Ep25 Creating a Strengths Culture

Why should your organisation consider having a strengths-based culture? Dr Amanda Potter with her host Angela Malik explore how strengths play a critical role in both personal satisfaction and organisational success in an inclusive environment.  They discuss the importance of diversity in the context of organisational culture with examples how certain companies holding onto corporate traditions see significant problems in their business. As usual, the topics will be approached from a psychological and neuroscientific perspective as well as through personal and professional experiences.

The Chief Psychology Officer website is now available https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
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To contact Amanda via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon
To contact Amanda via email: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

For more information about the BeTalent Strengths questionnaire mentioned in this podcast please go to: https://www.betalent.com

Timestamps

Strengths Culture

·       00:00 – Introduction to Creating a Strengths Culture

·       01:00 – A significant shift in approach

·       01:45 – Personality vs. Strengths

·       03:04 – What are Strengths?

·       03:32 – I’ll do it later…

·       04:58 – My Energizing Strengths: Angela

·       06:22 – My Energizing Strengths: Amanda

·       07:05 – Another argument involving Scrabble!

You reap what you sow…

·       07:35 – Why switch to Strengths?

·       08:20 – A Test of Strength

·       09:42 – I think there’s something to make out of this…

·       10:32 – Innovation, not a fad!

·       11:58 – Food for the future

·       13:37 – You gotta’ love Dopamine

·       14:14 – Strength’s baby steps

·       15:25 – This all sounds like Motivation…

Tending to my garden

·       17:26 – Competence in the workplace; hang on did I leave the oven on?

·       19:13 – Embracing unique individuality

·       20:00 – What is a Strengths Culture?

·       21:22 – Warring Tribes

·       22:37 – Keep the business model to ourselves

·       24:20 – Making a move!

·       26:09 – Why are only women in possession of all the facts?

Adapting to the modern world

·       26:50 – I don’t seem to fit in here…

·       28:16 – The right stuff

·       29:26 – All recorded in the book

·       30:11 – Measuring for metrics

·       31:12 – Have I been doing it wrong all this time?

·       32:14 – The coaches love it!

·       32:46 – Parting thoughts?

·       33:37 – The end.

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

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Transcript

Angela Malik: 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr. Amanda Potter, Chartered Psychologist and CEO of Zircon. I'm Angela Malik, and today we are exploring strengths, what they are, how they help us reach a happier and more productive working life, and how to create a strengths-based culture and environment.

Dr Amanda Potter: 0:22

Thank you, Angela,

Angela Malik: 0:23

for hosting once again. So, Amanda, I know you're a real advocate of using and adopting a strengths-based approach. I

Dr Amanda Potter: 0:30

am and I have done for about the last 10 years. So my journey has been from someone who has been absolutely passionate about personality assessment, so much so that I did a PhD in personality theory using the big five. And I'm also someone who has been an avid supporter of competency based assessment. And my shift has been significantly now towards strengths based assessment. And this has been a significant one in my career. And how has it been significant? So over the first 15 years of my career in psychology, I got trained in all of the leading psychometric products, including MBTI, OPQ, 16PF, FIRO-B, 15FQ, and so on. And I loved them all. But I didn't think broadly enough about the application of these tools and what it meant from a cultural perspective. And in this podcast, I would like to provide insight into what it's like to try to drive and create a strengths-based culture from inside an organization, rather than focusing on personality assessment for recruitment or for talent, which doesn't enable a strengths-based or cognitively diverse culture, both of which, of course, are critical for success.

Angela Malik: 1:44

As someone who is not a psychologist myself, I don't know if I fully appreciate the difference between personality and strengths. Can you explain what that difference is? So

Dr Amanda Potter: 1:55

personality, we think about trait. A trait is something that is enduring that we have across the whole of our lifetime and is a little bit like our behavioral DNA. And we're often recognized or known for this aspect of our personality. Whereas a strength is more towards a state. A state is something that changes more rapidly, more daily, and could grow, for example, over time. If you think about emotional intelligence or resilience, Resilience, that changes or fluctuates over time. And in fact, there's a positive correlation between emotional intelligence, resilience and age because we grow in our resilience and our emotional intelligence as we get older. But something that's a state is influenced by the environment. And therefore, the environment and the situation that someone is in will impact how they are feeling. So if we have on the one hand, personality, which is trait, and on the other hand, emotional intelligence, which is state, strengths for me are in the middle. And strengths describe and define what energizes us, what we enjoy and what we gravitate towards.

