Launching CliftonStrengths in Your Organization: Strategies for Success

Jim Collison:
[0:00] I am Jim Collison, and this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on February 27, 2025.

Jim Collison:
[0:06] Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and Gallup-Certified 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 live chat. Many of you are checking in already. If you're listening to the podcast or the YouTube video after the fact, you can always send us your questions: coaching@gallup.com. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or right there on YouTube, so you never miss an episode. Dean Jones is our host today. Dean is our Global Talent Development Architect and Senior Learning -- although, Dean, there's been some updates, so maybe I should ask you that role. But Dean, great to have you on Called to Coach. Welcome back!

Dean Jones:
[0:50] Yeah, thank you so much, Jim. It's great to be here. Super happy to be here. And yeah, my role has changed. I have been, for the last four or five years, I've been leading internal learning at Gallup. And now I'm moving to a new role where I'm going to be working with kind of our strategy around our coaching community, our strengths coaching community and also with our strategic licensees around the world. So I'm excited about that. That's kind of the transition that's underway in progress right now.

Jim Collison:
[1:16] Yeah, I'm super excited about that. I used to get to work with you often. Now I get to work with you literally every day, which is, which is super exciting. We're excited to be back on Called to Coach. We've had, the last half of the year, and the beginning of this year, have been super busy. We've got these now scheduled for you six times throughout the course of the year. So folks may be coming back, listening to the podcast on Called to Coach. They say, "Jim, it's been a while." It has been a little while since we've had Dean on. We'll get to catch up with him today. Today, we're talking about launching CliftonStrengths in your organization, these strategies for success. Dean, I think we've spent a lot of time at Gallup talking about these, and I think we continue to refine and think about what that means. I think you've got a great story to tell on this today, so I'm kind of excited to hear it from you. We've been through this. As I've read through your notes, I'm really excited to kind of learn with you today, so welcome, and what do you have for us?

Dean Jones:
[2:12] That's great. Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it. Yeah, I thought, I was, I was thinking about what, what, what to talk about and, and just, I guess, recently I've been spending a lot of time understanding our coaches community. And I've really been looking at who's in our coaches community, and what's the work they're doing. And we know that at least about half of our coaches community are coaches that work inside organizations of all sizes. And about a third of them work in very large organizations, organizations that typically have more than, than, than 5 to 10,000 employees in them. About two-thirds of our coaches work in organizations of less than 5,000 people -- two-thirds of the coaches that are in organizations. We also, on top of that, 50% of coaches that are embedded in organizations, we have another, roughly speaking, about 30% of coaches that work independently, and most of those coaches work with organizations to help them understand CliftonStrengths and adopt CliftonStrengths.

Dean Jones:
[3:13] So I thought it would be useful to spend our time today kind of talking about what is kind of the pathway for launching strengths inside of your organization. And I think it's very useful. I think a lot of times, we talk about, you know, that we're talking at a kind of an individual level or a team level. I think it's useful to kind of talk at an organizational level to say, Hey, what are those big phases that you go through as you're launching strengths inside of an organization? I think, so whether you're in an organization and you're thinking about, Hey, how am I, how should I be doing this or how is it going for me? Whether you're an independent coach working with organizations, helping them to do this, hopefully this is applicable for everybody.

Dean Jones:
[3:56] I do have a thought today. I guess, we were laughing before the before the, before the podcast today. I'm you know, I'm such a teacher. Right. So, you know, I'm like, I'm always giving people homework. Right. So. I think it's useful for you, if you're listening today or watching today, that as you're going through this, you're thinking about your organization, the organization that you work in or the organizations you work with to think about where are they in this process? So I think it's useful as you're thinking about this to say, Oh, yeah, I see that happening. I see that happening. Hopefully, I think one of the values of this construct is that you'll get a good sense of, OK, where is my organization? And what are some of the actions I could be or should be taking to move strengths along in the organization and help them to continue to develop?

Dean Jones:
[4:43] So anyway, we've broken this down into three phases, right? I want to talk about the first phase. I think that's the phase that most of us are familiar with, but I think it'll be helpful to kind of talk about what we're doing with this. I call this the "Introducing CliftonStrengths" phase. And this is the part where we're, as we work inside of an organization, we're getting them set up to really understand, we're bringing them into the world of CliftonStrengths, so that they understand what CliftonStrengths is. They can start to speak the language of CliftonStrengths. They're thinking about through the lens of talents and development and strengths around that. So we're bringing them into that kind of world around that. And a lot of what we're doing in this phase is starting to kind of create strengths experiences for people, so they have sort of a sense of, OK, what is CliftonStrengths? During that time, you know, we're using a lot in this phase the construct that all of you learned in the Global Strengths Coach course, which is the Name it, Claim it, Aim it construct, right? And we know that really what's behind that -- as coaches, we know the first phase, Naming it, is really about talent identification. Do I know what my talents are? Can I identify those talents? Can I put language to those talents? That's the first part. That's what we call "Name it" is really that talent identification piece.

Dean Jones:
[6:05] The second piece is talent awareness, and we call that the "Claim it" piece. We know that claiming your talents or building awareness of your talents really has two pieces to it. One is it's making sure I've got good awareness of my own strengths and others' strengths -- I've got, I understand what that is. I also am able to really appreciate those. So awareness is not just, Hey, can I, do I see where my Activator works, you know, on the court? Or can I point to somebody else's Deliberative talent or Achiever talent? But also, do I appreciate my own and do I appreciate others' talents? So I'm looking through that lens. One of the things we know, and I think I've said this before, but I think it's an important point to make, which is that people, if you don't accept and appreciate your own talents, you never can develop them. You can't ever move past that point. So until you've fully embraced your talents and strengths, you can't, that's the access to really being able to develop them.

