+ Episode Transcript

Thor Challgren 0:00
Welcome to today's episode. In this show I'm going to do a recap of the previous episode which was my interview with Katya Nicholas. Katya is a certified Clifton Strengths coach. Clifton Strengths is an assessment process that's been used by over 26 million people to discover their unique personal strengths and to maximize their potential and work and life. Thought it'd be an interesting conversation to have because empty nesters are starting a new chapter in life moving into brand new direction. So having an understanding of what you're actually good at, can be tremendously helpful in deciding what to do next. In my conversation with Katya, we talk about the origins of Clifton Strengths, we discuss what the assessment process is like. And we talk about how to interpret your results both in work and in relationships. We also talk about how this isn't really limiting you with a label. In fact, the odds of someone having your exact sequence of strengths is one in 33 million. So if you've ever wondered about taking this kind of assessment, I think you'll really enjoy the conversation. If you haven't heard the interview yet, I encourage you to go back give it a listen. In this episode though, I'm going to share with you my top three takeaways from my conversation with Katya discovering your unique strengths is a great starting point when you set out on a new adventure. If you would like some encouragement and support in this transition in your life, this is something I specialize in. I am a certified life coach, and I work with parents just like you. If you're in that season of life, I'd love to talk with you. Let's do our first call for free. Just go to discover.yourturntofly.com and schedule that free call. That's discover.yourturntofly.com.

Okay, my first big takeaway came when we were talking about your top 10 natural talents and Katya referred to that as your zone of genius. So quick recap, when you take this assessment, you will receive a report on your 34 strengths. And Clifton refers to your top 10 As the areas you want to strengthen the rest are areas to navigate. So Katia says take those top 10 Those are the areas that you focus on the top five, though, are your zone of genius zone of genius is a concept from author Gay Hendricks, which he describes in his book, The Big Leap. The idea is that you have several zones of talents and skills and your top two are your zone of genius, and your zone of excellence. The zone of excellence are things that you're good at and can probably do easily all day long. But there are also places where you can get stuck, because if you're good at this, people just want you to keep doing it all the time. And maybe you get interrupted, right. According to Hendrix, the real growth, the big leap, which is the name of the book comes when you move from what you're good at your zone of excellence, to what you are great at, which is your zone of genius. So Katya, his way of looking at Clifton Strengths is that your top five strengths are your zone of genius, if you live in those top five, you will be maximizing your own potential for genius. She's also likened it to having a dominant hand, you know, we all if you're right handed, that's your dominant hand, the other is your non dominant hand. So she would talk about the top five strengths as your dominant hand. And the second five strengths are your helper hand.

Thor Challgren 4:03
So in this part of the conversation, we talked about how you really want to dial into those top five areas of talent and maximize your efforts there. So for example, one of my top 10 is learning. So coach's advice is to look for opportunities to learn and that seems obvious, but we can go through our day and unless we're really thinking about hey, what are my natural strengths, we don't really lean into them. So this is a way for you to understand what your strengths are and to lean into the mana daily basis. This really helps me when I think about where I want to spend my time. My top 10 strengths come primarily 90% from two theme areas, theme areas what Clifton Strengths used to sort of describe overall category so my top two areas are relationship building and strategic thinking. So relationship building strategic thinking. So when I'm deciding where to deploy my time and efforts in any given day, those two theme areas are where my strongest talents are, you know, for comparison, one of the other theme areas is executing, which is making things happen. And in that area, my Executing strengths tend to be in the bottom half of my 34 overall. And that doesn't mean I'm bad at them or their weaknesses, that we never would refer to any of these as a weakness. But as Clifton says, they're just strengths that you have to navigate, you're aware that those aren't your strongest talents. And maybe those are things that you delegate, or if you're working with a partner, you find things that they're good at, and you share. And that brings me to my second takeaway from the conversation, which is the value of having your spouse or partner take the test and then compare the results. Katya mentioned how when your spouse knows what your strengths are, it reduces friction, there's less judgment. For example, several of my top 10 strengths involve strategic thinking, I'm analytical, I'm strategic, I think about the future I seek input, those are all strategy. So let's say my wife asks me for an opinion on something and she wants to quickly because she's an activator, or an achiever, which are more executing themes. Well, if you know that those aren't my natural strengths, if she knows that, she's going to be a lot less annoyed with me, I hope, if I don't respond as quickly as she would, given her strengths, so when we know somebody else's strengths, there's more understanding, less judgment. And there's more opportunity also to share talents as a team. We all have heard of areas where people say focus on what you're good at, let others focus on what they're good at. And this can be in personal relationships. And in business, let's say you have a business partner or a teammate, and you know what their natural talents are, when you know that you're better able to take advantage of those, you can find ways for their talents to complement yours. So you may know in a business partnership, if someone else is great at executing, and you're great at strategy, then maybe you have an understanding where that's how you both go through the day. Or if someone is better at there's a strategy, or strength called woo W O, which is basically a personality way of winning people over or you're, you're outgoing. So if that's a natural strength of yours, then maybe that's when you go out. Those are the tasks that you take on that maximize what you do. Well. My third takeaway was something Katya said when we were discussing the talents that are at the bottom of the list, and again, we don't think of those as weaknesses, we just think of them as non dominant talents. Katya said that when we think about those, we should drop talent and V. I love that phrase drop talent and B, it does not serve you. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, first off, remember, these are not weaknesses. As Katya said, they're just non dominant talents.