Angela Malik: 3:03

So let's go back a few steps before we move forward and zero in on strengths. What are strengths?

Dr Amanda Potter: 3:10

So very much building on what I said earlier, strengths are energizers. They're the things that we do well, we find enjoyable. And potentially with that practice, because of that moving towards behavior, the fact that we find opportunities to practice the things that we enjoy, in theory, we're likely to get good at them. can you give me an example so a strength never gets on the to-do list and that's because very often the task is done before the list is even created it's the natural energizing and authentic aspect of the person or what they enjoy on the other hand if there's something that you have to write down and you move it from one list to another constantly berating yourself for not actually completing that task that's likely to be quite low on your strengths list and we would refer to that as an underused strength because it's not something that's energizing to you something that you don't enjoy and it requires you to drive your motivation in order to complete that task and it's underused because if you need that strength in order to perform and succeed then it's a gap and therefore is a potential risk

Angela Malik: 4:21

well having done my be talent strength questionnaire On my own report, meticulous is right at the bottom, and I absolutely do leave those types of tasks to the bottom of my list. I suppose the way I try to work around that is by delegating out the tasks that I can that require that strength to individuals on the team who I know are better at that, are more energized by being meticulous. But, you know, if I have to use meticulous, I can. I just try to lean into my more energizing strengths when I can.

Dr Amanda Potter: 4:57

And what are your more energizing strengths, Angela? Where do you get your joy at work? So my

Angela Malik: 5:04

top two would be initiator and risk taker, and attentive is a close third. And I agree with all three of these. I think attentive, it's really great for my role in Zircon as client relationship manager, and it helps with collaboration with the team. As an initiator, because our team is small, Being a self-starter and being ready to jump into projects and get them rolling is something that's very useful as well. And as a risk taker, I really enjoy strategic thinking. So yeah, I think that really fits in with me and it helps our company stay innovative and competitive.

Dr Amanda Potter: 5:42

That's so interesting that you take satisfaction because that's the point is that if we focus on the things that we enjoy and we get the opportunity to practice them, to apply them at work, we're going to be happier. be more contented. And actually there's some fantastic research to say that if we help people identify their strengths, use their strengths and apply those strengths at work, we will have a more engaged, committed and happier workforce. So that's a great example. And then personally, Angela, the fact that you are risk-taking is very helpful in the fact that I asked you to be a host on this podcast, even though you and I had not done anything like this before. So very good. Very nice. I

Angela Malik: 6:22

think it's worked out

Dr Amanda Potter: 6:22

well. Let's hope. So Amanda what are your top energizing strengths? So my number one signature strength according to our Be Talent Strengths questionnaire is decisive and in fact I'm a fast somewhat impulsive decision maker who doesn't like a decision unmade. My second strength however is competitive and I'm not quite so happy about that one because for years I've been arguing with an old friend Emma Dobson who has labeled me in a nice way in a kind way as being competitive. She says I Oh my gosh. Did you throw it in when you lost? I did. It was a Z word or a Q word and I was winning until that last word and my competitor beat me and I was not happy. Oh dear, Amanda.

Angela Malik: 7:20

I know. So thinking about what you were saying before about your career path, what enticed you to move from personality when you loved it, you did an entire PhD on it, to switch to researching strengths?

