Webcast Details
- CliftonStrengths Podcast Season 4 Launch: Powerful Partnerships
- Why is there a need for a collaborative mindset in the workplace?
- What can you do to foster a collaborative culture in your work relationships, and what tools can you leverage to move toward that goal?
Collaboration and meaningful partnerships are essential to unlocking individual strengths, driving engagement and achieving better outcomes. In today’s world, fostering a culture of collaboration offers teams and individuals a competitive advantage.
Collaborative Mindset
A collaborative culture starts with a mindset shift -- from focusing solely on personal strengths to fostering relationships that amplify collective talent. While understanding and leveraging your own strengths are crucial, long-term success comes from discovering how those strengths can complement and synergize with the strengths of others. “Our strengths develop best in response to another human being.”
The workplace is increasingly demanding collaboration, making strong partnerships vital for success. Teams and individuals who experience powerful partnerships are significantly more likely to stay with their organization and achieve higher levels of engagement. In fact, according to Gallup, having just one collaborative partner in the workplace can make someone 29% more likely to stay with the company for another year and 42% more likely to stay for their entire career.
What Makes a Powerful Partnership?
Powerful partnerships go beyond cooperation. They create environments where individuals thrive, fueled by trust, respect and a shared understanding of each other's strengths.
The “Bring and Need” framework is one practical collaboration tool for cultivating these partnerships. This approach encourages individuals to articulate what they contribute and what they need from others to perform at their best. For example, someone with Achiever excels at driving tasks to completion but may benefit from a partner with Focus to help prioritize and set clear objectives.
The Role of Theme Dynamics
Understanding how different strengths interact -- known as Theme Dynamics -- provides deeper insights into how partnerships succeed.
Internal Theme Dynamics helps individuals see how their own strengths naturally work together. External Theme Dynamics explores how one person’s strengths interact with those of a partner. These insights can lead to innovative solutions and stronger connections.
Leaders and teams who understand these dynamics can identify partners who either fuel or complement their strengths, fostering higher productivity and creativity.
Tips for Leaders, Teams and Individuals
Leaders
Create a culture that celebrates collaboration. Recognize and promote strong partnerships within teams. Tailor communication and strategies to the dominant strengths on your team to boost engagement.
Teams
Regularly discuss strengths and partnership dynamics. Incorporate conversations about the “Bring and Need” framework in team meetings to help members understand how to support each other better.
Individuals
Identify a key partnership and explore ways to strengthen it. Reflect on the qualities that make it work and find opportunities to enhance collaboration. Small steps, like partnering with a colleague on a fitness goal, can create unexpected professional benefits.
Recognition Drives Growth
Recognition plays a powerful role in accelerating partnerships. Recognizing and celebrating strong partnerships not only reinforces positive behavior but also inspires others to invest in their collaborative relationships.
“When you recognize great partnerships, bring in strengths. Talk about how they are partnering in ways that bring out the best of one another to get to those powerful outcomes.”
Final Thoughts
Partnerships have the power to transform the workplace, but the journey begins with intentionality -- recognizing the value of strengths, aligning them with complementary talents and fostering genuine connections. Leaders, teams and individuals who prioritize meaningful connections unlock extraordinary possibilities. Invest in collaboration to build a culture where everyone thrives.
Learn more about using CliftonStrengths® to help yourself and others succeed:
- Watch more CliftonStrengths webcasts like this episode.
- Sign up to get CliftonStrengths content sent directly to your inbox.
- Shop at store.gallup.com for CliftonStrengths access codes and other essential strengths-based development products.
Gallup®, Q12®, CliftonStrengths® and each of the 34 CliftonStrengths theme names are trademarks of Gallup. Copyright © 2000 Gallup, Inc. The Gallup Q12 items are Gallup proprietary information and are protected by law. You may not administer a survey with the Q12 items or reproduce them without written consent from Gallup. Copyright © 1993-1998 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.