Dean Jones:
[7:08] So when you got people that are still quibbling about, "I wish I had Strategic," right? Or "I wish I wasn't Deliberative." Or "If I only had Empathy, my whole life would have turned out," right? You know, when they're doing that, we got to get them past that point. We got to help them with the acceptance piece and with the appreciation piece, so that they can move on and really start to invest in those talents and strengths and develop them.

Dean Jones:
[7:32] And then, the third piece is talent application. And that's where I start to be able to point my talents and strengths at goals, outcomes, objectives, the things that are really important to me at work and in life, so I feel like I'm using my talents and strengths to be able to move my life forward and to move my work forward. Now, the challenge that we run into in this phase is that people get stuck real easily with Naming and Claiming. You know, it is a very lovely, comfortable space to be in when you're Naming and Claiming. When people are learning, you know, when you're learning about your own talents, it feels good, because you feel validated. It's like, "Oh, yeah, I've always been that way, and I never knew how to talk about it." Or, "Wow! I always felt like this was a contribution." Or "People told me I shouldn't be that way, but I can see it's now a talent." And, man, that feels great, right?

Dean Jones:
[8:25] And then, as people start to develop their awareness around it, you know, it's wonderful to say, you know, I have talents and can express them. And I can see other people expressing their talents. The big challenge is you really -- so there's a lot of people, a lot of teams, a lot of organizations that get in that phase, and they think that's all there is to CliftonStrengths. And they never move into the application component, right? And you really haven't -- you're really not accomplishing this phase until people start to move into the application piece of this. So that piece where you're not just that I know my talents and strengths, but I'm starting to apply them. The thing I always say, and this is, How do you know when people are starting to apply them, right? Is, how you know when people are starting to apply their talents and strengths if they start to formulate strategies for how to use them. They can tell you what's their strategy for using their Relator or what's their strategy for using their Achiever.

Dean Jones:
[9:30] What do I mean by "strategies"? They've got ways of using their talents and strengths that help them to be successful. And they're conscious of those ways of doing those strategies, and they can talk about them. They can say, "I do it this way." One of the common examples I use is with me. You know, before I did CliftonStrengths, I knew I was kind of a people guy, you know, I was a people person. You know, I'm like one of the most extroverted people anyone's ever met. And then I did CliftonStrengths and realized, like, in my top themes, I'm like almost all Influencing, right? And so the thing I didn't realize was, no, I'm an Influencing people person. I have this one, in my top 14 talent themes, I have this one lonely Relationship theme called Relator, right?

Dean Jones:
[10:19] And knowing that really helped me to figure out how to build relationships. Because I could start to then, I knew that, oh, if I'm going to work with a team of people, I got to get to know them one-on-one before I start working with that team. So that's a strategy that I use. So what you want to be listening for to know, are you starting to help people to build strategies is -- and apply their talents and strengths -- is you can hear the strategies coming out of their mouth. They can start to see, you start to ask them questions like, "How do you use your Achiever to be successful? How are you using your Learner to be successful? How are you using that Individualization to be successful?" When you can start to hear them articulate what their strategies are, then you know you're starting to move into the application area and people starting to think about that. So let me just pause there, Jim. Anything you wanted to add about that or say about that at this point?

Jim Collison:
[11:11] Yeah, you know, the, of course, you triggered my Name it, Name it, and Name it idea sometimes, as we just -- and it does feel good, right? I see this a lot in the community. Listen, The CliftonStrengths Podcast is an exercise sometimes -- we've, we point it and give applications for it as well, but it feels good to kind of spend some time talking about that. Dean, I, I do, the other thing I see inside organizations sometimes is someone has such a deep desire to get the ball rolling. Like, they're, they feel they're alone. I'm the only one who wants to do this. And then they begin. So they, they, they kind of, you know, they kind of start reaching out to figure out how to get this thing rolling. And I hear, "If I can just get the executive team to buy off on it," it would, you know, and there's, there's more to it than that, right? Than, than just, just starting, like, "If I could just get the CEO to say, 'Yes,'" it's, it's a much deep, there's more, there's deeper roots to it than that, right?

Dean Jones:
[12:11] Yeah. And what we notice, it's interesting. For a long time, we would say to people, The way to introduce strengths, CliftonStrengths to your organization is, start with the CEO. And that's actually, it's great if your CEO is bought in and he or she wants to cascade CliftonStrengths in your organization. What we see in most cases, even, and in most cases, particularly with big organizations, is it just is not a top-down strategy. Oftentimes, in bigger or medium-sized, big organizations and educational institutions, it really is a bottom-up kind of movement. It's a grassroots movement. And a lot of where it starts is having people who are strengths coaches and strengths advocates inside the organization who get really excited about CliftonStrengths and want to start to build momentum around that. If we get to it today, I'll talk a little bit about some of the strategies for introducing strengths to organizations. We know there's some different ways you can do it. So as you're thinking about it, if we get to that today, I'd love to kind of talk about that a little bit.

Jim Collison:
[13:12] Yeah. And creating that momentum, sometimes, that can't be ignored. Right?

Dean Jones:
[13:16] Right. That's right. Where there's so much momentum in the organization that people say, "Oh, yeah, we got to do something here."

Jim Collison:
[13:21] Yeah, for sure. OK. Keep going.

Dean Jones:
[13:25] OK. Well, so we're still in that first phase, introducing CliftonStrengths. So you're thinking a lot, a lot of the content of what you're doing, as I'm saying, is Name it, Claim it, Aim it. Identifying talents, building awareness of talent themes and, as you're developing strengths, starting to focus on talent application. A lot of what happens in this phase, I want to kind of talk a little bit about what kind of is happening in the organization during this phase. During this phase, there's a lot of needs, what I call "needs assessment," right? Where you're listening to people, it's like you're looking at where they are and what they need. You know, what do I need to be able to understand the strengths? Where am I getting stuck around CliftonStrengths? You know, what does this mean? You know, like that. How do I learn this language? So there's a lot of needs assessment that's happening in the organization at this time. Typically, also at this time, there's a focus on a lot of formal learning opportunities.

