Build Your Career by Mining Your Strengths: Exploring CliftonStrengths® 34

Build Your Career by Mining Your Strengths: Exploring CliftonStrengths^® 34

Traditional Classroom: 1-day
Virtual Instructor-led: Two 3-3.5 hour sessions; Three 2-hour sessions

Often, when people consider their own growth and development, their first instinct is to look for mistakes and opportunities for improvement. They focus on the steps they miss, the skills they lack, or the information they get wrong. While this seems quite logical, decades of Gallup research supports the fact that this approach actually limits a person’s opportunities for greatness. Fixing weaknesses can prevent failure, but it is building strengths that leads to success.

Your ability to achieve excellence and get the most out of your life is directly linked to understanding and developing your strengths… and then aiming them at outcomes that matter. In this highly interactive workshop we will utilize the CliftonStrengths^® 34 assessment as a springboard for exploring your unique constellation of talents — the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that come naturally to you. We’ll examine ways you can take action to invest in your talents and develop them into strengths. We’ll also investigate what your top themes reveal about: how you build relationships, what motivates or energizes you, how you think about and process information, and how you influence others.

At the end of this session, you will create a personal development plan focused on maximizing your strengths and unleashing your true potential.

Target Audience

Individuals who will benefit from this course include anyone who is interested in personal growth and development.

Learning Objectives

Identify your top natural talents and the corresponding CliftonStrengths themes.
Articulate concrete steps you can take to better leverage your personal talent DNA at work.
Connect the concept of “flow” to your top themes and talents.
Describe the challenge-skills balance in relation to growing a talent into a strength.
Explain ways to mitigate the impact of a “weakness” using a strengths-based model.
List steps you can take to invest in building strengths using the 3 Es of education, experience, and exposure.
Create a personalized development plan to further develop and maximize your strengths.

Pre-Course Work

Assessment: Before the course, participants will take an online CliftonStrengths^® assessment, which will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Course Outline

Overview of CliftonStrengths^®

Gallup Research
Myths and Truths About Strengths
Strengths and Career Development

Exploring Your CliftonStrengths^® 34 Report

Your Top 5 Themes and Talents
- Maximizing Your Potential
- Avoiding Blind Spots
Turning a Talent into a Strength
The 34 Themes
Themes 6 – 10

CliftonStrengths^® Domains

Your Unique Talent DNA
The 4 CliftonStrengths Domains
Ranking Your Domains

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow” State

Characteristics of Flow
Cognitive Ease
The Challenge-Skills Balance
Connecting Flow to Your Talents and Strengths

Additional Theme Insights

Navigating the Middle Themes
Managing the Bottom Themes
A Strengths-Based Definition of “Weakness”
Mitigating Potential Weaknesses

Creating Your Personalized Development Plan

The 3 E Investment Strategy: Education, Experience, Exposure
The Neuroscience of Learning and Deliberate Practice
Creating and Sharing Your Plan

Summary and Next Steps

MDV050-6 Course Code

Practice Area

Management and Leadership