Strength Based Mentoring

If your mentee or a student that you know has the strength of Competing in their top 3 – they might describe themselves like this: You see many things in life as a game, and you feel great joy when you win. You truly hate to lose because you are always striving for first place. Every day you compete. Winning first place is your goal in any contest that you feel is worth your time. If there is no one to compete against, you compete against yourself to do more or accomplish a goal faster or better. You can be competing against someone else even when that person doesn’t know it. Because you hate to lose, you might get angry, upset, or even cry. It does not matter if others think the contest is important. If you are doing it, you want to be number one. Others look to you for the motivation to win. As a mom, I am quite familiar with this strength as my son Shaun was born with it.  When he took Strengths Explorer as a 5 th grader, Competing was his top strength and when he took S...

In your heart, helping other people is very important. You want to make the world better by helping people in small ways or big ways. Clifton Strengths Explorer Youth with Caring in their Top 3 SE themes, possess a heart for others. They love to give of their time to help others. The smallest act of kindness, they believe, can make a world of difference. Youth with this theme go above and beyond, not because of obligation or because of finishing a task, but because they know that in doing so, they are helping another person. These youths have big hearts; they notice when someone is in a bad mood or when someone is left out of the group. They make it their mission to encourage others around them. One wonderful depiction of Caring is from a mentee in the Omaha metro area. At one Academy Session, the mentor brought a picture frame to Ally and showed her two wonderful drawings her mentee had made. The drawings were of the mentor and mentee together, and in one, a heart was drawn...

You have more energy and more goals than other people. You love a sense of accomplishment. Clifton Strengths Explorer Youth with Achieving in their top 3 enjoy getting things done. They thrive on challenges and goals that allow them to accomplish tasks-big and small. Gallup writes about those with Achieving, “the more you get done, the more you feel like a successful person…An award, a good grade, or praise can mean a lot to you because it feels good when your effort and ability are noticed.” Youth with Achieving are hard workers and are always looking to go above and beyond what is required of them.   When you think about the youth in your life, can you name someone like this? I know I can. One student I interacted with at Johnson-Brock on our strengths day comes to mind. Once of the activities we love to do with youth on strengths days is ask them to depict the senses of their strengths. We give them utensils and a blank piece of card stock in order to show what the...