Dean Jones:
[14:22] So, you know, inside organizations, there's formal opportunities to learn, and then there's informal opportunities to learn. And we've talked in the past about the famous formula -- the 70-20-10 formula for learning inside organizations -- that 70% of learning should be on the job or experience kind of based learning, as opposed to 10% that are formal learning opportunities. In this case, a lot, in the beginning, typically, is formal learning opportunities. And the intent of that is to make the language of CliftonStrengths accessible for people, to make it feel intuitive, to make sure it's available so people start to do this. In a minute, I'll talk about some of the activities that typically organizations do or sponsor during this period of time.

Dean Jones:
[15:08] The one kind of caveat I would say to the whole thing during this time is, you want to make sure that you're avoiding kind of creating a priesthood, right? What do I mean by that? You want to make sure that it's not, that the experts are holding CliftonStrengths, and everybody has to come to the experts to understand it or for it to be interpreted. You want to make sure during that time that you're encouraging ownership of the CliftonStrengths language and the CliftonStrengths tools with people throughout the organization. And so, during that time, you want to do the things that you do when, as people are learning, which is to foster a lot of support, a lot of experimentation, you know, support a lot of play with it, let people know that they should mess around with it, they're not going to break anything or anyone, you know. And, you know, if they get it wrong, it's OK. You know, so you want to make sure during this time that you're really helping people to pick it up and to feel like they own it for themselves. Not that it's like, I've always got to go back to Jim to tell me what this means, right, around this.

Dean Jones:
[16:16] Some of the activities that you see commonly in this phase in organizations -- so one is you see a lot of kind of launch events, right? You're creating excitement and momentum. So there's information sessions or introduction sessions. Sometimes you see big launch events inside organizations. Sometimes you get keynote speeches by people who are strengths experts around this. Lots of trainings and learning sessions. So lots of, you know, going and spending time with this. I think our standard CliftonStrengths Discovery session is about 3 1/2 hours long. It's basically a morning where you spend getting immersed in the world of CliftonStrengths and sort of understanding, not just what are the 34 themes, but also what do we mean by it when we talk about talent? What do we mean when we talk about strengths?

Dean Jones:
[17:05] Also, during this time, a lot of feedback sessions. So leaders, particularly leaders, managers, those people that inside organizations that have responsibility for people, helping them to develop their awareness around their own talents and strengths. Obviously, that pays immediate dividends. The other thing you're doing a lot of during this time is a lot of communications. So there's lots of emails and communications and like that. So you're just, you know, as you're launching strengths, as you're introducing strengths in the organization, you're creating a lot of energy and a lot of excitement around people knowing and learning the language. And at the end of the day, one of the big things you're measuring is just how many people have done CliftonStrengths in your organization? So where are we in terms of adoption across the organization? Jim?

Jim Collison:
[17:52] We had seen, we see all the time folks using our webcasts, you know, a CliftonStrengths Podcast or a video, some of the work that we've done, to host Lunch and Learns. Just a simple activity where they can gather people together, have the conversation, open it up in ways where they can talk about it. It can be inclusive. Folks can come and not necessarily have even taken the assessment, but hear some positive things about it and what it's done. People can share some things in that. So we've seen, and of course, from some of the folks we have in the chat room, I'm sure they could share some of the things where they've seen this first phase in effect. And it's, I think it's a fun phase. This is some of the really fun, you know, grassroots, "Let's light this thing on fire!" kind of thing, get it really rolling, right? There's some excitement around that as well. So I've had the privilege of seeing a lot of that, as you shared that with me throughout the years, you know, I think, and the live listeners, of what you've been doing during this first phase. And it's, it can be -- and should be -- very fun and inclusive.

Dean Jones:
[18:59] It's, you know, it's exciting for people, and it feels very validating for people. It's one of the things I think that why there is always good adoption around CliftonStrengths is it's very positive. It's very uplifting. It's very inclusive. And immediately, I think one of the things that's so valuable -- and I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating -- is CliftonStrengths gives people a positive language for being able to talk about individual differences. And particularly in organizations, a lot of times, people fumble around. A lot of conflict or miscommunication comes from people being able to talk about individual differences. What are your unique contributions? What do you bring? What do you need in the organization? What works for you versus what works for me? A lot of the source of a lot of challenges around collaboration in an organization or the source of conflict or misunderstanding is that people don't have a shared language that's positive and inclusive for being able to talk about individual differences. So this helps to be able to do that. And I think it's one of the big benefits as people start to adopt CliftonStrengths.

Jim Collison:
[20:11] For sure. Let's dive into phase 2.

Dean Jones:
[20:14] Yeah. So the second phase is the phase where you start to build capability inside the organization. And typically, I mean this kind of in two different ways, right? Right. Excuse me. You're building individual capabilities. So people are going deeper, in terms of their own wherewithal relative to strengths. You're also building organizational capability. So you want to make sure that you've got the capability inside the organization. This is really the phase where it goes from being a program or an initiative to something that feels more like part of your culture. And so this is really a critical phase. And again, what happens sometimes is after the first phase, sometimes organizations or people in organizations say, "Hey, what do we do next?" Right? Or they say, "Hey, I think we're done. Right? We did strengths in our organization. Everybody did it. Everybody learned about it like that. It was exciting. It was fun. You know, we're calling it a day now." And you've only really scratched the surface around using CliftonStrengths as a business strategy to be successful in your organization. And what it really relies on is the second phase, where you're starting to build capability.

