Making of the Strengths Discovery and Strengths Coaching Demo with Taina Nicolicin
with Taina Nicolicin, Senior Lecturer in International Relations
Transcript
Edited for readability: filler words removed, names checked. It may still contain errors. The audio is the source of truth.
I ntro take 3Introduction to The Making of a Coaching Tool
Tobi
Hi, I'm Tobi from metaFox, and on the Making of a Coach I usually unpack how coaches and facilitators build their practice, and run demos on their methods and tools. Today we'll also run a coaching demo, but before that, instead of the making of a coach, we unpack the making of a coaching tool: the metaFox Strengths Explorer. And as a guest and sparring partner in this I have Taina Nicolicin with me, who shared her work in strengths coaching already on last week's episode. She'll be quizzing me today on how we have developed the Strengths Explorer, a web app for strengths assessment and feedback, built for coaches and facilitators. We'll open the curtains on the building of psychometric assessments. And in the second half of the episode Taina will put her coach hat on and run a small coaching demo with me as a client, using my strengths report from the app, so we can see how this could look in coaching practice. You can simply listen, and maybe occasionally have a look at your screen. We'll be showing some elements from the app and also the report. Let's go.
Guest Introduction and Strengths Coaching Overview
Tobi
Hi again, Taina. I'm glad to have you as a sparring partner on the show.
Taina Nicolicin
Thank you, Tobi. And I'm super excited to really see the metaFox strengths tool, and just hear more about how it's been developed. I feel grateful that I can have an insight into how something was made.
Tobi
We already had a longer conversation about your work with strengths, so there's this other episode that I would like to point people to. But just to get us into the flow, could you give us a brief overview of why you work with strengths as a coach?
Taina Nicolicin
I think the main reason is because I see it as the most potent tool for bringing out the potential of someone, if you want. We all naturally have so many strengths, but we are not aware of them. Bringing them into our awareness helps us develop this inner confidence about ourselves. We know who we are, we know how we want to show up in the world, we know what we want to play up or dial up, some of the strengths, and we know what we want to dial down, because we may have our own reasons. So this is more about the person. In practice there are almost two strands. One is, I choose to use strengths in individual coaching. Sometimes when people are looking to change careers and coming at it from a professional reason, let's say, they want to know what their next role could be like. Or they could be individuals who are just, as I said, coming to coaching with completely
different things, and then I introduce strengths as a tool for more self-awareness. So that's the individual practice. And then of course you have organizations, where strengths, or other psychometric assessments, are being used extensively, as we know, to create team profiles, improve collaboration between team members, et cetera. So that's more the corporate side.
Tobi
Yeah.
Taina Nicolicin
That's it, in a nutshell, as I can put it.
Tobi
Thanks. And that also reflects quite a bit my own experience.
Personal Journey with Strengths Assessment
Tobi
I would say my structured learning journey in the area of strengths started during the pandemic, 2020, 2021, when I was doing a course in MBSP, mindfulness-based strengths practice, at the VIA Institute on Character, with Ryan Niemiec. And they have a model called the VIA strengths, I think it's 24 different strengths, that they cluster into a set of virtues.
And for me, I think it helped me exactly in the way you were saying, with these questions of identity even. Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up?
Taina Nicolicin
What do we want to be known for?
Tobi
What do I want to be known for? These were also the things I kept coming back to throughout the years, to that model. They have a set of tests, partly free, partly paid versions online. As part of the program I did an assessment for myself.
I think it's easily four or five years ago now. This is what came out: curiosity, love of learning, zest, forgiveness, leadership, et cetera. These were my self assessment back at that time.
Taina Nicolicin
It's really interesting to see. I know we are going to look at your metaFox profile, and I was already looking at how this compares with your metaFox profile. A strengths assessment will always be a snapshot in time of yourself, and things evolve, and maybe we'll see this with your VIA strengths and then how your metaFox strengths look now. As you evolve as a person, your profile is also going to evolve. I think it's really important to retain that. Because sometimes I see clients almost getting overly attached to a profile that they made at some point in time. I sometimes encourage them, well, did you try taking it again? Because it may not come out the same, six months have passed, a lot of things have happened.
