Why I Believe in CliftonStrengths

July 18, 2024

Zac Moore

My first experience with CliftonStrengths was as a student leader in my undergraduate career at Austin Peay State Unversity. We took the assessment as part of a leadership organization. However, outside of taking the assessment, we didn't delve into the magic that is CliftonStrengths. I did not much think of the assessment other than that it was interesting to know my top 5 talents. “Talents, founder Don Clifton wrote, are your "naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior." They're the innate, natural abilities you can productively apply” (Gallup, 2024).

CliftonStrengths did not appear again in my life until graduate school when I was able to co-lead a leadership course with a staff member in my department. We had our student take the assessment and built a few course sessions around understanding and using their strengths. Through this experience I was able to retake the assessment and explore my CliftonStrengths deeper than I had in my undergraduat experience. The seeds that were planted when I first took the assessment started to bloom through this experience. In the course we explained the 34 different talents and what each meant. We then had out students and ourselves reflect on our top 5 strengths.

Fast forward to now and I use strengths-based approaches in my personal and professional life. Focusing on strengths-based development and learning is crucial for the success of not only students but also faculty and staff. Such development has been shown to positively impact academic confidence, network building, and self-perception (Paul, 2016). I have had the opportunity to attend trainings for CliftonStrengths through Gallup and have become a trained Campus Champion with the intention to become a Certified Strengths Coach. By using Cliftonstrengths with my students I have seen them grow and become more confident in their skills and talents and learn how to leverage their Strengths to complete objectives and achieve their goals. I have also seen how teams can come together and work more efficiently and effectively by knowing each others strengths. For example, many of my strengths are executing while my coworkers are relationship-building. We view and handle tasks very differently. Neither approach is wrong, but knowing that we may handle these differently due to our strengths allows us to set expectations and split tasks to best fit our strengths.

I highly encourage everyone to adopt a strengths-based approach. This along with a growth mindset allows us to work through our goals, objectives, and tasks both personally and professionally using what we do best naturally.

Sources:

Gallup, Inc. (2024, January 22). Science of cliftonstrengths. Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/253790/science-of-cliftonstrengths.aspx

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