Dean Jones:
[21:33] So, one of the first things that happens when you're in the second phase is you want to start to expand your core team of experts and advocates in the organization. Typically, in that first phase, oftentimes you've got an executive sponsor who's kind of responsible for rolling out strengths or introducing CliftonStrengths to the organization, or it's kind of a grassroots movement. And you start with a core group of advocates and coaches that are sort of trained or trainers that are doing it. Oftentimes in the first phase, organizations will outsource this. So they'll come to Gallup, or they'll come to coaches and say, "Hey, we're interested in doing this or we're interested in doing this in a limited way, you know, and we want you to do this for us." So there's somebody outside the organization who's bringing it to the organization. In the second phase, it's really about building that capability inside the organization. So it's -- the questions in this phase are things like, How many strengths coaches does our organization need, and how do we deploy those strengths coaches? How many champions does our organization need, and how do we get those champions trained up and deploy them? So part of it is figuring out, How do we build expertise across the organization?

Dean Jones:
[22:47] Part of what happens in this phase, right, is that is people start to learn the language of strengths more quickly and adopt strengths more quickly. So in the beginning, sometimes it's, you know, everybody's a little rusty because they're learning the language together inside the organization. What happens in the second phase is, and one of the big benefits is, people come into your culture and immediately, maybe even, you know, their first day, somebody's saying, "Hey, what are your Top 5? And, oh, you know, like, you have this CliftonStrengths or that CliftonStrengths. What happens is immediately, because it's part of the culture, people don't necessarily have to immediately go to a formal learning opportunity; they're getting it from the culture. So in the second phase, there's less of a need for formal education and more of a need for informal support and use. So what you see is teams saying, "Hey, I could use somebody to do a little work with me and my team." Or "I'd like some coaching around how I do this." So it's more of that kind of informal support and use, rather than a bunch of classes or a bunch of information sessions, that kind of thing that happens at this time.

Dean Jones:
[23:59] The other thing that happens in this phase is strengths moves from being something that is a thing to do, something that we're doing, to the context for how we work. That's a big shift. As opposed to, you know, in the first phase, strengths is just something we're doing, right? It's something, it's like we've got a program, and we're rolling out the program, and we're doing the thing. In the second phase, it's less of the doingness. It's more like, This is the context for how we work. This is how we approach stuff. and you want to foster that. So a lot of the kind of questions, remember I said the first phase, you want to be listening for, do people have strategies, right, around that? And that typically is my strategy for how I'm using my talents and strengths to be successful. In the second phase, you want to be listening for, How are they leveraging their strengths in order to be able to be successful, you know? So again, I said, we're building capability, and we're building capability around two different dimensions. So I want to talk about each one of those just briefly.

Dean Jones:
[24:59] So one is you're building individual capability. And this is where you're helping people to make sure they're developing those strategies for leveraging talents and strengths to be successful. What you see in this phase is, as people are developing those strategies, you're starting to work with people at all levels to be able to work with each other inside the context of strengths. Let me say that again, because I think it's important: In the beginning, it's more about that self-awareness and that other awareness. Now in phase 2, we're really thinking about, How do people at all levels work with each other inside the context of strengths? What does that look like, right? Well, it's teams using strengths to be able to collaborate, being able to resolve conflicts and maximize performance. It's leaders understanding, How do they use their strengths to build followership? It's managers incorporating strengths in the way they engage, develop and manage performance in their organization. So it's, at all levels, what we start to see is we're building that individual capability to work with each other inside the context of the strengths that we have, the collective strengths that we have, right? So, How do I develop my partnerships? How do I develop teamwork across all my partners that I work with? How's our team functioning, and how do we magnify that and maximize that based on the collective CliftonStrengths that we've got?

Dean Jones:
[26:25] The other thing that's happening is, we're building organizational capability, right? So it's a move from, Hey, there's a limited number of experts, and there are gurus and they're telling us about strengths, to it's part of the culture of the organization. So we're expanding the number of champions maybe in the organization, so we got lots of champions -- you know, somebody, you know, down the hall from me. I don't have to go far to find a champion who can advocate for strengths and help us expand our usage. We got coaches that are working in the organization, primarily probably developing managers and leaders and delivering training for people. They may be doing, like, group coaching sessions or things like that.

Dean Jones:
[27:06] The other thing you start to see in this phase is some of the cultural stuff that starts to happen as strengths arise in the organization -- is we start to talk a lot about, What are the best practices in the organization for using strengths and employing our strengths? You start to hear, as people are, sort of success stories, right, where you start to hear, Hey, this team leveraged their strengths and accomplished this. Or this team was able to use their strengths and avoid this kind of pitfall. Or we noticed that the engagement is better on this team, and one of the reasons for that is people know their strengths, are using their strengths to be able to make sure everybody is included and really able to fully express themselves.

Dean Jones:
[27:45] The other thing you see a lot during this phase is some strengths heroes starting to emerge -- people that can talk about their strengths and say, I used my da-da-da, or I'm, because I know my talents, I'm starting to be able to do that. One of the things I love is our Leading With Strengths podcast series, right, and, where you hear leaders talking about how they're leveraging their strengths in order to be successful, and how that's helped them as a leader. So you hear this at all levels. So it becomes part of the way we recognize people in the organization and the kind of heroes we have. So it gets embedded kind of in the folklore of the organization.

Dean Jones:
[28:22] So some of the activities in the second phase that you'll see a lot of -- a lot of individual kind of coaching and group coaching sessions. So typically, we're spending a lot of time with managers and leaders, because they've got responsibility for people in the organization. We may also be doing groups, group coaching with groups of people that have similar responsibilities or some similar concerns around that. Lots of team sessions. So reviewing Team Grids, but also helping teams point their CliftonStrengths, their talents and strengths at opportunities and issues that affect that team. Lots of leadership development. So one-on-one feedback sessions, group sessions with leaders to help leaders really start to understand, How do they build followership? How do they fulfill on the responsibilities of being a leader, using their CliftonStrengths? And how does that vary, depending on the strengths that they have?

