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...

In TeamMates, we utilize two different CliftonStrengths platforms, StrengthsQuest and Strengths Explorer. We have spent the last year discussing one by one the 34 StrengthsQuest themes. Over this summer, we are going to dive into each of the Strengths Explorer Themes. Before we begin, we wanted to spend a week discussing what Strengths Explorer is for those who are unfamiliar. Strengths Explorer is a simplified version of CliftonStrengths, aimed at younger individuals. In TeamMates, we utilize SE with 3 rd through 8 th graders. The assessment itself is much shorter than StrengthsQuest, only taking 15-30 minutes, on average. The questions have easier language and the assessment itself is not timed, making this assessment accessible and inclusive to all students.     Once the student is finished taking SE, they receive their Top 3 of 10 themes. These 10 themes were chosen by the Gallup Education department in the formation of Strengths Explorer. They a...

  We are grateful to have traveled to many communities this year and while Tess and I did a great deal of “talking strengths” on the road, we learned just as much from the strengths discovery and awareness of mentors and mentees. Realizing that some of the best strengths practice comes from conversations with one another, Tess and I decided to structure a new opportunity – a video series aimed at building conversations on the unique ways we see the world, based on our strengths, and based on our stage and season of life. As we were sharing this idea at one of our first fall strengths sessions, Bob’s ideation guided us to our title:  Genn and Millie.   My perspective comes from the GenX generation and Tess’s the Millenial.  We witnessed Bob’s ideation in action as that title quickly came to mind.  Thankfully Bob helped us find the right description. Often we discuss the impact of high school students thinking about their strengths in re...

This year, since coming on staff, I have had the opportunity to attend trainings at Gallup, travel to countless communities to advocate strengths, make ridiculous yet informative videos, write about individual strengths, and grow in my own knowledge and ownership of strengths. One of the greatest lessons I have learned personally this year is the power of knowing my limits. Gallup co-founder Don Clifton believed that a lifetime is not enough to learn about your #1 strength. After years of naming, claiming, and aiming my top 5, I find I am still learn something new about my strengths each day. But this year, because of my training, I had the opportunity to learn my full 34 strengths. When most people learn about their full 34, they go straight to the bottom, looking at what are their “weaknesses.” These aren’t actually our weaknesses, but our “lesser talents”, according to Gallup. Through a strengths-based lens, our lesser talents are opportunities to utilize blends of our other do...

People exceptionally talented in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information. Clifton Strengths Finder People with high Input have an unquenched thirst to know more. They are continuously seeking more information, more knowledge, and more resources. One of my favorite Input-ers is my coworker Allyson Horne. She explains her Input by sharing that her favorite sentences end in a question mark. By asking questions, Allyson shows her love for and interest in the other person’s life. Questions are natural and normal in every conversation for someone with Input. They have an insatiable curiosity. Gallup writes, “A few minutes of surfing on the internet may turn into hours once their curiosity takes in.” People with high Input often collect things. Unlike someone with high Context who may collect maps or historical stamps, or someone with Relator who may save letters and pictures from loved ones, the collectio...