Jim Collison:
[0:00] Welcome to Season 4 of The CliftonStrengths Podcast, where we dive deep into how CliftonStrengths themes build powerful partnerships and help teams thrive. I'm Jim Collison, Gallup's CliftonStrengths Community Manager.
Jillian White:
[0:11] And I'm Jillian White, Gallup's Subject Matter Expert on Culture and Leadership, and our Lead Subject Matter Expert on CliftonStrengths.
Jim Collison:
[0:17] We are excited to have you here today. This is the Season 4 launch. And Jillian, I couldn't be more excited. I've been waiting for this for a while. For folks joining us today, this is the first day for them, but you and I have been planning this for a couple weeks. I want to say "Thank you" to you. I don't think anybody realizes how much work it is to get all of this stuff in and ready, all the practice that we did and all those pieces. Jillian, thanks for saying "Yes," and thanks for coming on here. I appreciate you.
Jillian White:
[0:47] Well, Jim, it's really fun to get to partner with you on this. And, as many of you know who've been listening to this for a while, you said this is fourth season for CliftonStrengths Podcast, 10th season for Jim overall of leading the CliftonStrengths community. So incredible job just building a strong community of strengths practitioners. And Jim, you know, this is something I'm incredibly passionate about. And so, you know, even before this call, we have people who are joining us live as a part of today. We have a truly global group of strengths practitioners. I think we had four continents just joining us live today, and I know we'll have a number who are listening to this after the fact. And we truly, truly hope this is something that is helpful for people having more strengths-based conversations that make better lives, stronger workplaces.
Meet Our Host for Season 4 of The CliftonStrengths Podcast
Jim Collison:
[1:31] That's awesome. If we, if you want, if you're listening to this in the podcast form or on YouTube, we'd welcome you to join us live, if you want to join the recorded versions of this. We're out ahead of you on that by the time you listen to this, but maybe there's still time to catch up. So head over every Friday. We are available 11 a.m. Central to record these live, and we're on our YouTube channel. Check into the Facebook groups or catch me on LinkedIn if you want additional details. Jillian, I know you. A lot of folks know you from your hosting work at the summit and the speaking opportunities you've had. Or maybe even in the consulting that you've done, there may be organizations that are listening now that you've worked with. Others may not know you. Give us a little background, a little Focus on You. Tell us your Top 5, and then let us know what you do here for Gallup.
Jillian White:
[2:18] Yeah, fantastic. Well, it's only appropriate to start with my Top 5, talking to CliftonStrengths community. So my Top 5: Achiever, Input, Learner, Belief, Responsibility. And Jim, I was telling you this beforehand, but I love thinking about our strengths as a visual. And for me, if I had to create a visual around my Top 5 strengths, it would be a wheel. And at the very center of the wheel, the hub of the wheel, would be my Belief. So for me, doing something that has a strong sense of purpose, doing something that has impact, doing something that serves other people -- I get passionate about that. And that's what excites me about even being a part of this podcast is doing something that feels very purposeful and helping people have more purposeful partnerships. For my work for Gallup, I'm a Subject Matter Expert. So, Jim, I've been with Gallup, it's now 16 years, over 16 years. And based out of Chicago, I came here right after grad school.
Jillian White:
[3:13] And, you know, a lot of times I get people who say, like, what is a Subject Matter Expert? And it depends on the day what you are talking about as a Subject Matter Expert. But simply put, what I get the privilege to do is to take our Gallup insights and data and simply use it to help leaders lead better inside of corporations and to help companies create cultures of teams that thrive. And so I love what I get to do. You know, you've heard my Top 5 strengths. Jim, one thing I got to take on over this past year, we have done some work inside of Gallup to make everything we're creating inside of Gallup be a little bit closer to what our clients are using and doing. And so I've taken on a Lead Subject Matter Expert role for CliftonStrengths, which allows me to play this liaison role between our clients and Gallup. And there's a lot of exciting things that are coming out of that. So this is even one of those things that helps us stay connected and serving our clients better.