Dean Jones:
[29:14] Lots of manager development. This is a critical piece. We know that managers have a disproportionate impact on an organization. So we know we can trace back, one of the most profound and probably significant findings we've had in our 90 years as an organization is that we know that 70% of the variance in, the variability in engagement can be directly attributed back to the manager. So we know that managers have this disproportionate impact on the organization. So when we get managers fluent in the language of strengths, it immediately elevates their conversations for people. So doing a lot of one-on-one feedback sessions and coaching sessions with managers, doing manager development that includes CliftonStrengths, really helps them to be able to do that.

Dean Jones:
[30:00] The other things we're doing at this time is training our experts. So putting more people through GGSC, through the Gallup Global Strengths Coach course, so you got more Certified Coaches inside the organization. You're training champions, so you got more champions who could advocate for strengths in the organization. You may be doing some Train the Trainers to help people to be able to lead more courses in the organization, more of that kind of stuff. And then finally, the other big activity is a lot of strategic communications and organizational development activities. So there's people in human resources or OD in the organization that are looking across the organization at best practices. They're looking for those opportunities to be able to use recognition and communication to be able to highlight what's working around that, so that you can communicate the wins and continue to kind of engender adoption across the organization. So that's, that's all that what's kind of kind of happening in that second phase.

Jim Collison:
[30:57] Dean, let me ask you this question. Tammy had asked it from our YouTube chat, and I'll rephrase it to maybe make it a little bit larger: As we think about an independent coach or a coach consultant or even an embedded coach in an organization, maybe in a large organization, how important do you think it is to take note of these two phases -- to say, "We're here. We should be doing these kinds of things," or "We're in, you know, we're in this phase." Or even, there may be departments that are in different phases, right? Thinking about that. Can you give kind of some coach advice on, like, because some folks will want to write these things down and create a checklist and, no, I'm in phase 1.75 or whatever, right? So maybe some advice around that?

Dean Jones:
[31:46] Yeah, that's great. I, you know, I think the big value, if you're a coach working with organizations -- whether you're inside the organization or outside the organization -- is knowing, is having a good gauge on where, to your point, where the team is that you're working with or the business division or maybe the whole organization, you can kind of see where people are at. And this is not a check, this is kind of not a checklist of kind of doing this; this is a checklist where you're looking to gauge, OK, we've done a lot of stuff, but I notice, nobody's really talking about their strategies for being successful with their CliftonStrengths. So even though it feels like we've done a lot of things, what I can see developmentally, this organization still needs work on being able to develop those strategies. Part of it, I would tell you is, and I think for you, it tells you where the organization is and what you need to focus on.

Dean Jones:
[32:42] A lot of times, I find this a lot with coaches and with people in organizations. I'll never forget, years ago, I was in this meeting with this gentleman that led a very, very large organization, thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And they had done lots of adoptions around CliftonStrengths and engagement inside the organization. But I could tell, even for as much as they'd done, they were still at a very early stage, in terms of introducing CliftonStrengths to the organization itself. They, mostly what they were doing was focusing on people completing the assessment and understanding and starting to build awareness around their own talents and strengths. And as an organization, they hadn't moved people into applying their talents and strengths. And I think it helps you to be able to know, where do we need to go next? So if you're in the organization, I think it helps you to be able to focus on, What's the content of the work that I need to do with people? What is the -- I can hear this, and I can be coaching leaders and managers to say, Here's what I'm, here's what I'm hearing from your team; here's what I'm not hearing. As a consultant or a coach working with an organization to be able to say, Hey, here's what's next. Here's how to move that organization to the next level.

Dean Jones:
[34:00] The good news is we know, and we know because we've researched it, is the more adoption there is inside of an organization, the more benefits there are for organizations across the board. So we know that there's benefits, in terms of productivity and efficiency. There's benefits, in terms of growth in revenue and growth in the organization. We know there's cultural benefits. We know, for instance, that CliftonStrengths is a huge catalyst for employee engagement in the organization, and we know that has a set of benefits that it provides. So, do you think --

Jim Collison:
[34:34] Do you think, Dean, real quick, do you think sometimes we get frustrated because we're in, we want to be farther along than we are, but we need to kind of take a step back sometimes and just say, Hey, we're not, we may not be all these things working in phase 2. We need to shore up some of these phase 1 ideas, just to make sure these are happening first before -- and it's maybe not that prescriptive, but just some, any, any thoughts on that?

Dean Jones:
[35:02] Yeah, I think sometimes we get swept up in the doingness of it. What are we going to do? What's the next thing? What's the next course? What's the next program? What's the next -- ? As opposed to really tuning in and listening to, as coaches, as consultants, as people inside organizations, as leaders in organizations, where we're listening to, OK, what's really happening here? What do I hear? Where are we really in terms of adoption? And I think it's important to distinguish between introducing CliftonStrengths as a program or an initiative versus using CliftonStrengths as a business strategy in the organization. So it is a human capital strategy, and it's a very, very effective one for being able to transform the organization. And it's not just that you, certainly people do it as a program all the time, but where you get the real return on investment is, is that it's a business strategy for the organization, where you're looking at, How am I really going to transform this organization, so that we are more effective or more productive, we're more engaged and we're more successful?

Jim Collison:
[36:11] Well, I appreciate that. As a doer, I get sometimes in the, like, you know, Hey, OK, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? And what's the next thing? And I appreciate that, taking a step back, assessing, and then, what are we really trying to do here? Thinking it from a human perspective.

Dean Jones:
[36:28] Yeah, no, that's great.

Jim Collison:
[36:30] Let's move on to the third phase, if you're ready for that.

