As we tumble toward Christmas, the stores begin to push the gifts that we absolutely need to buy for our loved ones. In an attempt to balance this commercial overwhelm, our family tries to focus on sharing what we have with others and on making memories with each other. The excitement of our grand babies is a truly a gift within itself.
Working in leadership development often has me reflecting about the gifts we bring; our strengths, our wisdom, and our unique perspectives, that we can offer to those around us. While we need to notice and manage expectations, it’s becoming increasingly important to leverage our strengths. As leaders of teams, and in the complexity of our work, how do we encourage our people to bring their best? To engage more fully? To demonstrate their own gifts?
Resources
There are many resources I find helpful for this. Let me just highlight three of them.
1. Marcus Buckingham is a leading researcher around strengths. His work is powerful, and his resources plentiful. He often shares current research around strengths and engagement. He has published some great books and offers a strengths assessment on his website. Check it out here.
2. Brené Brown speaks to gifts in a different way. She explores the gifts of imperfection. Her thesis is that from our imperfections, come gifts and strengths that support our work. Her book is fantastic, and her website has a hub specifically dedicated to this concept, with additional podcasts and information specific to this topic. Check it out here.
3. Finally, one of the most powerful tools that I have used in my work for individual, small and larger teams, is called Type Coach. Using the constructs of Jung, and later, Myers and Briggs, the Type Coach Verifier Report does an excellent job of identifying strengths, challenges, stress responses and much more. Used as an adaptive communication and leadership tool, Type Coach has shifted and supported the practice of leaders and teams around the world. Check it out here.
Type Coach in Action
Meet Inspector Shelley Thompson from Peel Regional Police Services. Through her work with Heather Clayton Consulting, she was introduced to the tool, Type Coach. In Shelley’s words, it is one of the most valuable resource tools she has used as part of her leadership development.
Perhaps it’s time to give yourself the gift of insights and ideas to support your work as a leader?
My Gift to You
This holiday season, my gift to you this season is a free Type Coach Verifier Assessment.
This adaptive tool that supports communication, leadership and teams, takes about 20 – 25 minutes to complete, and generates a report including things like strengths, challenges, what happens to you under stress and strategies for all of the above. In addition, there are some great tools, such as coaching videos, team platform that supports conversations between team members. Type Coach can be expanded to include conversations about stress, innovation, change management and other key topics.
We will be making 30 free licenses available to our community. If you would like to receive your access code, send an email to my team by clicking here.
If you have already participated in Type Coach, you can send this to a friend or colleague as your gift to them by sharing this link here.
If you would like to know more or chat about your experience once you have completed it, let’s connect.
In the meantime, we wish you all the gifts of this Holiday Season – peace, joy, time with family and friends, and perhaps a little reflection time for the blessings and strengths that are uniquely yours.