it in another role, right? Take those and take them directly to another role.

CliftonStrengths and Personal Growth, Wellbeing

Jim Collison 28:50
Purva, we're about at time here. We have a good chunk of U.S. audience. I'm gonna allow us to go over just a little bit, because I want to ask you this one last question, as we think about it. So we're gonna go just a little bit long. I know if, a lot of the folks listening may not have to go to their next meeting, because there isn't a meeting to go to. So we can, we can stay just for a minute. But as we think about this, right, from a wellbeing and growth standpoint, right, What are some ways, it's not always just about job performance, but how does, how can this affect personal growth and wellbeing? Can you spend just a few minutes talking about that as well?

Purva Hassomal 29:29
Personal growth and wellbeing. So when you find those areas -- and by the way, there's not one area, right, where you can thrive; there's going to be many. But when you start to open up that niche, what you will notice is, you get more bang for your buck. So that same skill, knowledge and practice that you're investing gets you more. And it gets you more in a couple of ways: It gets you more growth, but it gets you more happy growth. So it's growth, and I think we've all had that -- that kind of surviving growth. We're doing something well. We're like, OK, I feel proud that I was able to kind of learn that Excel algorithm. But it doesn't feel as that high that you feel, when you're surviving.

Purva Hassomal 30:14
So when you think of growth, again, think of kind of, What's the sort of growth that I want that's going to fulfill me, that's going to give me that high more, in life and development? And when it comes to wellbeing, I'll go to this. What I've noticed is, when I spend too long in the surviving area, I start to feel drained -- one lovely participant today used that word. And, you know, each of our talents have needs, right? I know, like, for example, this is our quick reference. And you can see the needs; you can see it in your report.

Purva Hassomal 30:47
I love using this because, and I'll give you one example for me. I have high Maximizer, low Restorative™. Right, that's another really practical way to kind of think of where you thrive versus where you survive. When I, Maximizer is good to great. So when I get to work with clients or on projects, like right now, where we're going from good to great, right? Look at everyone participating. They're engaged. They want to learn. They know their strengths. They're talking about this and they're going to a deeper level -- I'm at my best. But imagine you gave me a group of people that were miserable, didn't want to learn about strengths, and I'm taking them from kind of like minus one to zero -- that doesn't motivate me as much. Can I do it? Yes. Does it drain me? Does it affect my wellbeing? Yes. Do I still have to do it sometimes? Yes. But can I start to choose environments that actually help me grow and improve my wellbeing, versus might give me more burnout and drain me? Can I make that choice? If I'm able to, I'm gonna make that choice. But sometimes we're not even aware.

Jim Collison 31:58
Yeah. Can I, can I ask one more question? And it came from the chat. Do you have a minute to stay with me? So Veena asks this question. She says, What if that energy comes from stimulus from an external environment as an, as an extrovert, right, maybe not getting enough of that stimulus, not sufficient enough via recognition or participation? How does one ground or lean into one? How do you, if it's not there, and you need it, what's your advice there?

Purva Hassomal 32:27
Yeah. And that's actually what we get into in coaching and in these strength sessions is, and I'll give you that example. I have high Positivity. And a few weeks ago, I was in a session, and the team was going through a lot of problems and challenges. And one of the goals was we wanted to let them vent. And so we spent a full day, and a big part of that day was just letting them get all their kind of complaints out. That really affected my Positivity -- to your point, I wasn't getting what I needed, right? Now, being aware that I have that need -- it's in my Top 10; in my Top 5 -- what I'm then able to do is manage my energy. And this is when we think of wellbeing and burnout.

Purva Hassomal 33:10
If I had just gone home and left it, that would have probably drained me. But because I was aware, I left that session, and I said, my Positivity is at a very low mark; I need to feed it. So think of, How do you feed your talents, giving them what they specifically need? I thought of one of my friends that has this real positive energy. I call them up. I said, "Do you want to go for a coffee?" And they said, "Yes." I said, "I've had this day; this is what's happened." They were like, "Let me take you for a massage. And then we're gonna go and just hang out." And all of a sudden that 2 hours at the end of the day just refilled my bucket of Positivity. She asked me about what I'd been able to do to bring them to a bit of a better state. She's got Developer^®, by the way, right? And so all of a sudden, that refills my bucket of Positivity. So one of the big things I think is we're always going to get times and environments where we don't get what we need. We're not thriving. How do you actually refill in a different way? But when you think of your career, choose, try and choose things and open up that thriving element throughout your career as much as possible.

Jim Collison 34:20
I love that. Some good comments coming in from the chat room, and there's some intentionality that has to be done. You know, we say this all the time in the recognition space: To get it, you got to give it. And I think sometimes we just need to model that, right? We need to model what we need. We've got to kind of go out and say, OK, well, I may need to do some of these things to get some of this stuff back. So Purva, we could, we could probably go another hour on this. But we, we, we committed to folks to 30. We went over 35, if you stayed with us live. Or if you're listening to the podcast, thanks for hanging out with us. But Purva, thank you very much. It's always great to be with you. There's never enough time, but thanks for coming on; I appreciate it. We want to remind everyone who's listening, if you're listening as part of The CliftonStrengths Podcast, thanks for listening. If you haven't yet, subscribe to The CliftonStrengths Podcast. We produce content like this, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff, available on that. Just, on any podcast app, search "Gallup CliftonStrengths" and "podcast," and you'll find it there. We want to thank, thank you for joining us live today. Thanks for coming out. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Purva Hassomal's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Woo, Communication, Positivity, Maximizer and Activator.

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