Dean Jones:
[36:33] Yeah, that'd be great. So the third phase -- in the second phase, remember, we're building capability, right? We're building individual capability, and we're building organizational capability. And then the third phase is really making sure it's really embedded in the organization. So this is where it moves really into being, I would say, it's embedded in organizational structures and programs in your organization. So you've built, in the second phase, you've built expertise. It's becoming part of the culture. Now you're, in some ways, in that third phase, you're kind of formalizing it, right? So we're thinking about, How do we take it and make sure it's in all of our organizational structures and programs? And I always think it's funny how you know you're kind of ready for this is people start to kind of wake up and say, Hey, how come this isn't in our onboarding program? Or, Hey, how come, you know, I had my performance review, and nobody talked to me about my strengths? You know, it starts to feel kind of like a glaring error that we wouldn't be, that CliftonStrengths wouldn't be the context for the work that we're doing.

Dean Jones:
[37:38] So some of the examples of that are it becomes a formal part of the performance management process and system, right? So you want to make sure that it's part of that system. It's in that system, right? Now, I can talk later about, sometimes people want to do that first, and there's some advantages to that. There's also some pitfalls to that. Putting it in your performance management process and system, that's one way you can embed it in the organization. Another is onboarding. So you expose people to CliftonStrengths as part of the onboarding process. They bring that language into the organization. Again, there's some pitfalls with that if you're trying to do that first. Sometimes, you'll get somebody who is, like me, a very eager and enthusiastic learning person who says, "I'm going to put this in onboarding." People learn about an onboarding, then they go back to their team, and nobody speaks that language. So it just makes them an oddball, right? As opposed to that they're going into a team that's going to use that every day. So you've got to make sure that they're being received by an environment that's going to support the expansion of their talents and strengths.

Dean Jones:
[38:47] Another thing you want to incorporate it in this phase is leadership development. So it becomes the lens for leadership development, including, and especially, high-potential leaders. High-potential leaders, particularly, develop, helping, using CliftonStrengths to develop their awareness of their own talents and strengths, their awareness of their own biases and blind spots, like that, helps them to be more successful. It can be used as a catalyst for accelerating engagement. So we oftentimes do strengths and engagement hand-in-hand, because we know, particularly, I think the data that we've used in the past around that is we know that usually we encourage people to be measuring engagement in their organization. And then when you apply strengths, it's like skipping an administration forward. So we know that it helps. It's such a catalyst. It can help you leap forward, in terms of the growth of engagement in your organization.

Dean Jones:
[39:44] Another big piece of it is having it become part of your employee value proposition and your employment brand, so that you start to be known as an organization that fosters and develops people's strengths. One of the things we know from our research is one of the things that the workforce really expects is that they're going to come to an organization that's going to develop them. Development is one of the No. 1 things that attracts talent to organizations and develops talent in organizations. So being able to get development in organizations is a huge, is important. It's a huge differentiator, right? And it also meets sort of the expectation that's in the workforce -- people expect that they're going to go to an organization that is going to develop them. It's one of the big shifts that we've seen over the last decade, in terms of organizational expectations.

Dean Jones:
[40:41] Some organizations, surprisingly, still haven't gotten with the program around that one. But if you want to attract high talent to your organization, you're investing in development. The other thing that happens in this third phase, so the third phase is we're getting it embedded in organizational structures and programs. The other thing that we're doing is systematically measuring the impact. So we're looking at things like our Q^12® growth over time. We might be doing business impact studies, where we're looking at things like growth and performance metrics or, you know, things like output, productivity, and so on, efficiency. We might be looking at customer metrics. So things like engagement and growth, customer engagement and growth around that, right? We might be looking at financial metrics, things like sales and revenue and so on, right, cost reductions, things like that. We may be looking at human capital metrics, things like attrition, retention. So we're looking at all these metrics to be able to start to measure, What is the impact of this over time, right? To be able to say, As we've invested this, what is the return that we're getting?

Dean Jones:
[41:41] The other things that kind of happen during this time is, you start to see communities of practice arise, and, that are supported by the organization. So people start to, just spontaneously, these communities of practice arise, where it's maybe a community practice around coaching or a community practice around using CliftonStrengths in a particular area. You know, you start to see people on their own starting to do this. There's also, at this point, there's typically a good amount of folklore in the organization. Lots of stories about successes, lots of heroes, you know, lots of strengths champions and cheerleaders in the organization -- that tends to happen.

Dean Jones:
[42:23] The point of this phase is it starts to get, it starts to feel like CliftonStrengths in your organization transcends any one person or team or division. It's not about that so-and-so executive or so-and-so coach is leading it. It's not about that this team adopted; it really is, It's part of our organization. And it's part of the way that we do business. It's part of the way we interact with each other. It's part of our strategy for success. And that's really the goal is, by the time you've completed these three phases is, it really becomes kind of the operating system for how we work and how we work together and how we support each other, in order to be able to be successful. So that's the third phase. I think, I've kind of talked about that, you know, like, typically in this phase, the activities are things like auditing organizational programs, looking at, looking for points of strengths integration, and then looking for those measurement opportunities during that time.

Jim Collison:
[43:23] Dean, I do want to say, we'll have a few minutes for some questions. If folks want to throw those in chat, I'm watching both LinkedIn and the YouTube chat. You had talked about the onboarding piece, and I appreciate the caveat, by the way. I think folks get excited about, let's get these great onboarding programs, and we dump them into teams that are like, "What? What are you talking about?" Right? As we were coming out of the pandemic, we spent a lot of time here talking about re-onboarding. And I think this is a great opportunity to mention that again in organizations, to think both about, especially with some of the change that's going on in the work culture around the world, of not just when they start, but you may have some teams that have had significant turnover or change. And they may need to be re-onboarded, right? They may need to go through that process again, so they are landing in teams. Could be a double whammy. Now, some people would just call that "institutional learning" or "training programs" or some of those kinds of things. But as we've talked about that here, this idea of re-onboarding, it's really resonated with people, as they thought, yeah, it also doesn't seem so, maybe so, daunting to do. Yeah, no, we're going to level set. We'll get everybody on the same page, in the same place, you know, just as things have changed.

