19. Using Positive Psychology to Build a High Performing Finance Team with Strengthscope MD, David Lincoln

Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real-world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people, and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.

So we're there to help people gain really clear awareness of what they are energised by. And that's what when we talk about strengths, we talk about energy. It's about the things that energise you and it's the things that you're likely to therefore be good at. That's what we're all about. We've got a series of tools that help us do that.

But fundamentally, our mission is to help people understand what makes them great and what they get energy from. I've been in the business about 15 months now. My background isn't in this field at all.

So I've had a career in retail leadership and management, project roles, etc. And this was a bit different for me in terms of, you know, a bit of a... A bit of a change.

I've always been interested in people development and personal development opportunities and actually understanding the strengths approach and some of the concepts behind positive psychology have helped explain some of the things I do really clearly. Definitely helped me understand why I'm energised by some of what I do and really brought that home.

And I suppose brought a number of the things that I like doing into my day-to-day job, which is really cool. Doing more of what you love is what we're all about, and that's what I'm able to do in my role.

how we do this so you know a bit about strength space coaching

So he's the, you know, he's the psychology expert on this. So I'm not going to go into the detail of it, but let me just give you a brief sort of summary. And really, when we talk about positive psychology, we're talking about the study of strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive. That's fundamentally what it talks about.

It's also sometimes now talked about the study of human flourishing well-being. And actually, if you look at the current challenges we face in the world today, that's probably never been more relevant in terms of how do you help people to be the best they can be and look after themselves. And more relevant than ever in this crazy world that we live in right now.

So I think it's really relevant at the moment. And I guess it's founded on beliefs that people want to lead meaningful lives, meaningful, fulfilling lives. And they want to be able to cultivate the very best within themselves. So they want to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.

And again, you know, that's our concept at Strengthscope is, you know, we don't just talk about work. We talk about work and life. And we talk about, you know, bringing the whole experience together.

The links go back way back into the sort of early 1900s when there was lots of conversation a couple of guys started to talk about humanistic psychology and and we're asking questions about human energy and how humans are energized by things that they're excited by maslow then did some work in the 50s a lot of people be um familiar with maslow's hierarchy of needs

so that that's starting to look at the human experience and how humans live their life and what's important and how they get satisfaction from it but really when when we talk about positive psychology as a movement if you like as a real sort of point in time where it started to develop it's martin seligman who who was really the father of the positive psychology

movement and and he he came into into sort of prominence back in the the late 90s And basically he talked about a fairly radical view at the time, which was that psychology had become far too focused on mental illness. So the bad stuff, and actually psychology was neglecting what was good in life.

So he had this sort of light bulb moment where, and he started then doing research on it. And the research was into what makes normal people's lives positive and fulfilling. So how do people become fulfilled in life? How do they get excited by things they're doing? Rather than just saying that person is not very well and mentally, there's some challenges here.

Actually, how do we help people to be positive about life and energised by the things they do? And there's a whole raft of theories and research around the topic.

there's three particular ones that I've pulled out because I think they're very relevant to the conversation today and particularly to what we do in adopting a strengths approach with businesses that we work with to help people develop. So the first is that flow and mindfulness can help to encourage optimal human functioning. What does that mean?

If you're in flow, if you're working in a way that is giving you energy and is making you feel good and is driving your performance, you're going to function at a higher level than you would otherwise. It sounds really obvious, but do more of what you love. Do the stuff that energizes you. People tend to be happy and resilient.

So again, that's a fundamental underlying characteristic that People don't want to be unhappy. People want to be happy. They want to be good and they want to feel good and have resilience about what's going on in life. And strong relationship and character strength can help to counter the negative impact of setbacks.

So life is such that we come up against setbacks and bad things happen and we meet those things. But actually, if you can turn your natural strengths against those negatives, you can tackle them much easier. And I guess those three really fundamentally underpin what we do in the strengths approach at Strengthscope.

The other really important thing, and then I'll shut up and let you come back at me with some questions. The other thing that I just wanted to talk about is the negativity bias, which is really important for people to understand because this is a core part of why we do some of the things we do as human beings.

