leveraging your strengths to reach your goals
TRANSCRIPT
Leveraging Your Strengths to Reach Your Goals
Judith Albino, PhD
President Emerita and Professor
Colorado School of Public Health
AAL Senior Consultant
Learning Goals
Use Appreciative Inquiry Skills to learn about others’ strengths and potential
Identify your Personal Strengths
Understand the Johari Window as a tool to optimize your strengths
Elicit feedback to move toward greater use of your strengths to reach your goals
Begin with a Goal in Mind
Think of a current goal related to your work or the work you would like to do.
Write the goal in simple terms
- large or small
- immediate or long-term
…we’ll come back to this
Small Group Exercise
Form a group with 2 others.
Speaker (each takes a turn) uses 7 minutes to
share a peak experience.
Listeners practice Appreciative Inquiry to learn more about speaker’s strengths, jot down key words. Probe about key issues; be curious. Listen for actions, energy, motivation.
Rotate until each person speaks.
Appreciative Inquiry*
Approach to studying and improving human behavior by focusing on the best of what isin order to imagine the best that could be.
A solution-focused, rather than a problem-focused, orientation.
*Cooperrider and Srivastva,1987; Bushe, 1998
Rules for Appreciative InquiryAppreciate and understand by asking open
ended questions that:• Help understand and discover
• Reflect what is positive and constructive
• Reveal context and catalysts
• Elucidate behaviors and feelings
• Envision a positive future
No critiquing, no judging, no second-guessing
Peak Work Experience
Think of a time when you were at your best at work, when you felt “in the flow,” alive, and totally engaged:
• What was the context: setting, task, people?
• What were you thinking and doing then?
Visualize…
Get grounded in the memory of your actual experience; explore what about yourself, the situation, the task, and others made this a "peak" experience for you.
Prepare to describe this experience.
Let’s review….
In groups of 3:
Speakers, in turn, take 7 minutes to share a peak experience.
Listeners practice Appreciative Inquiry to learn more about speaker’s strengths, jot down key words. Probe key issues and be curious, and note actions, energy, fears, motivation, etc.
Rotate until each person speaks.
Assessing Strengths
You heard about a peak experience, when someone was at his/her best….
Now, describe that individual’s greatest strengths as demonstrated by features of the story that was told.
Spotlight on Strengths
Strengths are useful to the extent that they are visible to ourselves and to others.
Johari Window provides a framework for understanding our strengths.
It allows us to compare what we know of ourselves with what others know of us.
Strengths Worksheet
• Worksheets for self and peer assessment.
• In your group, read the list of Judann adjectives describing work behaviors of individuals.
• Choose 6 words that best exemplify the person in the peak work experience story; note behaviors that demonstrated those strengths.
• Complete a Strengths Worksheet for yourself and for the others in your group.
• Each person will compile their own assessments.
Johari WindowJoseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, 1955
Four aspects of personality vary in visibility
Johari Window Panes
• “Arena” or “Open” (NW)
– Known to self and to others; goal to increase
• “Façade” or “Hidden” (SW)
‒ We know about ourselves, others do not see
• “Blind Area” (NE)
‒ Others see in us things that we do not see
• “Unknown” (SE)
‒ Neither we nor others see
‒ May represent our greatest potential
How Johari Can Help
Scoring Window Reflections
o Compile your adjective lists.
o Array sheets of JUDANN Adjectives.
• Self assessment + your peer assessments
o Copy all adjectives used to describe you (by yourself or others) into appropriate Johari Window panes.
Johari Window Example
KnownBy Self
UnknownBy Self
KnownBy Others
Open/ArenaAuthenticCalmingAnalytical
Blind SpotInnovativeDependablePositive
UnknownBy Others
Hidden/FaçadePrincipledStrategicPragmatic
UnknownAll other adjectives
For Reflection and Discussion:• What surprised you most about what others see in
you that you don’t see (Blind Areas)?
• When/why do others see these? Could you use these strengths more frequently?
• How do you feel about your Open area strengths? Is this how you want to be seen?
• What do you know about yourself that others don’t seem to recognize (Hidden)? Would you like anything to be more visible?
• What areas in the Unknown frame would you like to develop? Why?
Johari Experience
o Successful leaders are clear about their own strengths; they work intentionally to develop them. Self reflection is critical
Feedback reduces blind areas, unknown
o Successful leaders build teams that optimize aggregated strengths.
Caution: Your greatest strengths can be your greatest weaknesses!
Use Strengths to Reach Goals
o Return to your goals from the beginning of this session; choose one.
o Explore how to use a strength in pursuing one of your goals
Choose one JUDANN adjective to target, and state your goal as a question:
How can I use _________ to _________?
Get some help…
Let’s get as much input as possible in the next few minutes, using:
Feedforward
What’s Feedforward?
Feedback – focuses on the past; more often than not, it is about what we did badly.
Feedforward – focuses on the futureand what we can do differently, or better.
Feedforward Procedures
Two lines facing; begin standing opposite
someone you do not know well.
Bell rings: Begin: ask your question
Bell rings: Stop: say “thank you”
No discussing or explaining, no critiquing
or suggestions, no talking about the past
All suggestions are for the future
Move quickly; total time 1 minute.
Describe the Experience
Why is Feedforward Helpful?
o Others can help us reach goals.
o We get new ideas – some work!
o We can change the future, not the past.
o We don’t take it personally.
o Same as feedback – but positive!
o People listen more attentively.
o Anyone can help, especially peers.