Jim Collison:
[44:42] And so that was always, I love the caveat that you give on that, because I think sometimes we do approach that, or we approach it from a -- and you mentioned this a little bit earlier -- we approach it from a, if we're not having a 3 hours CliftonStrengths discovery session, where people are moving around the room and hands are being raised and tears are happening, it's not effective. And, right? And that can be part of it. But I love, as we get to, you know, this third phase of thinking. And for me, what really stood out is, when it stops being about a person or a coach or a, even a group of people, and it starts, you know, coming into the organization. You and I met with someone this week who's been around the strengths community for a long time, and you were asking him some questions, some historical questions, and he just started immediately talking about his successes over the years through his themes. And I thought, that is phase 3, from an organizational standpoint, right? Where we just get there, we just automatically start saying, "Well, this is my," or "I led with this," or "I'm doing those kinds of things." I don't know, any thoughts on that, Dean?

Dean Jones:
[45:51] Yeah, I just think it's, again, it kind of goes back to the question you asked a few minutes ago is, How am I going to use this? So if I'm a coach in an organization or I'm a coach that's working with organizations, how am I going to use this framework? And I think it's a useful framework to be able to start to think as, I always, you know, I think it's a useful lens for kind of an audit of, Where is your organization and where are they? And like that. And how do, it gives you kind of the next set of actions that you need to take. And the actions that you need to take, not in terms of, What's the next program I need to do and the next training, but where do I need to focus on really helping people understand, developmentally, where do they go next? And where do we need to focus an organization around it? There's lots of activities that will help you to be able to do that. I tried to talk about the specific activities as we've gone through this, so you get a sense of, OK, what does the work look like? You could also tell that each one of these phases is unique. And so it has its own kind of tenor to it. It has its own kind of energy and my, its own kind of focus to it. So each one of these phases is a, is a, is unique in in the work that we do around that. So -- do you want to -- ? Enter Text...

Jim Collison:
[47:02] Yeah, we'll take some questions.

Dean Jones:
[47:05] Yeah, why don't we take some questions at this point.

Jim Collison:
[47:08] I'll be watching, both in the LinkedIn chat, as well as the YouTube chat. So Sarah, out there on YouTube, says, Does Gallup offer any training for strengths champions that external coaches can offer to get them ready for these phase 2or 3? Can you talk a little bit about our philosophy on that, Dean?

Dean Jones:
[47:23] Well, we don't, so Sarah, just, we don't offer external training for strengths champions. We, honestly, when we started this, we started --just to give you a little background here -- when we started doing this, a lot of what we would do is we would certify coaches in organizations. And we would look and say, OK, you know, How many coaches does the organization need? And we would certify a bunch of coaches. But we realized as, as, particularly in larger organizations, as you're rolling out CliftonStrengths, not everybody needs to be certified as a coach in order to be able to support adoption. it. So the role of a champion is different than the role of a coach. I think we've done some Called to Coaches on that in the past, where we've talked about the different roles inside of a CliftonStrengths launch.

Dean Jones:
[48:09] But typically, a champion is just like it sounds -- it's kind of a cheerleader to get people on board. So a lot of what champions are doing in an organization is introducing people to CliftonStrengths and letting them know kind of what it is and encouraging them to take the assessment, right? So a lot of the champion is, Hey, just increasing adoption across the organization. Then the coach kind of picks it up from there around that. So no, we don't offer public champion training around that. We do do it inside organizations that we work with, but it's pretty straightforward. And somebody asked, I think in the chat, Hey, do you have a deck that you use? The deck that we give people in GGSC is the deck that we would encourage people use to introduce CliftonStrengths, and champions can do that. And you can do your own modification on the deck to make it make sense for the organizations that you're in.

Jim Collison:
[49:04] Some of the very best champion work I've seen in organizations are where that grows grassroots with the movement as well. And they really build that champion program around their brand. So what are, Who are we? What's the values of our organization? And then how do we, how do we enable these champions to continue to talk about, meet about, whatever, these, this, these CliftonStrengths, to help move it through the organization, right? And then bring those organizational values that are unique to that organization or those specific industry values, so to speak -- I don't know what the right word for that is -- but thinking about those, you know, it might be healthcare or manufacturing or banking or finance or some of those things. How does that, how does that help? How can they help translate that into the organization, based on the unique language or the unique culture that exists there? That I have seen work out really well. Tammy had been asking about an outline. Tammy, we'll actually, we'll post this as a podcast and we'll have a complete transcript that's available for you as well. So we'll make that available afterwards. Vanessa had asked, Dean, any other direction or best practices for onboarding? Your thoughts on that, as we think about this?

Dean Jones:
[50:22] Yeah, I would say, so Vanessa, there's a couple of things. Let me talk about that just a little bit. One is, if you're going to use it in onboarding, as much as possible, you want to train managers first. So you want to train the manager so that as you're onboarding people, as you're onboarding people, you can, as you're onboarding people, and they're starting to use this language and starting to discover it, what you're doing is you're helping them, you're helping get them ready for their manager and their team, right? So you want the manager to be able to use this as a tool that's a developmental tool to help that person to be able to be successful, you know? I always say that onboarding, the two goals of onboarding, from my perspective, are enculturation and self-efficacy, right? So the two things you're trying to accomplish in onboarding is, Hey, is the person enculturated? You know, Do they feel like they're part of our organization, they're part of our community here? And are they, do they have a level of self-efficacy, so they're able to kind of help themselves and be successful and be sufficient in what they're doing?

Dean Jones:
[51:29] At Gallup, you know, the way we do it, and I've been doing this for the last 5 years with our folks, we have kind of five touchpoints that we do during the first 4 months of an employee's life at Gallup or an employee's tenure at Gallup. We have them, before their first day, they take CliftonStrengths, so they show up on their first day with CliftonStrengths. Then, in their first month, they do a half-day CliftonStrengths course. We do CliftonStrengths Discovery, where they get kind of in the world of CliftonStrengths. Then, in their second month, they've got a little bit of their job under their belt, and we do a one-on-one feedback session with them, to help them make sure that they know what their talents and strengths are, what we've seen in their talent so far, and how we think they can apply that. They do that not with their manager, but with an expert in our organization, with a coach in our organization who can do that, right?