Dr Amanda Potter: 7:32

So about 10 years ago, there were a handful of very good reputable organizations that were selling strengths products like we do now in the UK. And I started to understand the application of a strengths-based approach in talent assessment, development, feedback and coaching as a result. And I very quickly loved the concept of strengths and the unique self, albeit at that time I hadn't really heard about cognitive diversity and I hadn't read Matthew Saeed's book, which of course wasn't published until 2019. But that was a real game changer for me because it helped to validate all of the thinking and all the research we we'd been doing around the importance of bringing teams of people together who are unique and different from one another in order to create conversation and debate.

Angela Malik: 8:17

What exactly is the application of strengths assessment? Why assess strengths?

Dr Amanda Potter: 8:23

So personality, if I go to the other side, helps us understand how someone would typically respond in a given situation. But it doesn't tell us about what that person would enjoy, move towards, get energy from and where they will spend their time. That's what's strengths do. They help us understand where someone will spend their time and therefore where they are likely to be the most effective.

Angela Malik: 8:46

And so this almost feels like an obvious question, but then what's the benefit of knowing that?

Dr Amanda Potter: 8:50

So Gallup do some fantastic research with strengths and they've got a product that is in direct competition with ours. And so they conducted some workshops using strengths and they found that as a result of using strengths, there was a 10 to 19% increase in sales, 14 to 29% increase in profit and number of other statistics, for example, decrease in safety incidents, a really high percentage between 22 to 59% decrease in safety incidents. So So Gallup, their data tends to be with thousands of participants and tens of thousands of organizations. So massive data samples and all of the data is pointing towards a strengths-based approach being highly predictive of a number of measures of performance in the

Angela Malik: 9:37

role. So clearly there is a real business case for using strengths in talent assessment and development.

Dr Amanda Potter: 9:44

Yeah, completely. And if you think that I always talk about the fact that I've been a psychologist for 30 years. The first 20 years of my career, my focus has very much been on competency, on skills and knowledge and experience. I've worked with organisations like the Ministry of Defence and their chief psychologists are very, very much wedded to the skills, knowledge, experience model. But by focusing on competencies and aptitudes and personality, we're missing a trick because strengths are highly predictive of performance and results. Candidates enjoy completing them. They appreciate understanding where their strengths are and what their signature strengths are. And ultimately, they help with cognitive diversity and inclusion and problem solving and ideation in organizations.

Angela Malik: 10:32

So I know we said that Matthew Said's book didn't come out until 2019, which I think was a game changer for how mainstream organizations were thinking about strengths. I guess the next question then is, is a strengths-based approach just fad or is it innovation

Dr Amanda Potter: 10:50

well it's a very long fad if it's a fad i genuinely believe it's long-term innovation we're learning more and more about the application of strengths now matthew saeed has come into our industry not as a psychologist but as someone who is naturally very curious and so he asks great questions and he publishes fantastic books answering those questions and the book rebel ideas is very much about asking a number of questions about the risks of homogeneity in homophily. And he points to the importance of cognitive diversity as a way of increasing innovation, ideation, and problem solving. And to be fair, I completely agree with him. So I don't think it's fad. I think it is something that is quite fundamental. And in the words of Dr. Nikki Hayes, who's the president of the BPS, who, as you know, Angela, we've recently interviewed on the podcast, Once you understand strengths, it makes sense. And as Nikki says, it's not necessarily common sense because not everybody knows it. But once we understand the concept of strengths, it's very clear the value they bring.

Angela Malik: 11:58

Recently, we were at the ABP conference. That's the Association for Business Psychology. And I was in a session and heard something that I thought was great relating to competencies. It was that competencies which assess past performance have been regarded to be the best predictor of Yes, I