Negativity bias is something that was basically built into us back in the days of cave people. And it was fundamental to our success. And it was all about survival. So you were always looking for the band. You were always looking for the dinosaur that was going to come and eat you.

You were looking for the fire that would get out of control and engulf your cave. You were looking for the other animals that were going to come and eat you, the saber tooth tigers, whatever it was. I've probably got all of those animals wrong in terms of time and history, but hey, let's go with it.

And the fundamentals of the negativity bias are, that criticism carries far more weight than compliments and they also take up more headspace.

We tend to glaze over good stuff and we tend to focus on bad stuff and we tend to spend about 80% of our time worrying about, thinking about, looking at the bad stuff and only 20% of time thinking about or considering the good. And our question to people is what about turning that around?

why not spend 80% talking about the good stuff and the things that are energizing and the things that help and only spend 20% of the time worrying about the things that don't. And there's a couple of really, really good examples that bring this very vividly to life for people.

So the first one I would talk about is think about the last time you had a work appraisal. So you're sitting in your work appraisal and your boss is sitting there and giving you some great feedback and then drops the bomb of, yeah, but you're not really that great at X. And then finish it up by saying, but you know what?

I love what you do with this, and you're really helpful in that and everything else. What is it that you go away thinking about from that appraisal? The thing that will bounce around your head for the next week, two weeks, month, maybe even prompt you to leave your role, is that one thing that you could do better on?

Because we have this negativity bias, we focus on the bad. And the other one that really resonates, I don't have children, but for those that do, your child comes back from school with their latest report card. And the teacher has written on there, a child's done an amazing job, they've got an A in maths, an A in English, and a C in science.

The kid's going to come bouncing in the door, I got an A in maths, I got an A in English. The parent's likely response is, what happened in science? That is negativity bias in full flow, because innately, we're driven to look at the things that are bad, rather than saying to the child, Do you know what? That's an amazing performance.

You've done a sterling job at getting an A in both English and maths. Yes, of course, you have to focus on the bad things because if you don't, they go unchecked. And we would never say don't check on them. What we would say is turn your strengths into ways to tackle those performance risks.

And the final point on the negativity bias I'll sort of leave with is it typically takes three positives to counteract a negative.

So if you're having a conversation, deliver three positives and it will then balance the one negative that you deliver and and just as a point which will probably amuse many but in a relationship so with your respective other you need to dial that up to five to one the negative is even more apparent when it's somebody that you're that close to so yeah that that's

the reality you you've got to you've got to think about the positive to negative relation ratio

resilience and positive mindset because you know there's so much bad stuff going on around us that actually this is why this this for me is so critical and why i was so keen to have you on the show to talk about it and if um I also want to pull out, you know, the piece of what you talked about, about Maslow, because I think for those that have done any

kind of leadership training, you know, you will know this, but there's a lot of people that haven't understood that. So I obviously done a bit with Maslow, but just summarize what Maslow's theories is and why it is important to take into context with the strengths based and positive psychology approach.

And there's different There's slightly different versions of this, but fundamentally, at the bottom, underpinning all of this is physiological. So it's the stuff that's really important to you. It's the way you're built and you're made. You then move into safety. And in the current world, this could be job safety. It could be having a place to live.

It could be having a home that's yours. You're then into love and belonging. So it's the relationship stuff. It's the feeling of belonging to a thing or an organization. And again, we You shouldn't underestimate, one of my values is belonging. So I hold that as a personal value. I need to feel part of something that I'm involved with.

So I need to feel part of a business to be able to really do it justice. I need to be able to feel part of a team and feel like I belong. And actually that's fundamental in that middle tier of Maslow's hierarchy. I have it as a personal value as well. You're then into esteem. So how do I feel about all this? Do I feel good about it?

Does it give me that feel good factor and then at the top is self-actualization so what does it mean to me how do i want to be but i mean look look it up online you know there's there's there's so much online about maslow that that if if people want more information there's there's just stacks and stacks of it available

And this is when we talk about how I think about Maslow, is that you need to deal with the physical needs and then shift over to that.

