I was reminded recently of a common phrase, "back to basics." This week, I chose to highlight the activity Gallup teaches us to do first after we have discovered our top 5 strengths. It is an activity I have gone back to time and time again because sometimes going back to basics is the best thing we can do in our own development.
The activity I will challenge you to do is a reflection on your signature theme report. Log back into www.strengthsquest.com and scroll down to find your report. See here:
Download this report and print it. Yours will look a bit like this, with your name and top 5 listed:
This report gives the longer definition for each of your top 5 strengths. Your mentee, if they are in high school will be able to generate the same report as you have by logging into their own strengthsquest page. If your mentee is in elementary or middle, you will be able to access the longer report for strengths explorer by going to the strengths explorer website and typing in their access code. If you need assistance with mentee access for strengths explorer, please reach out to me at tstarman@teammates.org.
Once you have your report downloaded and printed, start by highlighting words and phrases that resonate with you or sound like you. You may highlight a lot, or you may highlight a little. Then, turn it over to someone who knows you well and ask them to do the same. With your mentee, you may choose to do this with each other. Or, you may choose to do this with someone else, and then come back together to report on the differences between your reflections and the other person's reflections on your strengths.
We did this activity early on in our Genn and Millie series. If you would like to see it modeled, click the link HERE to watch this episode.
Through this activity, we come to see our strengths with more accurate light. As humans, we judge ourselves based on our motivations and intentions, but we judge others based on their actions and behaviors. In this sense, we become our own worst critics. Allowing another person who knows us well to speak into, and affirm our strengths, we begin to break down the biases and negative connotations we might have regarding our strengths.
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