Jim Collison:
[4:11] I love that. My, my spouse has Belief really high. And so it's, it's going to be fun to, now knowing that about you, we're going to spend a lot of time this season thinking about powerful partnerships.
Jillian White:
[4:25] Yes. And Jim, I should probably add on the, you know, outside of work side, too, I know we'll get, all get to know each other as we go through these seasons. But that Belief shows up a lot of different places. For me, one of my passion projects I've gotten to be a part of was actually through my church and getting to help build a leadership development program. So the Belief shows up that way. I also, Jim, you mentioned Sarah, your spouse. I just got married this past summer. And Jim, I mentioned this at the summit, but here's how I knew he was the one: He took Clifton StrengthsFinder without me even asking him to. That's a sign of a potential powerful partnership right there.
The Need for Powerful Partnerships in the Workplace
Jim Collison:
[5:03] Indeed. Well, I'm excited to get to know you. The best part for me in these -- and I hear this from the folks that listen live or listen via the podcast -- is we all kind of get to know each other during this. And so, what a great way to celebrate 10 seasons of this and thinking about powerful partnerships. We're going to say that a lot during this season -- powerful partnerships. And we think there's, there's think, yeah, we think there's, there's three areas we're going to cover in this podcast. And we're going to break those down, much like we've done in the past seasons of The CliftonStrengths Podcast, to give you some, kind of some, some helpful hints on these themes, one at a time. Jillian, if you were to think, I mean, I kind of already said we're talking about powerful partnerships, but if you were going to think about, what are you hoping folks get from this from an overarching standpoint -- just the, the, the opening volley, so to speak, what, what would you say?
Jillian White:
[5:59] You know, Jim, we mentioned this at our summit this past year, but one of the Don Clifton -- you know, founder, positive psychology, founder of Clifton StrengthsFinder, one of the quotes that he is known for is saying that "Our strengths develop best in response to another human being." And what I love within Gallup, we've done an incredible job, our strengths community has done an incredible job thinking about how to provide things for individuals to discover their strengths. Think about even our book that's out there called Now, Discover Your Strengths. And what I love about this evolution is maybe our next book is Now, Discover Our Strengths, is that we get to move from the me to the we. And you and I have talked about this on a couple of our past podcasts on Called to Coach. But we know, as you look at the research, there's a greater need for collaboration in the future of work. There's a greater need for partnership.
Jillian White:
[6:51] If we have any Certified Coaches who are listening with us, what is one of the most common questions that you get after somebody looks at their own strengths? They want to know the strengths of somebody they're close to -- whether it's their spouse, their manager, somebody they're working with, a good friend. And so our hope through this season is that we get to move from me to we and actually give very practical ways to say, How do we partner better? How do we collaborate better? And Jim, you know me, I've got Input and Learner in my Top 5. So I love bringing in some tidbits from our research on this. And any guesses, when you look at how many people actually experience a powerful partnership in the workplace, any guesses how many people do not ever experience a powerful partnership?
Jim Collison:
[7:37] Oh, that's a good, that's a good question. I don't know if I know the answer to that one.
Jillian White:
[7:41] A fourth of people say they've never experienced a powerful partnership. But go back to our research on this. If you have at least one collaborative partner in your workplace, you are 29% more likely to stay with that company the next year, 42% more likely to actually stay with that company for your career. Now, bring this, imagine you're a leader in an organization, right? You better be paying attention to the partnerships that people have inside your organization, because it makes a difference to the bottom line. We know -- Jim, we've talked about this -- 20% of global workers are actually chronically lonely. And when we help solve for that through the workplace and create collaboration and partnership, it's helping social wellbeing of individuals.