Dr Amanda Potter: 12:20

was in that session too, and I couldn't agree more. That was with Martin Kavanagh from Amberjack. What he was saying is that if we are working in this VUCA, which is this volatile, unpredictable world, and also people talk about BANI now, B-A-N-I, which talks about the fact that we have no ability to predict the future anymore. So in this sense of unpredictability, how in the heck can past performance be relevant? How can we use past performance to predict future performance when we don't actually know what the future is going to be? And his point, and I completely agree with him, is that in this very VUCA world that we work and live, we cannot rely on past performance being the greatest predictor of future performance. We have to look to potential. And that's why we are moving towards a strengths-based approach. That seems to make a lot of sense. Yeah, I agree. It does make a lot of sense. There's a huge amount of research from multiple studies showing that strengths help people to feel more engaged, more productive, and have greater well-being at work. And also in an assessment situation candidates who complete strengths-based approaches leave those interviews feeling motivated and encouraged and that strengths-based approach really helps. So what does neuroscience say about strengths? So if we go back to the previous podcast you'll remember Tim getting very excited about the neurotransmitter dopamine. He does love dopamine. He does love dopamine. Dopamine is the motivation and reward transmitter and to be fair I love dopamine too and dopamine helps us with encouraging people towards activities that bring us joy. So strengths are things that potentially bring us joy because we enjoy doing them. So dopamine plays a big role in moving us towards those strengths. How do our strengths develop? So from a neuroscientific perspective strengths are created by our brain synapses being nurtured as we develop learn and grow. As our strengths are heavily dependent on environmental factors during development and as I mentioned strengths are moving towards more of a state they can change over time and so As a result of our environment and as a result of us changing and focusing on new things that we enjoy, we are likely to train ourselves to be more motivated, to be more excited by different activities. And therefore we will release greater levels of dopamine and get excited about the tasks that we enjoy most.

Angela Malik: 14:58

So if strengths change over time and we can train them, then that must mean that we can influence what our strengths are. We

Dr Amanda Potter: 15:05

can. Because strengths are more of a state than a trait as i mentioned they're not completely state like emotional intelligence or resilience it is possible to gradually evolve our strengths over time but with personality the argument is that they are preferences that remain largely constant no matter the situation

Angela Malik: 15:24

so if i have a strength that means i'm energized by that activity is being energized by something the same as being motivated

Dr Amanda Potter: 15:32

is it the same motivation the answer is no From a psychological term, we differentiate between strengths, motivation. They are quite different from one another. And I know I probably used the word motivation earlier when I was talking about dopamine because that is the reward and motivation transmitter. But actually, from a psychological perspective, we clearly differentiate between strengths and motivation and also strengths, motivation and skill. Can you elaborate? Imagine we were to focus on your least preferred strength, Angela, which is meticulous, and Sarah and I asked you to spend a whole day peer reviewing and proofing reports. What will happen is you're likely to feel quite tired by the end of the day because it's not something you necessarily enjoy. But because you're a fabulous employee, thank you very much, you're motivated to do a good job. So you want to deliver high quality work. So you're motivated to be meticulous, but you're not energized by it and therefore can get depleted. But as a result of that practice, because you're motivated, you're actually in truth very skilled at being meticulous, albeit you don't enjoy the experience. So with that example, what we're seeing is the difference between something that you enjoy and bring you energy and something you're motivated by that doesn't energize you and therefore can deplete you. What's amazing in our business is we have our team of highly meticulous people working with us, including Jess and Emily and Andrea and Heidi. So, so many people who are meticulous who have gravitated towards our business, which I say thank goodness because you and I both are not meticulous, Angela.

Angela Malik: 17:15

Absolutely. I would really not be surprised if meticulous was at the top of their strengths list. I think it is. If we check, it's on our website. I'm pretty sure. Looking at strengths and skills, for example, there must be some overlap. I mean, if you're energized by something, you're likely to get good at it.

Dr Amanda Potter: 17:33

True. But in terms of the definitions, they're completely separate. If we think about the difference between competencies and strengths, that will help because skills are a part of competencies. So competencies exist to help us articulate the standards or requirements for a job, a role, a level or an organization. And there is most definitely still a place for competencies because we need to measure performance and assess skill and capability against requirements. But strengths are unique to the person. And that's what differentiates you from me, Angela, because your top combination of strengths are different to mine. And therefore we show up in very different ways. So strengths are very much about who you are and what you bring. And competencies are about what you can do against the requirements and how competent you are against those standards or requirements. So to answer your question, of course, there can be an overlap between the two. But fundamentally, they're very different psychological constructs.