Tobi
Indeed. And I think that's also one thing I really like about working with strengths: that it is not fixed. With personality profiles, it's said that the profile is formed partly genetically, partly in early childhood, and is then sort of set. Which I think, no matter if it's true or not, certainly doesn't aid a developmental process.
Taina Nicolicin
Yeah.
Tobi
And that's what I really love about strengths, that you can hold this a bit more lightly. That's also what we are trying to do, to frame the language flexibly.
Taina Nicolicin
And you can coach strengths. Dialing up, dialing down, these are things that can actually be coached and can be developed throughout our lives. Very interesting.
Development of the Strength Explorer Tool
Taina Nicolicin
Okay, so this is where your journey is starting.
Tobi
Exactly. Back then it was, I think, an eight week program. As part of that eight week program, one session a week, we were also asked to ask other people how they perceive us, which strengths they see in us. I guess the idea of our trainers, the program managers, was that we would go around and have conversations with this sheet of paper. And, the tech and tool nerd I am, I didn't just walk around with a sheet of paper, I actually built a simple Google survey back then. I sent it to a bunch of friends and colleagues that I interact with at work on a daily basis. I got 11 responses back then. I
had included a message saying, hi, I'm in this coaching experience, would you like to give me some feedback on my character strengths? I had them select from the list of the 24 character strengths. Here we can also put it up next to each other and see how it compares. So in my self-assessment, curiosity and love of learning came up, zest, and these were also aspects that people actually ascribed to me in the feedback process.
Taina Nicolicin
Interesting. And kindness. I'm also looking at the bottom ones as well, and you can see that it came out the same from both the self-assessment and from others' assessment. Leadership is an interesting one, because it's six in your self-assessment, but then others seem to have rated it second. Strong.
Tobi
That's interesting. Anyway, let's not digress into talking about my strengths now.
Taina Nicolicin
So you've done this exercise, and is this the start of you thinking about developing a strengths tool, or is there more to the story?
Tobi
I think back then we already had our first card set at metaFox, but I got quite taken with the idea of, couldn't one build a digital tool to also collect feedback? Back then I shared the template for this Google form also with my course members, but that's where it stopped. And meanwhile we were of course developing our tools at metaFox. So the Stronger You card set, where we combine pictures with strengths, which were loosely inspired by the VIA character framework. We were also in conversations with them about partnering, but in the end they weren't very eager. And we also thought, maybe we can actually make the language of our strengths a bit more applied to everyday work related conversations, so tune down the spirituality a little bit and make it more practical for daily use. That was our guiding principle, both for the strengths cards
and the Strengths Compass, which is one of our paper based tools. That is a simple cheat sheet where we try to simplify the 60 strengths cards into a model where we just have 22 strengths. To give it some order, we loosely clustered it into individual strengths, sort of character strengths that you show when being by yourself, into relationship strengths, how do you relate to others, and practical strengths, how do you interact with the world, how do you deal with tasks. That is how we framed it here, and we also took this notion of meaningful use on the one hand, and then over- and underuse. So which strengths do we really manage to realize in daily life, and where are we potentially overusing? Because any strength can also
Taina Nicolicin
Yeah.
Tobi
become a weakness. If you're very self-confident, that's a great strength.
Taina Nicolicin
Yeah.
Tobi
But if you then are perceived as arrogant, that's obviously not a strength anymore.
Taina Nicolicin
Yeah.
Tobi
So, overuse on the one hand, and on the other hand also underused, unrealized strengths, that would give us energy, would fulfill us, but that we don't manage to bring out in our daily life. Because maybe the role that we have to play in work, in life, doesn't really give us room for that strength, or we are not aware of it.
Taina Nicolicin
A hundred percent. I have all of these tools at home. I had great feedback on them from individuals, because they enjoyed this cheat sheet, being able to visually very quickly just see, oh, what does it mean? At least what I've noticed with some of my clients is, they do their strengths assessment, we do their debrief, we do a few coaching sessions on that, and then it becomes something that sits on the shelf very quickly, in three months' time. But then having this sort of cheat sheet, as you called it, that can be anywhere on your desk, it's a very easy to hand tool that you can have. So I really love this.