And I think that's really important for people to take into account, that if the team are in a bad physical space, that you know, as much as you focus on other things and get them into good mindset that actually you need to have that balance.

So with that, with that sort of said, I think it was a really good concept that you're talking about in terms of man, you know, that this also could be applied to psychology piece and positive psychology can also be applied to relationships because I think sometimes we underestimate as leaders, the impact of personal life on, on, on how well people perform in the

workplace. So, And you mentioned that it takes five compliments to override a single negative with personal relationships. What's the logic behind that? Is it just results of a study? Is there any sort of reasoning

So if you're having a conversation with your partner and they're telling you lots of good things, you tend to brush them off.

And actually, if somebody that you know less well at work, for instance, says something really good, which is the same thing really good as your partner's just said, you're likely to hold more sway from it from the person at work because they know you less and therefore their opinion must hold more more weight because they don't really know me you know me so you're

gonna say that you know that's that's what you you would say that because you know we live together um so it's it's a useful point to remember that you know that that negativity bias is inbuilt within us it's not it's not something that's bad or good it actually helps us to survive and live life but how can you turn it on its head and use it to your

benefit to actually then look at the positive And I guess the other thing that I just sort of expand upon a bit is you talked about the physical environment and all the rest of it. Really important right now, we've got people working at home. I'm not going to say working from home because I don't think it's a choice. It's an enforced working at home.

And the lines between work and home are really blurred right now.

so again understanding the things that energize you understanding where your strengths are means you can turn to those and use those to chat to to tackle the challenges that you face um so yeah i think it's it's really important i think the other the other thing and this is a little bit of a product plug but i guess it's it's important in terms of the concept

of the rest of the conversation around how we approach strengths so As I say, we talk about strengths as things that energize. So these are the natural qualities that energize. And the other thing that's really important about this for us is that it's about uniqueness. There are lots of really good assessment models on the market.

Many people will be familiar with things like Myers-Briggs or Insights or all of those, and they're all good. I'm not going to come on here and run down any other assessment provider because they all have value and they all bring awareness of you as a human being and what you do.

The challenge with many of those is, and Myers-Briggs is a great example that most people in senior roles in business at some point in time will have done Myers-Briggs. You'll have your type, your indicator type. What we say is that's okay, but you are you, and the way you do things is unique to you. So we measure 24 strengths.

We measure those in four clusters, and those clusters are closely aligned to Myers-Briggs, to be fair, so there is some alignment to it. But what we say is actually your strength profile is unique to you. The likelihood of you having the same seven significant strengths is one in 346,000.

And if you take the entire strengths profile of having all of your strengths in exactly the same order as somebody else, it's one in 1.3 billion. And that's what we talk about. So when you're talking about diversity and inclusion, or you're talking about project or personal development, we're not wanting to put people in a box.

We're not wanting to label you as like this. We're saying you're amazing as you. How can you be you better? How can you use the stuff that's intrinsically you and you're energized by to allow you to deal with the things that you're not as energized by? And that's the fundamentals behind our approach.

Don't worry about anything else. That's not what we're saying. So actually, we've got a sort of a three circle model where they all come together in this zone of peak performance in the middle. So the overlapping circles. And for you to achieve peak performance, you've got to be clear on the organizational goals.

So the organization needs to be clear about its purpose and what it's there to achieve. So what's the vision? What's the mission? What's the purpose of what you're doing? That's the first thing. Secondly, skills and knowledge or competence. So again, there is a big difference between strengths and competence.

So strengths and natural qualities that are inbuilt within you, competence can be learned. You can learn skills, you can learn knowledge, and it's a fundamentally important part of peak performance. So again, we're not saying don't worry about skills, don't look at training, et cetera.

What we're saying is they are important and particularly important actually where you've got an area that isn't a strength of yours. And I've got a good example of this. So result focus. is not a natural strength area for me, which people get surprised at because I'm a managing director of a business and I've led many teams over time.

The reason it's not a strength for me is I hate the last 5%. I'm really bored by it. I'm as competitive as the next person. I will drive for success in a project, but I get to the nitty gritty of the last bits and it just bores me to tears. I lose interest and that affects my result focus.