Jillian White:
[8:25] But we also see that teams that do this really well see better business outcomes. So you've got higher engagement, you have higher safety numbers for teams with great collaboration and partnership, better customer scores -- they know how to partner better to serve their customers -- and higher profitability on those teams. So yes, it's something that's really good for just relationships, but it's also good for thinking about how to strategically give shorthand for talent to partner better, to serve your clients, to serve your customers inside of an organization.
Powerful Partnerships and Having a Best Friend at Work
Jim Collison:
[8:58] A fourth. That's a crazy statistic. By the way, you just got a sample of what Jillian is going to bring to the podcast every single week. Like, if that's not amazing -- you're going to want to be here for that. She's going to bring a lot of those numbers to us, and that expertise in that space. So Jillian, great way to just kind of tell them what we're going to do, but in a way that you're going to do it every single week. Before we dig in a little bit on the content that we're bringing, that idea brought up a question for me that I'm going to ask you in a kind of a consultative manner; we didn't practice this in advance. We think about powerful partnerships. We also have a question on our Q, on our Q12® survey, Q10, which is Best friend at work, How close are powerful partnerships and this idea of a Best friend at work? Can -- synthesize that a little bit. What are your thoughts on that?
Jillian White:
[9:49] Yeah. Well, and just to zoom back for a minute, I know we've got people at different places listening in. We may have clients who work with us on employee engagement. But if you go back to our research on what creates a high-performing team, we find 12 drivers of what creates a high-performing team. And I always remind people, there's -- one of those 12 drivers is one that we get a lot of pushback on. And it's that one, "I have a best friend at work." And I remind people, it's one of 12 items. So Jim, to your point, that question right there can be a good indicator of relationships on a team, right? And if that item is high, I go, OK, there's some good ingredients here. And a lot of the numbers that I just shared with you for great partnerships actually match numbers who are high in that Best friend item.
Jillian White:
[10:39] So, for example, in manufacturing settings, I get to work with some manufacturing clients. Imagine you have people out there making steel doors in a facility, right? And if you have a best friend at work in that environment, you are actually less likely to have significant safety accidents. So think about that for just a minute, right? If I work with somebody who's a best friend at work, and I go, "Hey, Jim, I know you, I know your kids, I know your grandkids. Wear your helmet while you're doing this, because I want to make sure you're doing it safely." So there's an element of having each other's back. What I think gets added when we think about partnership is the other 11 drivers of a high-performing team. Yes, we want people to have good relationships, but in a work setting, we want those to be good, productive relationships. And so, when we've got a Best friend at work, who we also get to do our best work with, who we also get to contribute to the mission together and learn and grow together, that to me is the winning partnership in a workplace, is a productive, life-giving partnership that you see results from.
Jim Collison:
[11:46] I love that. I was, as you were talking about that, I was thinking about, you know, as we think about powerful partnerships, I recently, in the spring, picked up a new workout partner, who's here at Gallup, that I was struggling to get my workouts in. And I thought, you know, I need, if I'm going to do this, I have to do this in the context of another person. I just have to. It doesn't work any other way for me. I can't work out alone, right? And so I picked up Mike Kinney. He'll hear this. And, but he's also a powerful partner to me in this, in this podcast, in these webcasts that we do, because he, like you, is a big statistic guy. And so when we're working out, he's always talk -- "Jim, did you know?" And he'll, he'll do, he'll throw out these stats to me. And so it's become a, not only a strategic partnership from that standpoint, it's been a wellbeing partnership, because we're doing some great things together. And quickly has become a Q10 for me, as far as a Best friend at work kind of, kind of doing this. So I get 2 for 1 out of the deal. How's that for a powerful partnership?
