Strengths Activity-Strengths Collage

Conversations are a great way to recognize, own, and develop our strengths. But sometimes, I find my mentee and I have the best dialogues when we are doing something kinetic. This week's featured strengths activity is hands on!

In the picture above, you see a great example of this week's activity, a strengths collage! Our own words and descriptions of our strengths are powerful, just like strengths conversations, but sometimes, when we look to other's words, we can help expand our understanding of our talent. In addition, sometimes our words just don't "cut it", and pictures or images might evoke a more accurate feeling regarding your talents. Through this activity, you and your mentee will look to magazines, newspapers, and advertisements in order expand your strengths language as well as practice strengths spotting.

What you will need:

A piece of card stock or journal page
Various magazines, newspapers, or advertisements.
Glue
Scissors
Markers/colored pencils

Directions

Have your top 5 or 3 strengths in front of you.
Flip through the media materials and pick out words, phrases, or pictures that resonate with you and help describe your strengths.
As you find these materials, cut them out and place them to the side.
Once you are finished, begin assembling these cut outs however you wish on your card stock or journal page.
Then, add further customization to the collage, if desired. Write your top 5 on the collage, add in your own words or phrases, or add in doodles and decorations to tie it all together.
As you are completing, engage in conversation with your mentee about the images and phrases you each select. Ask questions like, which strength(s) does this cut out refer to? How does this cut out describe your strengths? What about this image resonates with you? Be sure to name the specific strength you hear in their answers so they can see their strengths in action.
Finally, challenge yourselves to share your collage with at least 2 other people, sharing about how this collage displays your strengths.

If you do this activity with your mentee, send us a picture of it! For questions, comments, or to share your collage with us, reach out to Tess at tstarman@teammates.org.

Comments

Strengths Activity: DBT House

The featured activity this week has become a recent favorite of the TeamMates Strengths Team. I learned of it by attending the Green Hills AEA Conference this past summer. The breakout presenter, Louise El Yafoori, taught on mitigating culturally sensitive trauma. This activity comes from the practice of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. While it can be used in very targeted ways for working with certain groups of kids, we found it a powerful reflective exercise that we all could benefit from. We facilitated this activity at our annual strengths day at the Gallup campus this year and the results of this learning and self reflection were highly impactful. Consider doing this activity with your mentee as a way to deepen the conversation around strengths and talent by incorporating discussions of values, role models, support systems, and more. Activity Instructions: On a blank piece of paper, sketch out a house. Your house should include: a foundation, walls, windows, a door, roof, ch

Achiever: Fulfillment from Accomplishment

People exceptionally talented in the Achiever theme work hard and possess a great deal of stamina. They take immense satisfaction in being busy and productive. Clifton StrengthsFinder We are excited to hear from Stephanie Pravecek about Achiever this week. Steph is the Events Coordinator for TeamMates and leads with Achiever, Responsibility, Discipline, Consistency, and Relator. People with high Achiever are hard workers, list makers, and doers. It is very difficult for Achievers to take a break when there is a task at hand that needs to be completed. Once one task is complete it is on to the next and then the next. Achievers set out each day to accomplish at least one task but, there is much more fulfillment when multiple things are crossed off the “to-do” list for the day. This does include weekends and vacations, as REST or RELAX are not words you often hear in the vocabulary of an Achiever. As a guest blogger this week, I am going to put more of a personal ton

Strengths Activity- Strengths Metaphors

A fun activity we have done with students is Strengths Metaphors. We often have a tendency to limit and confine our strengths to the two-sentence definition of the theme we find on the 34 list. Strengths manifest uniquely in each person based on their other 5 or 2 themes, their age, their background, their life experiences, and so much more. The Strengths Metaphors activity is a great way to break the themes of out of the boxes we put them in. Fill out the worksheet or engage in a conversation using the prompts on the sheet. Pick one of your top 5 or top 3 themes. Describe what the theme looks like, what color you would associate with it, what it smells like, what it sounds like, and any other sensory descriptors you would add to the selected theme. Share with your mentee and ask your mentee to share with you. Share with each other why you chose to assign these specific descriptors to the strength. If you have similar strengths to each other, discuss the differences between

Strength Based Mentoring

Search This Blog