I’ve worked with hundreds of workplace teams around the topic of CliftonStrengths®. If you haven’t heard of CliftonStrengths, it’s a system for bringing out the best in people. The main application is in the workplace, but there are advantages to using it in your personal life as well. Throughout my career, I’ve seen three types of strengths work. Which are you best at?

Introducing Strengths

The first type of work is introducing strengths. Not everyone has heard of...

Employee engagement is the ability to be motivated, dedicated, and emotionally connected to your work and workplace so you give your best, discretionary effort. Engagement doesn't happen by chance - it takes intention and effort. But you can strengthen your workplace.

Here's an infographic on ten ways to engage employees:

Do you like this infographic? You can download the full size version.

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Last week we shared our six-factor employee engagement model to leaders at Penn State. This is the result of more than five years of research and development while I was leading human resources at EnergyCAP, consulting with other organizations, studying the experts on engagement, and building a comprehensive employee engagement program.

I believe this work matters greatly because:

• there is majority disengagement among workers
• the national engagement rate...

Over the last five years, I’ve led hundreds of training events, mostly around CliftonStrengths®. Usually, the idea for an event begins with team leaders wanting to do something for their team.

Maybe there’s a team retreat coming up, or there’s a team problem to solve, or they want to offer professional development, or they’ve heard of the CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly StrengthsFinders®).

Different reasons have brought them to me, but most events end the...

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In our previous blog we discovered that although it was easy to blame the Great Resignation of employees on the pandemic, that wasn’t the actual cause. The real cause of the unprecedented numbers of employees voluntarily leaving their workplaces was employee disengagement. Now that workplaces are returning to normal (albeit a new normal), should they be concerned about employee disengagement?

According to Gallup, only 34% of American employees are...

You probably have heard the name Michael Phelps, but have you heard the name Bob Bowman? Phelps won the most Olympic medals of any athlete (28) and is most known for winning eight gold medals in a single Olympics. However, if not for Bowman, you may not have ever heard of Phelps.

Bowman was Phelps’ long-time coach and Phelps credits Bowman for much of his success. Together they built a partnership that achieved extraordinary results. What could a strengths-based partnership do for you?

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You’ve probably heard of the Great Resignation, which refers to the unprecedented number of American workers who resigned from their jobs during the pandemic. Maybe your organization lost employees during this time or maybe you left yourself. If you did, you’re in good company—I did too. But what you may not know is what really caused the Great Resignation.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 4 million people...

Eight weeks ago, we moved out of our home in Pennsylvania. A lot of people have asked us why we moved. When I started working full-time for my own business, it meant we could live anywhere. We’d heard great things about Charlottesville and Covenant School. After a discernment process, we decided to move.

But our new home wouldn’t be ready for six weeks, so we would have time on the road. We looked at our six weeks as a series of smaller trips, some for leisure, some for business,...

Sometimes I get asked what happens in a Strengths coaching session (also known as a Strengths debrief). The short answer is it depends on what the client wants to get out of it. I don’t approach a session with my own agenda; as a coach, I want to follow the client’s agenda.

But if a client has never been to a coaching session, they may not know the possibilities. That’s when I like to offer options so the client can choose what will be most valuable. The subject is...

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I was speaking for a leadership group and asked, “How many of you know what you’re good at?” All of them raised their hands.

Then I followed, “How many of you think about using what you’re good at to do your work?” None of them raised their hands.

By not connecting their strengths with their work, they’re leaving so much value, efficiency, and power on the table.

I think this happens a lot in the workplace. We move...