Jillian White:
[12:47] That's a great example of a powerful partnership right there. And I, you know, I would encourage anybody who's listening in to this, when, your leading question, Jim, was just, What do you want to get out of this season? I would reverse that question to everyone who's listening in, right? So get a very real picture in your mind of someone who you partner with that you find as a vital partnership. And where can you take that to a next level in this next season? I mean, start personal, right? Take one of your own partnerships. If you're leading in an organization, think about how you're supporting partnerships and actually making those be more like that picture you just painted for us, Jim, where it's that person who, when you work together, 1 +1 doesn't equal 2; 1 + 1 equals 3+, right, as you get to partner.
Powerful Partnerships and I Bring, I Need Statements
Jim Collison:
[13:36] Yeah. Yeah, no, exciting. Looking forward to that. I'm sure, for those listening to the podcast, you're going to hear Mike come in from time to time on this. as far as his influence on me and some of those things as well. We're going to break each one of these episodes down into three, kind of three topics and go through them. We've spent some time, we, during the summit this last year, we released some new content available for everyone. If you log in to, if you go to Gallup Access and log in and look at your Strengths Dashboard. Now in the, in the Community section, which may get renamed here at some point, we'll have to figure that one out as that happens. But the Community tab, there is the opportunity that you can connect to other people. And when you do, there's a little Compare button there by them that you can now click on. And you get some I bring and I need statements. And we want to pull those out. Why are those important? What are we hoping to do with those, Jillian? And why is it important, as a part of our podcast, that we cover that, when we think about powerful partnerships?
Jillian White:
[14:39] Yeah. So what you're getting an idea of here just in this season launch is the structure that we're going to use for our upcoming sessions, right? So we'll always do a quick little refresher. We'll go strength by strength. We'll do a quick little refresher on what that strength is. And then, as Jim's talking about, in that next section, this to me is the meat that relates to our goal of the podcast, which is powerful collaboration, powerful partnership. I like to think "Strengths together" has a nice tagline to it, right? How do we live our strengths together or be stronger together? And when we go back to that, Jim, remind me of the starting question. This is, my Input has me too far off.
Jim Collison:
[15:16] Yeah, no, no, right on. Bring and Need.
Jillian White:
[15:19] So Bring and Need. If you go back to that section of what we're going to cover, we just want to make this as practical as possible. So we want to give us a really, really simple framework to actually put these concepts into action. And Jim, it's funny actually looking back on the evolution of the Bring-Need framework. So think about what it's doing. Bring and Need is a simple way to say, I'm Achiever No. 1, right? What do I bring to us working together, Jim, with Achiever No. 1? I bring stamina. I bring drive. I bring a willingness to step up to a challenge, right? But what do I need from a partner, in order for that Achiever to be at its best? So it might be things like, I need help prioritizing and knowing where to aim that energy, right? You're getting a sneak peek, by the way, on Achiever that's coming next. But here's the fun story behind this. This framework, I have to give a shout-out to our clients on this. So any of our Certified Coaches, you're going to get an opportunity to hear from Caroline Day, who's a Senior Strengths Coach at an organization that I get to partner with. They have over 700,000 employees. She's going to be a keynote at our Strengths Coach Learning Series this March. And she was actually a part of the initial evolution of these Bring and Need statements.
Jillian White:
[16:41] We rolled out a strengths-based approach, along with engagement and several other things as a part of a performance-management rollout within their organization. And as we were working with groups, Caroline said, "We need a simple way to take something like the Best of Us exercise, which is really, how do your strengths help and hinder you? And what do you bring and need as you're working with other people? We just need a simple way to give people a way to look at their strengths in partnership. So she actually started using the Bring and Need statements. And any of you who do work closely with CliftonStrengths or have gone through our strengths coach certification, we have some resources that take strengths and easily synthesize them into some simple statements. And Bring and Need is a part of what we have already synthesized around these strengths.
Jillian White:
[17:25] So in my role now with being the Lead Subject Matter Expert for our CliftonStrengths practice, part of what we did is we said, How can we update our technology and our tools to use things where we've already put in the hard work on the content and take something like that simple framework that clients are already using and bring that to scale and let more people get to use that and take advantage of that? So you're now going to see that mirrored in Gallup Access, our technology tool, but it's also going to be a structure that we now use in this podcast to help people think about strength by strength, what does it bring to collaboration and partnership? What does it need? How does it, how does it show up in its best form when we're using that framework?