So what I do is I rely on some of the skills and knowledge that I have to have checking mechanisms. And actually more importantly, I rely on the strengths of others.

So within my team, I've got an amazing program and project manager who is all about the last 5% and will not let us off the hook with not finishing something and completing it so the the third circle is strengths and energizers so actually you combine the peak um the the organization goals the skills and competence and the strengths and the bit in the middle where

they all overlap is the zone peak performance that's where you will get the maximum performance and the study from gallup so this was all around um people who have adopted a strengths-based development program or a strength-based approach within business and the numbers are quite staggering in some cases. So a fairly obvious one is a 73% improvement in engagement.

So people are more engaged, 73% more engaged in what they're doing and why they're doing it. So there's this personal satisfaction piece that comes with doing more of what you enjoy. Fundamentally, if you give people that rush of, I love doing this, they're going to be more satisfied and therefore they're going to engage more. 11% reduction in absenteeism.

So because people feel good, because people are happy, they go off sick less. 15% increase in sales. It's about the motivation and the energizing nature of what people are doing. 49% lower turnover in staff. So a reduction in staff churn within your business. 36% increase in productivity. And the biggie, 29% increase in profit.

Okay, so this all sounds amazing, but from a practical perspective, how do you address, say, challenges with poor performance using this model? that's always a challenge, isn't it? Because you need to address those areas where a person is weak or not delivering what the business needs.

But like you say, you could be very careful because three, you know, you need three compliments and three areas of positive praise to outweigh the one.

And I guess, so what we also talk about within the strengths approach and within our business is performance risks and often performance um issues in a role will come down to performance risks two main types of performance risks one is overdrive so this is where you overuse a strength or you use it at the wrong time or inappropriately and and the other one is an

energy drainer so a really good example of an energy drainer if you're in a role where your life is about checking the detail of facts and figures so you think about a finance team you will have people whose role is about preparing um mi reports for the board um and it's really important that the detail of those reports is accurate and that the figures are

absolutely spot on if you have a a low energy bar an energy drainer in detail orientation you are going to go home at the end of every day feeling like the world has ended for you it will drain the life out of you and ultimately that is just the way it is for you that's your that's a non-strength for you now what we would say is okay what other strengths

can you bring into play that would help you in delivering that. So can you dial up critical thinking? Have you got that as a significant seven? Can you use result focus to set yourself a target of when you need to have achieved that by so that you create some energy for yourself around the task at hand?

Can you dial up collaboration and work with somebody else who can help you with that and give you some energy? So actually it's about how you approach that and how you can then draw on some of your other strengths to actually help you gain energy from the things that you're naturally not energized by.

I mean, ultimately with performance, you're always gonna come back to a series of metrics. And if somebody isn't delivering against those metrics, you need to challenge that at a performance management level. But one of the shifts that I would encourage people to do is ask people why that is the case.

So, you know, and particularly, you know, if somebody's completed a strengths assessment, you know, you will be clear on where people's strengths lie so actually one of the best questions that we can ask ourselves and we do this within our team so part of our monthly review process we we we measure people against objectives so we don't measure people against attendance

so it's performance against objective meeting and we have a series of clear objectives for people and we talk about how things are going and there's only three questions that we ask each month and we then talk about them so what's gone well what hasn't gone so well, and how can the strengths of yourself and others help you?

Now, that is an incredibly powerful question for individuals to take responsibility for improving their performance, because what you're saying is how can you use your natural energy to help you be better at what you do?

How can you draw on the things that you're energized by and you're excited by and you get excited about and you get energy from to actually help you do better in your role? That will never take away if there's a skill gap or a knowledge gap. And that's where those three circles come in, the zone of peak performance.

If somebody is not capable of doing the job, strengths will only help you so far. If you fundamentally can't do a job, of course, it's down the normal performance route. What you can do is look at the strengths to see how you can help somebody to gain that knowledge. So how can you use your strengths to go find the knowledge that you don't have?

How can you help them to pick that up? And that's where the strengths can really come into their own.

