Engaging Our Strengths to Deepen Our Work

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Engaging Our Strengths to Deepen Our Work
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Objectives

• Basic understanding of strengths
• Consider investing in strengths within your
  organization
• Leave with a plan for sharing/increasing
  knowledge about strengths in DV work

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Introduction to Strengths

• What is a talent?
• What is Strength?
• Personal/individual success
• Organizational success

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Life Line Activity
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Life Line Instructions

• Draw a line that represents your professional
  life and the major events in it.  Mark the line
  up for events that represent high points in your
  professional life and mark the line down for
  events that represent low points.  Write the
  names of significant people or events at
  different stages of your life.  Write a brief
  description of the significant events. Feel free
  to draw pictures or use any type of imagery.

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Life Line Sharing

• Speaker For each person in your group, please
  take 5 min. to share you life map with peers.
  Share the significant points in your leadership
  life that most represent you. Share only what is
  comfortable for you, but let your peers get to
  know you.
• Listener As you listen to your peers life map
  journey, listen for talents, strengths or values.
  Write down on a card a word or phrase that
  captures what you heard. (one per card)

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Managing Strengths and Weakness

• Understanding and managing for weaknesses
• Strategies for indentifying strengths in others
• Strategies for creating strengths based
  organizations
• Talents, knowledge and skills

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Curiosity Interview

• Speaker Tell us about a peak experience you
  had at work-A time when you were feeling
  confident and challenged in a good way, may be
  lost track of time You felt in the zone.
• Listener use the following open-ended questions
  to help draw the story out of the speaker.
  Remember to stay open and curious as you
  listen-the goal is to better understand the
  speaker and her/his story. Avoid WHY questions.

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What? What was the moment? What happened? What were you feeling? What did you discover? Who? Who inspires you to be in the flow or at your best? Who do you have for company at those times? Who do you inspire to be at their best
When? When was this? When else have you experienced something like this? Where? Where is it easiest to get in the flow? Where do you want to go next in your work?
How? How did this happen? How consciously did you create the event? Who did you see yourself differently afterwards? Avoid Why?
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Group Reflection

• Any thoughts for the group?
• Did anything come as a surprise?
• Did any feedback in particular resonate with you?
• How might you use what you learned from this
  exercise in your work?
• Any ideas for taking this back to a team at your
  organization?