Powerful Partnerships and Theme Dynamics
Jim Collison:
[18:09] Yeah, and we'll, we'll bring those out, kind of vamp on them in our, in our own, get, bringing some of our own information in. But that, that information is available out there today for folks who want to get into Gallup Access and see that compared to, compared with someone else. The second section we want to cover is on Theme Dynamics. Talk a little bit about, well, that's certainly not a new term, and we did a whole season -- Season 2 of the, of Theme Thursday is based on that. Thoughts on where we're going to be going with Theme Dynamics?
Jillian White:
[18:36] Well, Theme Dynamics, as you know, Jim, this is such a fun space to play in. I think section 1, Bring and Need, pretty straightforward, right? This, to me, is the art side, where we get to play around a little bit. And Jim, you may have some thoughts on this, but the Top 5 report that we had come out, one of the things we added in there was actually, I think there's two ways to look at Theme Dynamics. So one is Internal Theme Dynamics, and the second is External, so me and another person and how our themes combine. We're going to look at both in this podcast. So with each theme, we're going to go back and say, What's the theme most likely to partner inside of someone? So if I have Achiever, the most common strength that it partners, or the most common strength that shows up with inside of a person is Learner, right? So we say, What's different about how I partner with people if I've got Achiever and Learner? So Theme Dynamics in that Top 5 report, this has been a top hit, is looking at how every strength combines with your other Top 5 strengths. The second thing we're going to look at is more of that external view, so how my strengths partner with someone else. So Jim, as you and I partner, right, how does that actually show up?
Jillian White:
[19:55] And one fun thing -- maybe our, maybe anyone listening in on this first one can give some fun ideas around this. I've been playing around with some terms. And I know I use this in any coaching that I get to do. Several of my colleagues help people think about, What's a great partner to you when you look at your strengths? And to me, there's something powerful in saying, Who is somebody who just unlocks your strengths? They unleash something inside of you. They accelerate something inside of you. They fuel something inside of you, right? So if it's an Achiever, you know, who helps you achieve more, right? So who's that partner that you're looking for? And then on the flip side of it, I also think there is merit in looking at Who is someone who complements you? Maybe some fun language with this is like a fueling partner and a foil partner. You know, something that says, Who fuels you? And who do you need to be, Hey, I'm going to bring my Focus to make sure your Achiever is aimed, right? So we're going to use that framework as we talk through Theme Dynamics and look at both the internal and the external.
Jim Collison:
[21:05] Yeah, I'm excited to bring that back. We'd spent some time talking about that a while ago. And with the, with the new Top 5 report of it having those clues in there for every single one of your Top 5, I think it's a great reminder to go back and refresh some of that thinking. You know, there are, there are more combinations of those Top 5 than we can absolutely talk about in a season. So we probably won't cover yours.
Jillian White:
[21:27] We won't cover everything.
Powerful Partnerships and Tips for Leaders, Teams and Individuals
Jim Collison:
[21:28] But they're available in the report. That's a common question: Can you talk about mine? And I'm like, well, we can't talk about them all. But we will give an example of them and encourage you to get into that new Top 5 report. I still find folks who are just now finding that and saying, "Oh, man, why didn't you have this earlier?" Because we have it now. So get in there, get it done, and get it consumed. OK, the third section we're going to spend is Tips for Leaders, Teams and Individuals. Give us some idea, what are we hoping to do with that section there?