Angela Malik: 18:35

So in thinking about strengths versus competencies, then, what is the implication for businesses?

Dr Amanda Potter: 18:42

So some organizations are replacing competency models with strengths models. And I think that's dangerous, because both are needed. Competencies are knowledge, skills and experience, as I've said, very clear for organizations like the Ministry of Defense, where they use this as standards for assessment at each of the levels of the organization. Strengths are truly about that unique individual. And everybody is different and has something that is distinct about them, depending on their combination of strengths.

Angela Malik: 19:12

So Amanda, if both are needed, what does it mean to have a strengths-based culture? It's

Dr Amanda Potter: 19:18

a movement away from competencies alone towards the unique individual. And it reminds me of the old personality debate about individual differences, which is measured on normative profile charts or unique individuals, which is measured on dimensions like FIRO-B or MBTI or insights. We need competencies as a standard for assessment and development, but we also need to recognize the unique strengths that people bring. So recognizing that they have gaps on the competencies and then weaknesses as a result is helpful, but understanding where they prefer to invest their time and where they get their energy is even more important. So then what is a strengths culture? So a strengths culture is giving each person the tools to identify and understand their core or top three strengths and what their signature strength is, their number one strength, and then apply these strengths to be the best versions of themselves. And organizations that use the strengths assessment at a very practical level do this for assessment, for recruitment, for development, for coaching, and for team development and facilitation. And so strengths become part of the language more so than about gaps or risks or performance management. It focuses on potential aspirations in the future rather than gaps and performance and development. It's a lot more positive than the focus. It's so much more positive actually and employees we know don't enjoy performance management conversations because it's about the past, it's about the gaps and very often it's a conversation about what they should have done better. If we could have strengths-based appraisals which are about the future, about what they enjoy doing and what their aspirations are, that's going to be actually much more energizing and they can identify the overlap between what they're motivated to do because it's the right thing to do for their career or the organization and what they love doing, which brings them joy and leave the day feeling great rather than feeling exhausted and depleted.

Angela Malik: 21:21

With any culture, diversity is going to play a huge role. You mentioned cognitive diversity earlier. We tend to talk about that a lot in this podcast. We do. Yeah. But can you remind us what it means and how it relates to

Dr Amanda Potter: 21:37

strengths? Cognitive diversity is much more difficult to observe or identify in people and cognitive diversity can include strengths. Why is cognitive diversity important? Without it, we are at risk, as Matthew Saeed says, of a homogeneous or homophily culture, which has a significant impact on organizations because of the risk of groupthink, consensus-driven culture, deferring to leadership, lack of creativity, and a number of unconscious biases that can come in when we see low cognitive diversity.

Angela Malik: 22:36

We were talking before about how there's a clear business case for strengths-based approach, and there's so many benefits. So why is this approach not more widespread?

Dr Amanda Potter: 22:47

In the large organizations, we see it being pretty widespread now. So 73% of the large organizations that we interviewed, who are FTSE 100, Fortune 100, many of those and the large public sector organizations we interviewed are moving towards a strengths-based approach. It doesn't mean that they're buying product, but it does mean that they're changing their attitude from a gap-based performance management approach towards an aspirational future and potential-based approach that considers strengths.

Angela Malik: 23:19

We don't see it as often in small to medium-sized businesses, though.

Dr Amanda Potter: 23:22

You're absolutely right, Angela. And in those small to mid-tier organizations, we see them getting extremely embedded with product and methodologies and consulting partners. And they can end up having quite traditional methods of assessment for recruitment, for example, or assessment for development. And they almost don't want to take the risk. They're often quite risk averse, quite change resistant. And so they have to truly be convinced about this. The great news, as you said earlier, books like Matthew Syed's book on rebel ideas is in the public forum. And I've heard clients more than ever across all types of organizations talking about quite psychological terms like psychological safety, cognitive diversity, the risk of homogeneity, strengths-based approach. So what we're seeing is people being much more curious about the difference that we can make as psychologists, which is utterly brilliant.