Thor Challgren 8:39
She talks about what Tiger Woods would do with his golf coach, when he was at the top of his game, they would focus 80% of their practice on his strengths, and 20% on his non dominant talent. So when Katya said, drop your talent envy, I take that to mean, don't look at that 20% with judgment, don't say, oh, you know, so and so has more of that skill than I do. And then you envy them. Or you compare yourself to, you know, in the past, I used to be able to do this more, it's you're envying either someone else or you're comparing yourself to another version of yourself or maybe even an ideal version of yourself with Tiger Woods. Let's say that 20% of his game was hitting the ball out of sand traps, that's just not a strength of his. So if he focuses on that if he envies another golfer who is good at that it's not serving him. Instead of envying someone who's talented in your 20% area, focus on your 80% the things that you are talented at, as Katya said those last 10 talents of 34 are just less pronounced for you. Get curious about those things. appreciate them, but don't envy others who are strong there if you're not. So those are my top three takeaways number one, focus on those top five talents and your zone of genius. Number two, consider the value of having your spouse or teammates or partner take the test. And number three, focus on your 80% not your 20% Avoid talent and be those are my top three takeaways from my discussion with Katya Nicholas, I've put Kati his contact info in the show notes below. And our fuller conversation is in the previous episode, I hope you'll give that a listen. I've also included a link to a video where cacci goes into greater depth and describing how to think about your Clifton Strengths Assessment. And if you're curious what a report looks like an assessment report, I've included a link to mine. This is a PDF. This is an example of what you would get when you do the Clifton Strengths process. And I'm assuming I can share that if it's not there. It's because I've discovered that you can't share your own report, but I paid for it. It's mine. I'm going to share it if I want. In any case, check out Clifton Strengths, I've also included the link in the show notes. So if you're curious about taking this yourself, the reports or the assessments about $50, roughly and you get a report, highly recommend it is so helpful. Not only from pointing out what your strengths are, but giving you strategies for how to apply those, especially for your top 10. There's a lot of description about areas where you can apply them. And one of the other points that I loved, that Katya made was, your strengths are unique to you, and especially your combination of strengths. So when you look at, say, my combination of those top 10, they're all unique, and they complement each other. And as Katya said, that's your, your secret sauce is what makes you unique. So that's why someone could have a similar overall maybe groupings. But your set is unique and the ways that they complement each other are unique. And when you get the report, you'll see that it talks about how to actually implement your given strength. One of the other things that it does that's so helpful, is it talks about things to be aware of blind spots are what they're called. So for each of the major talents, it will also share what the blind spot of that would be. An example might be if someone is super detail oriented, it'll say a blind spot might be that you lose track of the big picture. So you have to think about the bigger picture and not just get lost in the details. That's a simple example. But you get the idea. There's all sorts of blind spots for every talent, and it's helpful to you to know that so check it out at the link that I put in the notes. As always, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you being with me today. And I'll see you next time.