Jillian White:
[21:57] Yeah. And, you know, some of this comes from just thinking about who are our target audiences for this? You know, we know we have, we know we have a lot of coaches or practitioners around strengths who join. So we want to help you think about how to use this in your coaching. We also know, for me, I get to work with a lot of leaders inside of organizations. And so there's a part of me that thinks, if I'm somebody leading inside of a company, right, let's say I'm leading a division. Let's say it's the CEO leading their executive team, right? It's a manager leading the people on their team. How do I take this and make it super practical? So that I'm actually going, OK, take this information. I've got somebody I'm working with on my team who is high in Achiever, high in Belief, right? How do I lead them and coach them differently?
Jillian White:
[22:44] And even from a leader perspective, something we've been having fun playing around with is, if I'm leading a group of people that has this -- so imagine I'm leading a company, and I look and go, our No. 1 strength across the entire company is Achiever. How do I help that leadership team think about how they're communicating to people in a way that speaks to the strengths of those people, right? So that collaboration even between leader to group or group to group, it's going to get practical for leaders, for teams. We all know the role the manager plays with the team, so how can a manager use this? And then, because we know partnership is something that, you know, we want to help people with in the workplace, that's a part of our mission, but we also know it's something that's just a part of living and our lives. And so that's why we're covering that third category is individuals, as human beings. You know, some of that's going to be in the workplace, but even take your example, Jim, of a great partnership. That's somebody you work with, but you're now working out with. So there's a line that is both work and personal coming together. And so, how do you think about a powerful partnership just in life in general? And we want to get super practical here, to say, what's some tips for leading somebody or working with somebody that has this strength?
Jim Collison:
[24:04] You work with a lot of organizations. And if you were to give some advice on how an organization could utilize a podcast like this, the easiest thing we always think of when we think of podcasts is the individual -- yeah, sure, downloading it, listening to that as they travel, or catching that time as they're, they're commuting in to work, or walking the dog, or some of those kinds of things. But with all your organizational work, can you think about, hey, how could you take not only this season, but maybe some of the past seasons and use them organizationally? Any thoughts on that?
Jillian White:
[24:37] Jim, I was already doing that yesterday. So I was training a group of people inside of an organization to be what we're calling Strengths and Engagement Champions. And it's all of their heads of HR. This is the same organization with over 700,000 employees. And so we wanted all of their heads of HR for all of their different client accounts to essentially have this background. And so what I did with that group is I actually, I actually gave them a little independent study project. And I said, "Take a little time, go in." I had them go back to, is it Season 1 that's the Theme Thursday shorts that -- I can't -- wherever the Theme Thursday shorts are.
Jim Collison:
[25:16] It's its own. That's its own.
Jillian White:
[25:17] It's its own thing. Oh, my goodness. We have so many resources. But I had them go back and just said, "Hey, take some time to get a little more savvy around this, and start with your own Top 5, right? Go in, learn a little bit more, get more familiar with how these strengths show up. You're working with somebody that has that. Go back to one of those podcasts and listen to it." So that's idea No. 1. A couple other ideas. If you are joining, and you're a part of, let's say, a coach or champion network in an organization, a lot of times, we know fueling that network is powerful. Do something like you would do with a book club. Pick one of these podcasts, have people listen to it, and get together and talk about it. That's a very, very easy way to continue investing in ourselves as practitioners and get smarter in this.
Jillian White:
[26:03] And then, final one, if you're inside of an organization, so let's say you're a manager, your team, maybe what you do is you look at some of the top strengths on your team, and you listen to these together, have people share, have somebody share who this is their top strength, right? Somebody who's high in that Achiever we're going to cover next week -- listen to it, you know, bring it to your team meeting, talk about some of the things that make sense. Final thing I would say is, think about how to recognize and spotlight great partnerships. So use the tool for that. For me, some of the fun things I've gotten to do with clients is, let's say you have a town hall, and you bring two people on stage who are great partners, and you put their strengths up. And you say, "How do they partner together?" And you start to create a model of what it looks like to be intentional and have purposeful partnerships that have performance outcomes.