Dean Jones:
[52:21] In their third month, they do another course, half-day course, that's really about taking their CliftonStrengths and pointing them at goals and objectives. How do they do that? How also do they manage weaknesses around that? So we know that part of being really successful with CliftonStrengths is being able to fully express your strengths, but also to be able to regulate them so that they don't get in your way or in somebody else's way. And then at the end of the fourth month, we have them do a course in our organization -- it's a 2-day course that people do that connects CliftonStrengths to our culture, right, so that they really understand that. It's a point really where we kind of, we, you know, people go from really being a consumer of our culture to being somebody who can generate our culture.

Dean Jones:
[53:03] So that's kind of the, how we incorporate CliftonStrengths at Gallup into our onboarding process. So it's, it's not like a, "Hey, here's your CliftonStrengths report. Enjoy!" It's not just, "Hey, we want you to understand and appreciate it." We were really trying to train them so that they go through all those phases, so they're, by the end, they really can fully express themselves as somebody who knows their strengths in our culture and that they're applying their CliftonStrengths in their work in order to be successful. So that's the, that's the game there. You know, so hopefully, hopefully I, you know, that's, that's helpful, right?

Jim Collison:
[53:39] Yeah, no, that, that lays that out nicely, I think. And organizationally, you know, reviewing your own onboarding process and thinking about how that fits in, I think, is super important based on your culture as well, right? Two questions from the LinkedIn group. A comment here. Tasha says, We call them "Strength Advocates" here, and they're invaluable. And then, Ours are called [change] agents, but few of them have interest. How do you ensure that they do the work effectively?

Dean Jones:
[54:11] Yeah. Here's the thing. People always ask us all the time who should be a champion and who should be a coach, right? And I think your best champions are people that are organically interested in CliftonStrengths. You want to listen for the people that are naturally champions anyway, right? And the ones that are super excited, super positive about the work. And those are the people that you want to be champions on a regular basis. It's hard. It's kind of like the best champions are the ones that -- you don't recruit them; they recruit you, you know. You don't go to them and say, "Hey, boom, you're a champion." They come to you and they say, "I should be a champion." You know, "I need to do this." And then your best coaches come from the most successful champions, right?

Dean Jones:
[55:01] So you've got lots of champions. You know, you're going to have lots of champions throughout the organization. Then your best coach is the people -- one of the ways that you encourage and develop your champions is to start to develop them into coaches. And not all of them are going to turn into great coaches, but they're people that have a native kind of passion and interest. So you want to listen for that. And so I think that really, you know, that's my kind of two cents around that. I would say, you know, I would say, if you've got champions that aren't effective, you know, you know, they're, you know, I would be cautious with that. If you've got a champion that's not effective, you know, I'd take them out of the game and find somebody who really wants to be in the game. You know, it's just, you don't want, you don't want champions that are dragging you down in that way, you know? So --.

Jim Collison:
[55:50] Dean, as we wrap this up, I've got one more final thing to say, but any final thoughts for you on this topic?

Dean Jones:
[55:56] No, hopefully this is helpful. I'm interested -- as always, I'm interested in how you're thinking about this and how you're using this. If, you know, if you have questions around this or, or comments or anything, you can go to coaching@gallup.com. All that stuff gets funneled to Jim and me. And so we're always super interested in your feedback around this. Hopefully, this is helpful for you as you're doing work inside your organization or with the organizations that are your clients, hopefully this helps you to be able to know, OK, how do I steer that work so we know that it's productive and it's going in a direction that's going to leave the organization being more successful with CliftonStrengths?

Jim Collison:
[56:37] Awesome. Dean, as always, always great to be with you. Thanks for this 55 minutes of learning. I always appreciate you and the work that you bring. Some clarity to, to a lot of the work that we do and some great guidelines as well for folks to work with. Thanks for being with me today.

Dean Jones:
[56:53] Yeah, you're welcome.

Jim Collison:
[56:55] Tammy, who asked some great questions today, this is a good one on the way out. She says, Jim, where did you say the transcripts can be found? I'll send you your check, Tammy, a little bit later here for that question. Just want to remind, for new listeners, we, we do create a post and a transcript for every single one of these episodes that we do, both for the CliftonStrengths podcast and for Called to Coach. It's available at gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. There's an area you can go to. If you're following us on the podcast or on YouTube, there'll be a link to that location there from now -- for the live listeners, it takes us a couple weeks to get these transcribed and out there for you. But we have a summary and a full set of transcripts that will be available for you as well.

Jim Collison:
[57:37] So with that, we'll remind everyone to take full advantage of all the resources that are available for you. Dean mentioned a few of them. Many of them are in Gallup Access. Head out to my.gallup.com. Log in, spend some time moving around. Go to the upper left-hand corner and choose that menu. You may see some things there you've never seen before, like the Resources section. Click on that, put your question in there, and oftentimes we'll have a resource for you that's in there and available for you. Check that out today. For coaching, master coaching, if you want to become a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, you can send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. We'll have somebody contact you back and get your questions answered around that as well. Stay up to date on all the future webcasts by joining us on the Facebook group, following me on LinkedIn -- many of you today, we had a bunch on both sides. We welcome you both. Don't, don't fight each other. It's OK. We can get along, YouTube and LinkedIn. It's fine. But follow me on LinkedIn or subscribe on any of the platforms where we produce these things, and you'll get notified of them as well. Thanks for listening to us today, and thanks for joining us. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Dean Jones' Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Activator, Focus, Woo, Strategic and Relator.