Typically, you know, businesses use a competency-based interview approach. So they will talk about, have you got the skills to do this? And if so, give me an example where you got that skill.

that's okay what's more interesting is why did that go well how did it go well what did you learn about yourself from that what strengths or skills did you use to achieve that great result when have you been at your best because typically again if you can get people to talk about when they've been at their best it will naturally bring out skills and strengths

that they're using in those examples to be able to deliver their very best work so Again, I would always advocate really looking at the recruitment process to make sure that fit for people is absolutely right. And you can go to a full extent of strengths-based interviewing and hiring where you're actually...

So if you're hiring into a finance team, for instance, you could complete Strengthscope assessments across that team and then look at the strengths that make that team successful. So what are the common strengths that that team hold? And that's likely to give you some indication of the strengths that are going to be useful to somebody coming into that team.

It's really important because strengths are about energy, not about competence or capability. It doesn't mean that somebody without those strengths can't work well in that team. What it means is they'll have to look at other strength areas to stay energized. So the detail orientation example I gave you earlier on is a really good example of that.

If you want someone who's, you know, a big chunk of their role is proofreading and checking numbers and figures, and they have low detail orientation, doesn't mean they can't do it.

And they may well have built a whole raft of skill examples to help them through that but it's going to leave them less energy at the end of the day than somebody who is energized by that strength so actually starting to map strengths against roles can be really helpful in terms of culture change i mean you know one of the biggest challenges of culture change is

high engagement so if you don't engage people um at the very beginning you're going to be on hiding to nothing with a culture change product that project so you know that that's one of the key elements and I guess I come back to several points so make sure that the purpose is clear and that comes back to that zone of peak performance if the purpose of this

project isn't clear what's the purpose of what we're trying to achieve and making it clear to people that their work matters within that purpose is really important so how do you use people's strengths to understand what they can bring to a particular project. So what strengths do they bring? Again, another thing that we do in all of our meetings.

So if we're having a meeting at Strengthscope about something, we've just been working on some new product development. So a new interactive course that we're developing. At the beginning of every meeting, we'll ask the team, what strength are you bringing to this meeting?

And it's really powerful because what it does is it helps people to focus on what I personally can give to this project, what I can give to this meeting or this interaction. And at the end, we do a strengths checkout. Did you bring it? Because otherwise, it's really easy for somebody to sit there and say, I'm going to bring emotional control.

Okay, what does that look like at the end of the meeting? Well, I sat there and didn't get emotional. Yeah, that's a cop out. Like, What did you actually bring? If you brought strategic mindedness or if you brought critical thinking, where did you demonstrate that? Did you bring courage? Did you challenge when you thought something wasn't right?

So helping people to understand that their work is important is really key in that. And this is all part of that engagement piece.

And again, a lot is often talked about with millennials for instance so the millennial population have have a very strong alignment to this what we do matters and and we've seen a big shift in some of the um you know the movements around the world around uh you know um climate change is a good example where you know that that's that's an organization that has

engaged across all age groups but is is is a lot of millennial the millennial population is involved in that actually we we we're of the view that importance of what you do matters to every generation just some are more explicitly expressive of that so actually it's important to all of your all of your team and helping them understand that is really key um I think

the second one is involving your people. So having your people involved in the culture change project sounds really obvious. And how does that relate to strengths? So as an example, can you do a team view of your strengths to make sure that where the team is coming from gives you the strengths you need to complete that project? And if not, call it out.

So if you've got a team of people that have zero creativity, Nobody in the team has a creativity strength, and yet you're creating new ideas and you're coming up with a load of new funky stuff to create culture change in your business. It's going to be really tough. You're going to struggle with that.

Similarly, if you've only got one person out of a team of ten that has creativity, recognise that that one person is likely to be called upon for their creative strength. They're likely to be pushing that strength into overdrive at times, and that comes with a performance risk.

And similarly, if you've got everybody, so if all 10 members of the team have creativity, you're likely to face a situation where you come up with so many new ideas that none of them actually get done. So really useful way of being able to stay focused on what a team is bringing versus what a team needs to deliver a great result.