Tobi
We sort of have it on the fridge door, so you can pull it out in daily life.
Taina Nicolicin
Yeah.
Tobi
And these come in packages, so that you can also use them in a workshop, and then each participant of the workshop can actually review that in reflective peer coaching conversations, that sort of exercise.
Taina Nicolicin
And great to have, I would say, especially if, I'm thinking more about the work in organizations now. In the typical journey, everybody does the strengths assessment, team assessments, debriefs, and then strengths are being used in one-to-one conversations or development conversations, whichever way organizations choose to name them. And then, absolutely, a tool like this is very useful to have to hand in those conversations.
Tobi
And then, while working on that, I was also in touch with some coaches. Some people are actually using the VIA character strengths assessment, for example, or other assessments, at the beginning of journeys with the client in one-on-one coaching. Or also when they are working on a team development, they would have each member of the team fill in a survey and take that as a snapshot of the status: where is the individual person, or where is the team? And of course, that idea, I couldn't let it go anymore. And we got started on building something like that.
Challenges and Refinements in Strengths Assessment
Tobi
What we developed was basically our very first MVP, where we took those 22 strengths from our compass,
with three items for each of those strengths. So for example, in order to describe the strength indicator flexible, we would say, this is someone who's adapting to changes quickly, who's embracing new ideas, who's volunteering for new tasks.
I tried to come up with a simple way to build this into an online tool. Build a simple minimum viable product, in Typeform actually. And the idea was
that people would rate these 66 behavioral markers on a scale,
and through doing so identify their top strengths. And then invite other people to give feedback, on the one hand going through the same process of rating all the 66 behavioral items, and on the other hand also giving feedback on where they see potential overuse, et cetera.
Taina Nicolicin
I assume that there was a sort of mathematical model behind this that would map that out, depending on your answers.
Tobi
Exactly. And that's how most of these psychometric tests work.
This behavioral marker is, in the backend, tied to a certain indicator.
Psychologists would say, for example, adapting to changes quickly would be tied to flexible.
And we did that with the internal metaFox team, and also with students. I was a guest lecturer at a university and ran an online workshop on strengths with them, and also invited
the students to take the assessment. All of this was quite a hacked process. You had to go through several Typeforms, you received the link to the next Typeform in an email, so it wasn't super user friendly. That's why we also didn't put it out in the world,
but simply used it to collect roundabout 150 of these data sets, to refine the model. Because what we were able to do then in the next step was to run a factor analysis. What's happening there is basically that we look statistically at how the different ratings on these different behavioral items, standing up for ideas, or volunteering for new tasks, initiating projects, how do they correlate with each other? If a person ranks high in standing up for ideas, where else do they rank high?
And what we found is that there was one big cluster. Most people who were ranking high for standing up for ideas were also ranking high for volunteering for new tasks, for initiating projects, for facing risks bravely, all of these were correlated. And that's actually not what we want,
because we make a difference between the strengths courageous and proactive. But in our model, everybody who's courageous is also proactive. So that's what we found, that these two strengths cannot be clearly distinguished from each other.
Taina Nicolicin
Very interesting.
Tobi
And this is the kind of thing that you have to go into when building a statistical model, no matter if it's a personality types model or also a strengths model. Looking at how certain behaviors, that we can observe in the world, and that we can rate ourselves, and where others can also rate us, connect to a certain indicator, a language that we use to describe this characteristic.
Taina Nicolicin
And I guess this will then lead to a much lower number of strengths that you will have in your assessment?
Tobi
Exactly.
Taina Nicolicin
That's fantastic.
Tobi
After running several of these analyses, with different methods being applied to our data set, what we found is that 22 strengths were simply way too many. We couldn't really
distinguish between these fine nuances in the language, because there would always be an overlap.
Taina Nicolicin
And I guess, whilst we would want to recognize that yes, there could be fine details or nuances, that's also something that can be brought into the conversation. When you're debriefing a strength, it's not necessarily that the report has to contain 22, or 24, or 30 different strengths. I'm getting really excited about this, because I think if you were to ask me what was the number one negative, or constructive, feedback that I received from clients in using strengths, I would say it's the fact that they find the report a bit overwhelming, with the number of strengths and the amount of information that's included in the report, and that they can only retain a very small amount of it. That's been the most prevalent thing that I've heard. And it wasn't only on Strengths Profile, which is the one I was using most extensively, I've heard it with CliftonStrengths as well, who have 37 of them. It's the number one criticism, I would say, from the end user.
So it's great to hear that you are trying to reduce that.
Tobi
And what you are sharing now is the perspective of users, of clients, when they receive this very long list of strengths. That is the one issue. The issue that we were coming from here is not even that, but simply the statistical correlation. We cannot say, if you rate high here and low there, then it means you have this strength and not that one. We found that with our 22 strengths model we couldn't really say this is scientifically grounded. So we had to simplify.
At this point we had already met, we had done a bit of a coaching journey using the science of Alex Linley. And that is what I also found quite enlightening, this notion of what makes a strength. It's on the one hand the question, what are you good at? But it's also
the question, what gives you energy, and what do you do often? These were then also the three dimensions that we started working with, both in our workshops and also when it came to developing the next version of our Strengths Explorer tool.
Taina Nicolicin
I think it's super important to look at this. Performance is assessed, I dare to say, in all of the strengths assessments that I've seen, I've done maybe eight different ones for myself, and I think it's assessed in all of them. Energy and use, variably. And I think these two dimensions are super important. From my work with clients, and also in organizations when it comes to motivation, employee motivation, this energy dimension is basically the lever that you have to pull in order to improve things. And then use is the one that we actually look at the most, I would say, in coaching. Because it's all good and well that you're really good at something and you love doing it, but if you're not actually using that strength, well, it's just there in your hidden potential, isn't it?
Tobi
Yes. And I think this is what also gave me a lot of clarity when it came to, okay, what is it that actually gives me energy? These are also the things that I will be enjoying. And that's then also the things that I will be good at. So there's definitely a correlation between what gives me energy, what makes me feel good, and what makes me perform well. And that's also what we at metaFox very much use when it comes to roles in the organization, this notion of, how can I find my sweet spot,
work at my best and perform well at work?
Taina Nicolicin
Yes, absolutely.
Tobi
So that's how we started out. On the one hand the challenge, how can we reduce these 22 strengths with three items each into a simpler model, into a shorter survey also, and on the other, how can we incorporate energy and use as well?
We discussed this quite a bit in the team, ran different experiments. And for now, this is how our answer looks.
Current State of the Strength Explorer App
Tobi
This is our assessment app, how it looks today. So it asks you, how do you relate to the following statement? And then there is, just as before, a brief behavioral marker, which says, in this example, I trust my instincts and hunches.
That might refer to a strength as intuitive, or something. But we also don't need to know that when going through the assessment, of course. We only
look at the behavior. Is this giving me energy? Do I find it draining or energizing? And how often do I do this?
Taina Nicolicin
And this is also quite clever, that instead of asking two different questions, because this would normally be two different questions in the assessment,
Condensing Assessments for Coaching
Taina Nicolicin
you're able to condense that into one, by using the plotted graph, or whatever it's called. Quite clever as well. The tool will be so easy to use, and the assessment being shorter will also make it so much more usable in that coaching journey with the client, for coaches. Because you don't need to spend an hour of a session for them to fill in the survey. It doesn't require that much time from the client, it doesn't require that much time from yourself, to see how their assessment is evolving in three months' time, six months' time, 12 months' time, depending on the length of your coaching journey with a client. So it's quite exciting.
Refining the Strengths Model
Tobi
Of course, this is also just the first step of putting out a refined model. So instead of the 22 strengths, we now have only 12 strengths. And it is not using adjectives anymore, like we did before, but we came up with these role descriptions. So we said, okay, let's have the visionary strength, the seer strength, the innovator strength. And then each of these would in turn be connected with the adjectives that we had before. We just found, when we were testing it in the team, it a bit more fun to actually ascribe these roles.
Taina Nicolicin
Very interesting. Instinctively I go into archetypes work immediately. I love that, and I think it's a much more playful way of introducing this.
Tobi
In the end this is work in progress. I'm sure we will refine this once we have collected a certain amount of data and can run some statistics on that. And then also the language will change again. So I'm also super curious to get yours, and also the feedback from real world users as we launch this.
Exciting and Challenging Aspects of Development
Taina Nicolicin
I do actually have a question. What was the most exciting part of developing this, and then, on the flip side, what was the most challenging part?
Tobi
I would say what was most fun is actually this survey with our team, and then also running a little workshop with it in the team. Combining the results from our very first survey, where team members had done the self-assessment and also collected feedback, and then
we were also combining this with the strengths cards, the metaFox Stronger You, and having people cluster and reflect and run peer coaching on these questions of, what do you realize, what do you not yet realize, what are learned behaviors and weaknesses. And using that in the team was, I think, on the one hand fun, and on the other hand also valuable.
And challenging, of course. All the strengths modeling and the statistics and psychology that we are discussing now, that is only one aspect of it. The other aspect is building this into an actual app. What technology stack should we use for that? How can we make this easy to use? That is the main challenge. And this building of the Strengths Explorer is also a bit parallel to our paper publishing business, where we think about logistics. How can we produce this? In which warehouse does it need to be shipped? How does it arrive at the customer? How do we bring it on the website? So, these logistical questions that are behind the coaching and psychology.
Taina Nicolicin
Also what keeps us busy. And I guess that is the journey of anyone operating in this field. Even in my work I would love to spend all of the time in those real conversations with the client, but then you have all of that other logistical part of being a coach, the appointment tools and this and that and notes. There's a lot that needs to happen in order to make a meaningful conversation happen. Well, great. It was amazing to see this. Thank you so much for the opportunity to see a bit behind the scenes of how the tool is being developed. I look forward to looking a bit at your profile.
Integrating Strengths into Coaching SessionsDemo Coaching
Tobi
So at this point, let's go into a small demo. How would you as a coach, Taina, use this in a coaching with strengths session?
Taina Nicolicin
Let's get going.
Tobi
So in a real world coaching journey it could have looked like this: you invited me to the app, I filled in the survey, and then the survey produced a report that I can either view online in the app, or I can print or save a PDF report and then send that to you as a coach, so we can discuss it in our session.
Taina Nicolicin
I would typically start the session with seeing what you want to get out of your profile. Are there any specific goals that you have that we would need to achieve in our time together? I think for today, what I was thinking is, maybe we set the goal to come out with one strength that we would want you to dial up, and one strength that we would like you to dial down potentially. Would that be a good outcome for our conversation?
Tobi
Yes, I guess so.
I've only done the self-assessment at this point, and this is the result that we can see.
Exploring Strengths and Their Impact
Taina Nicolicin
Interesting.
Tobi
The ones that get the top score here are innovator, doer, learner, connector, visionary.
Taina Nicolicin
So these are your top five strengths then. What surprised you when you saw this, if anything?
Tobi
What is possibly a bit surprising is that this doer strength, which has this strong focus on tasks, on consistency, on checking boxes in a way, really comes out on top. I would have expected it in the top five, but seeing it here in the very first place also gives me this prompt of, maybe this is actually something I'm overusing. And, these days being also often a bit overwhelmed and a bit restless, I guess that is
a sign of overusing this doer strength.
Taina Nicolicin
And if you could rearrange these ones, how would you want these top five to look?
Tobi
That's a good question.
I would want the doer to go down a bit here.
Taina Nicolicin
So would it be your third one, your fourth one, your fifth one, your second one?
Tobi
Just looking at the titles, I would say the innovator feels more enjoyable,
while the doer also has this notion of drive and restlessness for me. So I would want the doer to go down, and to embrace a bit this lightness, learning, and also make more room for the connecting bit. So I guess I would want the doer to go from first to last in the top five.
Taina Nicolicin
Okay. And then innovator would stay where it is?
Tobi
Yes. I think that is one of the parts I'm enjoying most about my role at metaFox at the moment, this exploratory hat that I can wear for a vast amount of time in my daily work.
Taina Nicolicin
So which one out of the visionary, learner, connector would you like to take number one then?
Tobi
What I like about the visionary is that it has this team notion. Inspiring and uniting others by sharing a vision. So that is quite attractive about it. Because being a lot in the doer shoes these days, it's also lonely. It's you and the task, and the task is exhausting. And the visionary, the connector, even the learner, they all have this collaborative, connective bit to it. And that is, I think, what I'm missing right now.
Taina Nicolicin
What is something about liking or enjoying those that you wouldn't say out loud?
Tobi
I guess it's this sense of belonging that really is a big theme. Wanting to be appreciated also, depending on that to some extent. So I guess that is the dark side of the connector, learner, visionary: that there is on the one hand the joy in connecting and collaborating, and on the other hand also this dependency of, ah, I need to be needed. I need to be liked. That is something I wouldn't often admit to myself or to others.
Taina Nicolicin
How does it feel now that we brought that into our awareness?
Tobi
Good. It's also something I can do more consciously, actually check in with people more, even if I'm not joining day-to-day meetings or weekly meetings at the moment. Just ping people and say, hey, can we have a bit of a sparring on this, I would like to run this idea by you. That is something that I would say my team members probably would enjoy too.
Taina Nicolicin
Okay.
So what I'm hearing is that you would find it hard to rank them differently.
Tobi
Yes. I also want to keep it flexible. I have all of these in me, and depending on what's needed right now, I can bring them out.
Taina Nicolicin
That's also another thing that I'm seeing quite often with clients, that the top five, or top 10, may not shift significantly from one assessment to another, but the order is shifting. So probably, if you're going to do this assessment in three months' time or six months' time, you may see these top five strengths being the same, but in a very different order, depending on where you choose to focus your attention. So, should you start doing some of those actions around connecting with your team, you might see connector moving up, or, who knows, maybe even visionary. So it'll be interesting to see how the journey develops. Should we move forward to looking at how this translates into the different realized and unrealized strengths and learned behaviors?
Tobi
Yes. If we look at how the assessment categorized it, this is what came out. So under realized strengths we again see three of the top five, that is innovator, doer and learner. And similar to the previous view, we see, okay, how does this strength play out in a meaningful way, and what is the risk of overuse and how would that look? I guess that reflects nicely our previous discussion. When the doer is overused, it says, you may burn out by focusing solely on tasks.
Remember to take breaks and prioritize self-care to maintain your energy and wellbeing.
Taina Nicolicin
Absolutely. And I guess one of my first questions here in this section would be, is there a strength here that you're overusing, maybe to the point of diminishing its impact? And it sounds like you're already identifying the doer as potentially being that strength. I think another thing that would be interesting to look at is, what's the impact on others when overusing this doer?
Tobi
I would say my relationships outside work obviously suffer when the doer is tuned up really high. Because I'm really stuck at the computer. I spend a lot of time on these projects and there's less time to just have a walk with friends, go out for sports, or even party, or spend time with my wife. And I guess that's the impact on others.
Taina Nicolicin
If we look at some of your other strengths, it could be these two other realized strengths, or maybe any of the top five, would there be one strength that could support you in dialing down the doer? So I'm almost looking at, what is something that is already a strength that just maybe needs a tiny bit of fine tuning, that could really make an impact on not overusing the doer.
Tobi
I guess I can see several, actually. On the one hand it's the connector, that values others' perspectives, fosters trust, and this sense of collaboration. At the same time, I would also say it's the learner, even though I don't like the phrasing that we have here currently, this notion of constantly seek personal growth. That again has a bit of, I need to develop. I see a bit of the doer phrasing in how we define the learner here. So actually, now experiencing the model, I would say maybe we can rephrase the learner to have this notion of lightness. And even if we don't rephrase it in the model, I would say that is what I would want for myself, to counterplay the doer.
Taina Nicolicin
That's a really interesting perspective. Because what I'm hearing there is that you're almost recognizing an overplayed doer, even in the description of the learner. I'm wondering if, by learning and actually just constantly seeking personal growth, as it says there, would that be the equivalent of the negative effects that you've currently identified in the doer?
Tobi
I think how I interpret that learner for me now, it has this element of the connector also.
I take these two for myself here. On the one hand, taking this as an enjoyable journey of lightness, of connection. And even coming back to the learner, that isn't necessarily a super collaborative strength here. It can also have this notion of, you know, just reading a book that is not necessarily tied to a task right now, or watching a YouTube video that is not about building apps with no code, or psychology, but that just has this notion of learning
for joy's sake.
Taina Nicolicin
So I guess, as a quick recap, we've identified that the doer is one of the strengths that we want to dial down a bit. And you would do that mainly by trying to, in a work context, spend a bit more time with people off task, if you want, and doing a bit of check-in, that would hopefully break up that routine that you have of just working hyper focused, but would also dial up that connectedness a bit more.
Tobi
Yes. That's actually quite useful. Thank you.
Unrealized Strengths and Actions
Taina Nicolicin
Great. Unrealized strengths, which is my favorite part of a profile always. I do enjoy the hidden potential in people all the time. So I'm really curious to see what you have here. Visionary, connector. Interestingly, it's almost like we're answering both questions, isn't it, because we're dialing up the connector, which I didn't know is in your unrealized strengths, but there it is. How do you feel about the other two? And the diplomat, maybe I would ask you, because we haven't spoken about the diplomat that much.
Tobi
It's funny how now we get to the unrealized section in the report and it turns out we have sort of discussed that already, by looking at the top five. I would say, just going a bit more again into connection and communication. Where I see the visionary is, as discussed, how we could also appease the doer a bit. And then the diplomat. It says here, to make room for the strength, you resolve conflict with empathy and vulnerability, promoting psychological safety and common understanding. And I guess what I can see here is that what makes the doer very exhausting for me these days is also this implicit sense of expectation that I feel, maybe from Max, my co-founder, from other team members, because they don't see much of me these days. They always hear me say, yes, we are almost ready to launch the Strengths Explorer, almost ready, almost ready, and this day is postponed and postponed. What I can see here in the diplomat is, it says it can also be described as humble, compassionate. Maybe I would interpret it even as self-compassionate, and showing myself vulnerable there in the team, which is something that
would help me, and possibly also then have a positive impact on our culture. Being in a way a role model, or an example, in a way that might also help other people who might even be in similar shoes as I am.
Taina Nicolicin
When you were describing that current situation of the team not seeing you much these days, and you feeling this self-imposed pressure of, well, you're away working on this tool and you're almost ready, instantly in my head I was like, how have you shared that with the team and with Max? How have you shared this self-imposed pressure that you're feeling? And I'm gathering, from what you've said on the diplomat, that you haven't shared this at all with them.
Tobi
Not much, I guess. No. And in the one-on-one conversations with Max it regularly comes out. He might also have similar experiences, but maybe be less hard on himself. He's just maybe a bit more kind, or confident, not to make his own life so hard. But who am I to speak on his behalf?
What I also find interesting here in this view is that the seer scored relatively high on energy but low on use. And I think this is also maybe this notion of kindness, self-compassion, that maybe isn't necessarily even in the definition, but that I can see here for myself.
Taina Nicolicin
I can definitely see how that could be the case. And I guess this is the beauty of seeing this together, almost as a map. I like this view a lot, because we can very quickly see, just from our brief conversation already, how everything is linked. You are the person that holds it all. As much as we sometimes try and focus in conversation on one strength or the other, they are actually so interlinked together that the result, as we're saying, is a snapshot in time, and what happens with one influences what happens with the other one. So, going back to your unrealized strengths, just so we can maybe leave with a bit of an action, what's maybe one thing that you could do this week to stretch one of your unrealized strengths?
Tobi
After our call right now, actually call up a friend and go for a walk, making room for the connector. That I think is one concrete action. And applying the diplomat strength on myself in a way, this compassionate, considerate, empathetic persona in myself.
Treating myself as someone responsible for helping.
Taina Nicolicin
It's a very good phrase. I would challenge you to also think about what you were sharing earlier, around how you're feeling in relation to your colleagues and Max currently, and see if, by dialing up this sort of vulnerability that you have in the diplomat, that would bring down your perceived level of expectation from them. So just see if there's anything useful for you to take from that. Let's see how we're doing on weaknesses and learned behaviors. Do any of these three surprise you, to see them in this category?