Angela Malik: 24:19

So for those organizations that want to be disruptive, innovative in their approach, how do they achieve that cultural shift into strengths?

Dr Amanda Potter: 24:27

So it's actually quite simple. It can start with the tools and the products and exciting people about the concept of strengths and then educating the business about the importance of cognitive diversity, the importance of challenging one another and the importance of being curious and remaining curious. Because this, of course, links beautifully with psychological safety.

Angela Malik: 24:49

If it is that simple, then why don't they just do it?

Dr Amanda Potter: 24:53

Well, I think it's because we live in a fixing culture where we naturally gravitate towards and focus on our weaknesses and we want to be good if possible at everything and we don't like to fail and we know that from the psychological safety research and because of that fear of failure and moving away from the risk of being weak in any certain area the joy of identifying potential or focusing on strengths is lost. We focus on those negative aspects. A great example of this is if we look at the Harvard business review research and job applications. We know from that research that many women are found to apply only for jobs when they believe they 100% meet the written requirements. And so they have extremely high standards of themselves. And the concept behind strengths is that you have outstanding areas, so positive spikes that really identify you in which you are overwhelmingly great. But then on the other side, you'll have some gaps And if we take that approach, we're never going to be 100% great at everything. We're naturally going to have gaps. And so that would mean that we would never apply for a new job.

Angela Malik: 26:08

You said the research shows that women tend to only apply for jobs when they 100% meet the requirements. Why is it only women?

Dr Amanda Potter: 26:16

It's a great challenge, actually. And the research has shown there's quite a significant difference between men and women. Men are much more prepared to push themselves forward even if they do not 100% meet the requirements where women feel like they need to meet all of the requirements before they push themselves forward. It's just a significant gender difference in self-belief and confidence and how men and women apply for jobs, which is fascinating. And the other one, just as a sidebar, that men over the last 10 years have had more company cars than women because men are more likely to ask. So

Angela Malik: 26:50

in a fixing culture where we are focused on gaps and weaknesses, how does someone feel if they aren't that environment and they can't work in that kind of culture.

Dr Amanda Potter: 27:01

Well, I think if you're in the fixing culture and you're trying to be the best you can be in an area you're motivated to do and to deliver, but you don't particularly love, you're going to feel at odds with yourself. So you're going to end up working against your authentic self. Imagine, for example, you were incredibly energized by being inspirational, by being future focused and being innovative. So they're the sorts of activities that should bring you joy and you are best placed But imagine that you didn't enjoy all of the work around being methodical, meticulous and structured, but you were given project plans to oversee over a long period of time or you were having two minute meetings. You are likely to get higher levels of dissatisfaction and lower levels of well-being, which of course could eventually start to contribute to burnout. And it also impacts psychological safety because happy and resilient people create safety. safe, inclusive environments where people can operate in an authentic way. So it's just really important to make sure that we do the things we love rather than the things that we think we should do. And stay true to

Angela Malik: 28:13

our authentic selves. Totally. So for organizations that are looking to implement a strengths-based approach, can we use strengths for recruitment to select the right candidates for an organization?

Dr Amanda Potter: 28:25

Well, the word right is the one that worries me in your statement, Angela. So the right strength is a problem. Because yes, you can use strengths for recruitment, but no, you cannot select the right strengths. And the reason I say that is you should never profile match. Profile matching is when you identify the strengths in the team or the organization that you would like to recruit for, and then you actively recruit people with those strengths. If you do this, what you're going to do is contribute to a homogeneous or homophily culture where everyone is the same. So I fundamentally disagree with profile matching. I fundamentally agree with the unique individual, identifying what someone's core and unique or signature strengths are, and then deciding how well that person will fit into the team. Do they have strengths that will complement the team and add greater value because they are diverse to the team that you have already?

Angela Malik: 29:23

Over the years, you must have collected lots of examples of organizations which have successfully implemented a strengths approach and and achieved cognitive diversity.

