Coaching practices for Building a Strengths Team

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Building a Strengths Team, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I look around at the people I’ve hired and they all think exactly like me
• Where I come alive is in the human glue
• I already know what I’m good at, but I only ever use those strengths in the same few familiar places
• I’m trying to reach this goal by white-knuckling through the exact things I’m worst at, and it’s draining and stalling
• I catch myself scanning everyone around me for what’s wrong with them, and I want to flip that lens

Practices that may help

1. Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
   Strengths-based leadership, developed by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie building on Gallup’s decades of manager research, holds that the most effective leaders invest in their own strengths and build teams whose combined strengths cover all four leadership domains — executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking. Gallup’s correlational research consistently finds that strength-focused teams report higher engagement and performance, though the causal direction is not fully established.
2. Build a team whose combined strengths cover all four domains
   Hire and assemble deliberately for domain coverage, not for people who think like you.
   Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
3. Lead from the relationship building domain — hold the team together
   People strong in relationship building are the glue that holds a team’s cohesion under pressure.
   Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
4. Use a signature strength in a new way each day for one week
   Apply one of your top character strengths to a context or relationship where you don’t normally use it.
   VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
5. Set goals that build on your signature strengths
   Design goals that let your top strengths be the primary vehicle rather than your weak spots.
   VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
6. Spot and name character strengths in others
   Notice and explicitly name the character strengths you observe in people around you.
   VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
7. Invest more development effort in your strengths than in your weaknesses
   Move from average to excellent in your strength areas rather than from poor to average in your weak ones.
   Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
8. Connect individual strengths to the broader virtues they serve
   Understand which of the six VIA virtues your signature strengths express, and what that reveals about your character.
   VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
9. Use your signature strengths in a new way
   Identify your top character strengths and deploy one of them differently each day.
   Positive Psychology, Made Practical
10. Identify your core strengths through your own history
    Find the recurring threads in your best moments to name the strengths that are actually yours.
    Life Review and Reminiscence Therapy

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.