Tobi
The analyst. I was surprised, in fact, that it scored that low.
Taina Nicolicin
I am very surprised.
Tobi
I guess if I had taken the assessment in another spot, it might have also come out differently. And it's this, I examine details closely to maintain accuracy. And then it's also this one,
I assess risks thoroughly before deciding.
Taina Nicolicin
Which you do. I almost want to say, maybe you've been forced, because you are doing a lot at the moment, that has probably forced you to do less risk assessment than you would usually do. So therefore you are answering the question now
that way just because of the nature of the doing.
Tobi
And I guess that's also something where, if we would bring in the feedback function now, that would be really useful.
Taina Nicolicin
Exactly.
Tobi
I said, well, I actually don't worry about the details so much. Now, after a conversation and realizing that this doer strength is overplayed a lot, I would say, maybe I actually do consider the details and make my life harder with that. So it could be really interesting to say, okay,
Taina Nicolicin
Yeah.
Tobi
Taina, like you, who knows me a bit, actually sees this differently. That could provide me quite a lot of insight.
Taina Nicolicin
Exactly. And this is where I look forward to you guys, and obviously me, seeing this feedback from others being introduced. I think that's going to be incredibly valuable in understanding what was happening.
Concluding Thoughts and Next Steps
Taina Nicolicin
Okay, well, I guess we can leave it at that. I think we have some concrete actions for you, in what strength needs to be dialed down, and you'll do that by trying to connect with people, both in your team but also outside of work. You have a clear action to connect after our call with one of your friends and go for a walk. So, it was useful. As usual, I think I'll leave you with one last question, and that's, how will you track or notice the impact of these actions, or of using your strengths more intentionally, as I would like to say?
Tobi
I guess in my journaling practice. I have this small table that I fill out in the evening on my e-reader notepad.
And there I assess body, mind and soul.
Like, did I do sports? Did I do some sort of meditation, mindfulness practice? And did I do something for my soul, did I connect with loved ones? I will make this my reminder, to keep me accountable, to engage more in bringing more lightness into the learner, to tune down the doer.
Taina Nicolicin
Well, thank you so much. I think, an unexpected but precise version, using some paraphrased words. It was really nice to see all that, and I think it's going to be amazing. I can't wait to see the final result of all of this. I look forward to trying it out, of course in my private practice, but maybe we actually have to reintroduce some strengths work at work. I've been looking at a few things. We used Clifton so far, but who knows, maybe the metaFox tool can actually be the answer that will satisfy all of my very rigid requirements that I've developed over the years.
Tobi
Thanks so much. The coaching session was definitely unexpected and precise, and that makes it useful. And with regard to the further tool development, I'm also super excited to get your feedback and have this evolve into something very useful.
Taina Nicolicin
Great. Thank you.
Outro
Tobi
And this is where we conclude our strengths special on the Making of a Coach. Honestly, before Taina and I hopped on that call I really had my doubts whether anything would come out of that coaching demo. Because, as a developer of that tool, I had of course taken the assessment many times and also read all the texts from this report quite a few times. But becoming aware of the impact of my doer strength has really kept me busy these days, and actually turned out to be quite a powerful realization. I could really apply that in my daily life since the recording, and tune down my doer, balancing it a bit more with the sense of intuition and grounding. But don't take my word for it. If you have become curious about the Strengths Explorer, go to metaFox.eu/strengths, where you can find the access to the app, and for the time being use it entirely for free. You can try it yourself, review your results, and if it seems useful, share it with a client to understand where they are in your coaching journey.
And I really look forward to getting your feedback, both on the Strengths Explorer tool and on today's episode. You can email me at tobias@metaFox.eu, or of course simply leave a rating on your podcast app. This is it for today. After this excursion into strengths psychology, we'll go back to the making of a coach with leadership development facilitator Paris Thomas. You can subscribe on your podcast app to not miss out on that, and I really look forward to having you as a listener or viewer already next week. All the best on your own journey. I'm Tobi from metaFox. Bye bye.