And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to go looking for someone with those strengths. It just means it's awareness of that. So again, at the beginning of a meeting, we don't have efficiency as a strength in this group. So let's just stay focused on our timelines.

And you can attack that by having someone with a leading strength who stays focused on the outcome and stays focused on the timeline and stays focused on what needs to be delivered by the end of the meeting.

You can have somebody else with a critical thinking strength who will say, right, let's break that down into individual bite-sized chunks rather than look at this amazing big project. Break it down into the small pieces. Let's engage that critical thinking strength and dial it up.

So you can always tackle a lack of strength or a shortage of strength with the other strengths that you've got just by dialing up some of the others that the team bring in and and also you know empowerment so make your team feel empowered to be able to make the change trust them that's a fundamental of leadership you know you you've got to trust the team hold

them accountable and again use some of those strengths based questions to help them understand why they did what they did when they did it so if something goes wrong know use some of that strengths based questioning and then i guess the final piece which i would say get people to play to their strengths so if you've got people with particular strengths in particular

areas use them because it will energize them more so if somebody is is you know has a high strength in detail orientation and that's what you need at this point in the project don't be afraid to dial that up with that person and ask them to bring that strength to the team if you've got a natural leader with a natural leading strength.

Get them to help take some leadership role in the project because if they're doing more of those things that energize them, they will naturally do more of it. They will move towards it and they will do it better. So again, it sounds really obvious when you're talking about, you know, use people's strengths, but it sounds so obvious it gets forgotten.

And if you don't know what your team's strengths are, you can't play to them.

So your awareness of your own strengths, but also your awareness of your team's strengths and where their natural abilities, not like you say, not like competence, not how good they are at using a platform or how good they are at Excel or doing things. It's all about what they are naturally good at and what they're naturally energized by.

So I guess my final question is, You've mentioned this a couple of times, but just talk us through the concept of overdrive. So because, you know, there's almost a chance that you can use your strength too much, isn't there, and take it too far.

So they're the things that give me most energy. So if I use a real life example of how that can play out.

So courage for me is about doing the things that are right to do so it's about standing up for the things that are right to stand up for it's about fairness it's about equality it's about making sure that you know if i see something that isn't right and that's that's across life actually not just at work so that that can go into overdrive in a meeting when i

think somebody is not acting in a fair and reasonable manner If I'm excited by the topic, so if we're talking about a new product, for instance, in the Strengthscope portfolio, my creativity will be off the charts because I'm really excited about new, exciting, funky stuff.

enthusiasm couples up with that so actually for me those two creativity and enthusiasm are real watch outs for me in terms of overdrive what does that look like it means i get really carried away with how exciting this is going to be for the future i can see this amazing thing in front of me and it's like yes this is going to be the future this is going to

be awesome and actually what that means is that you lose focus on the objectivity or you lose focus on what's the actual outcome we're working for here? So we're trying to deliver a new product to do X. You know what, we can make it as funky as you like, but actually is it meeting the project brief?

And that's where, again, having the awareness of your strengths. So I can then counter that. And this is where OverDrive is really powerful. So understanding where you're likely to drop into an OverDrive situation means I can then consciously focus on dialing up leading which is a bubbling under strength.

So it's not one of my significant seven, it's not one of my top, but it's one of the next group. So I can focus on saying, okay, I'm gonna stay focused on leading, which means that I'm gonna stay really focused on what the outcome is that we're trying to achieve. I'm gonna stay focused on the objective of the meeting.

So if the objective is to create a project scope for this new product, that's the outcome that I'm gonna stay focused on. And by doing that means it will keep those other strengths of enthusiasm and creativity under control. You can also call it out with others. So the other thing that you can do is strength spot.

So strength spotting is a really powerful tool to use with your team. And it's part of the reason why you call out at the beginning of a meeting, what are you bringing to the meeting? You can also take that a stage further. So if there are likely to be performance risks that you're bringing to the meeting, call it out.

And again, if it's a really important meeting, we'll create a team wheel. So our strength profile is built on a wheel with the 24 strengths going around it with the bars that come out.