Dr Amanda Potter: 29:32

Very much. And we've been working with Jig Ramji from London Stock Exchange Group, for example, and they've been doing some fantastic work there with Nick and Hayley and Dan and Lisa and so many of the other team members around implementing a strengths based approach for assessment, for recruitment and for development. And that's because both identity based diversity and cognitive diversity is a massive agenda for the London Stock Exchange. And I can can see that it is starting to make a real difference in the way people talk about development and they're moving away from traditional performance appraisals towards potential assessments.

Angela Malik: 30:11

So where organizations are implementing a strengths approach, how can they identify and measure strengths?

Dr Amanda Potter: 30:18

They can identify and measure strengths using strengths-based tools like the talent strengths questionnaire or strengths cards. But the key is not, as I said already, to use it as a way of working out which strengths you want to keep and which strengths you want to get rid of, but more as a tool for exploration and giving you insight about a person.

Angela Malik: 30:38

Are there any potential pitfalls to look out for besides profile matching, which you've mentioned?

Dr Amanda Potter: 30:43

The main one is truly profile matching. The other one is using tests only for self-affirmation. So ignoring or fixing the weaknesses rather than coaching the strengths. You've got to be careful that if you take a very positive strengths-based approach, that you don't just use it as an excuse to avoid the strengths that are at the bottom of the list and just think well i'm not any good at those anyway so i won't bother in developing them but actually looking at the whole picture what is at the top and what's at the bottom

Angela Malik: 31:11

oh dear does that mean i shouldn't be delegating out my meticulous tasks

Dr Amanda Potter: 31:15

well i know you're motivated to do it and i know we need it but i'm not going to ask you to do it too much because you will get depleted and feel exhausted that's good

Angela Malik: 31:25

So it sounds like strengths and our Be Talent Strengths questionnaire in particular are great for use in development, coaching, facilitation, assessment, really the whole spectrum.

Dr Amanda Potter: 31:37

I completely agree. And of course, I'm biased. Any strengths questionnaire, whether it's from us or from another test publisher, to be honest, all the strengths tools that I know on the market are excellent. And all of them are great in multiple different applications. So whilst decision styles, for example, is particularly helpful at the very senior level for executive recruitment and top team facilitation, I would say strengths has the most global appeal. You can use it in any setting and in any environment because it's very helpful with exploration, but particularly our coaches enjoy using it.

Angela Malik: 32:13

Yes, I hear all the time from our coaches that they love when their clients have that aha moment and are able to take some insight from the reports. And in fact, if a leader is looking for an executive coach, I would encourage them to find a coach who is using a strengths approach exactly for all of the reasons that we've given here.

Dr Amanda Potter: 32:32

For me, I use strengths in my first coaching session of six because it helped me to create that trust and that personal connection, which is so foundational for the coaching relationship.

Angela Malik: 32:44

So as we come to a close of this episode, Amanda, do you have any parting thoughts from your experience?

Dr Amanda Potter: 32:50

Your question makes me think about Julie Lee, who's one of our long-term psychologists and has worked with me for the last 22 years of Zircon. She has always said that she, as an assessor, loves working with and giving feedback to people who are spiky. In other words, they have outstanding strengths and significant gaps because they're the most interesting to work with because they're prepared to get off the fence and they're extreme in certain areas and they're prepared to be themselves and I think that's really the message that if we are going to create an environment that's strengths based we all need to embrace who we are what we love doing and do more of those things so that we are spiky we get off the fence and we are prepared to be our genuine authentic selves

Angela Malik: 33:37

I Amazing. Well, thank you, Amanda, for another fascinating conversation. And thank you also to Attila Simone, our business psychologist who supported with preparing for this podcast.

Dr Amanda Potter: 33:48

Thank you, Attila. It's been fantastic. Again, we really appreciate your help. And thank you, Angela, and everyone for listening. I hope you have a lovely day. And thank you for all of your positive ratings and your support for this podcast. We really appreciate your help.

Angela Malik: 34:02

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