Jillian White:
[26:58] I think we just got a lot of -- purposeful partnerships with performance outcomes. There we go. But I would love to hear from people who listen in on this podcast. I can't wait to hear the ideas of what they come up with. Because if there's one thing we know about the community that listens to this, these practitioners, they are creative, they're resourceful. And so, if you're listening in on this, share back with us how you use this. We can't wait to hear.
The Power of Recognition in Partnerships
Jim Collison:
[27:26] Yeah, love to hear how, in seasons past, I've had individuals that they took pictures of the groups. They, like, Hey, every Tuesday, we get together as a group and listen to a past episode of, in those days, of Theme Thursday or The CliftonStrengths Podcast. And then we talk about it. And that's such a creative way. We can't, in a season like this, and with the time availability, we're going to do these podcasts in about 15 minutes. So they're going to be very, very fast. Not intended to be exhaustive; intended to get you enabled and rolling in your work as a coach, however you do that. And to really excite inside organizations, to fuel them for success, right, in what they're doing with these powerful partnerships. I will add this to it, Jillian. I think, if you ever want to accelerate partnerships, the key is recognition, right? Get powerful recognition, meaningful, authentic, right, all those things that we say in that, but getting recognition working, so that these, I think the partnerships grow faster in the context of authentic recognition. I don't know, do you have any thoughts on that before we wrap this up?
Jillian White:
[28:37] That's a great idea. And just to put something practical to that, within Gallup, we actually give a, we call it a Power of 2 award, right? And people can submit, hey, who do you think is doing exactly what we're talking about, living out a powerful partnership? So to your point, Jim, you know, recognition can be incredibly powerful when we incentivize the behaviors we want to see more of. And so, if we know partnership and collaboration is important, how do we recognize great partnerships and great teaming? So teams who are working together. And when you recognize them, bring in strengths, right? Talk about how, even if you don't have Clifton StrengthsFinder, talk about how they are partnering in ways that bring out the best of one another to get to those powerful outcomes.
Jim Collison:
[29:22] Yeah. Jillian, any other thoughts? We've, we've come to the end of our time here today. Just a reminder, if you want to join us live, you can do those Fridays, 11, 11 a.m. Central Time on our YouTube channel. We'd love to have you join us live. Final thoughts, as we wrap this for today?
Jillian White:
[29:38] A final thought is, I just want to invite you all on the journey with us. So if you are interested in being a part of creating powerful partnerships, whether that's through your coaching, whether that is through leading in an organization, come join us for this season. We can't wait to hear from you and how you're getting to apply this. Thank you for being a part of a strong strengths community. And come join us for the journey.
Jim Collison:
[30:03] There's been a host of questions that have been asked with the live audience and chat. We'll cover those in the postshow. One of the benefits of joining us live is a little bit of postshow that doesn't make the recorded version. And so if you're listening live, hang tight. I'm going to, I'm going to wrap this part of it up. Don't leave. We'll be back here in just a second.
Jim Collison:
[30:20] With that, we'll remind everyone to take full advantage of all the resources we do have available in Gallup Access. If you log in and head over to the Resources tab, upper left-hand corner on the menu, hit Resources, you put in any theme, all these seasons that Jillian and I have been talking about, they're all there. You can get them there, see what, they're all titled by the theme that they are, as well as the theme of the year. And so a great resource for you, if you want to catch up before we get started on this in a full season. Maybe you need to catch up on your Top 5. Maybe that would be a reasonable thing to listen to. That's only 50 episodes.
Jillian White:
[30:55] That's a good starting point.
Jim Collison:
[30:55] Maybe for your No. 1, it's a little more realistic in a week to get that done. So, so don't forget, we got those resources for you available as well. If you're listening live, stay a, stay around for that. If you're listening to it on the podcast, we may have another episode available for you next. Just click Play. Keep listening. Thanks for coming out today. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.
Jillian White's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Achiever, Input, Learner, Belief and Responsibility.