So we'll create a team wheel for the group of people that are together to identify where the significant strengths, the team strengths are, the clear strengths for that group, and also where there's performance risk, so where there's no strength. And we'll call that out at the beginning of the meeting as well.

So if we've got six people in the room and we We are blessed in our team with lots of creativity. We've got some amazing creative people that want to just create these amazing learning experiences for people.

What that means is we get really excited about all this new funky stuff that we can do and we have to then come back to all right let's just dial that one back and actually if you're aware of it up front you can then tackle it at the very beginning of the meeting by calling out and saying to people guys big watch out here we've got 10 people with

creativity in the room this is going to go into overdrive at points so let's just be aware of it let's call it out when it happens Who's bringing a strength that can help us counteract that? And that's where people can then say, well, I'll bring leading, I'll bring critical thinking, whatever it might be.

And also just being aware of it yourself to call it out in the meeting. So if you see it happening, call it out live. Hey guys, we're getting a bit carried away here. Let's just pause for a moment and regroup. So yeah, for me, the other one, I guess that I'm blessed with is flexibility. So I love new stuff. I love change.

I'm never happier than when I'm being disrupted or disturbed. So the worst thing for me would be sitting in a room all day on my own, just working. That's a horrific day for me because there's no change. There's nothing different. There's nothing new in there. I like new, I like new ideas. I actually look forward to people saying, oh, have you got a minute?

I've got a question. Yeah, great. Bring it on. You know, I can very quickly turn. So we had, you know, we had had a couple of staff members move on in the business for their own development. I move on quite quickly to a place of opportunity because the flexibility strength allows me to see what's coming, what's the future.

But that can also be a bit of a challenge around, I look for change, whereas some people change. And it comes back to that point earlier on. If you don't engage people, if you don't empower them, if you don't have them clearly communicated and you're not playing to people's strengths, change for a lot of people is really scary.

And if you've got a flexibility strength, I don't see change as scary. I see it as really interesting and exciting and fun. A lot of people don't see it that way. So again, you have to be conscious. That's a good example of probably where Overdrive can be misusing a strength so I can use my flexibility in a way that disables other people.

So I'm very aware of time because I've got a feeling that you and I could talk about this for absolutely hours.

So I'm hoping, and I've certainly learned a lot from today, and I'm hoping our audience have, but if there's like, you know, your top tips for those that are going away and taking this on board and going actually okay so i want to see and i want to try and start to use this with my team what are your sort of your key takeaways for people listening to this

podcast

Our founder, Paul, does a series of podcasts as well, which, again, are linked to those blogs that are all about how you apply strengths in day to day life. So there's some amazing tips and tools in there about actually what can I do to bring strength to life in my daily work? The second thing is awareness.

And you mentioned this earlier on, but be aware of what people's strengths are. Be aware of the things that they bring that energize them. Of course, I'm going to say the best way of gaining awareness is to complete a strengths assessment. And there are others on the market. We're one of many. We're the only one that has British Psychological Society accreditation.

But hey, you know, I just...

So when they've been at their best, when they felt at their absolute best, what have they been doing? What sort of jobs have they been doing? What sort of tasks have they been doing? And that will start to give you some clues to what strengths that person will hold.

You know, if somebody turns around and says, I'm absolutely at my best, I'm in the zone when I'm checking those figures for the board, the likelihood is there's a detail orientation strength in there. That's the likelihood.

So, you know, be... be able to start to spot strengths in other people through what they're doing and what they're saying and listen out for those keywords. And I guess the final thing is to then talk to people in a way that engages them with the things that energize them.

So even if you don't want to do an assessment, what energizes you and how can you do more of it? And that may be about doing a role that's not the role you're currently in because you just find it draining. That doesn't mean that person can't do something else. It doesn't mean that they're no good to the business.

It means that they're probably in a role that's not playing to their strengths. So how can you look at using that person in a way that's going to help them be more energized and ultimately go back to those numbers, going to give you more performance and going to give you more productivity from that person because they want to come to work.

They're engaged by what they're doing.

It's been amazing to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge.