Adam Torres and Tiffany Weigand discuss StrengthsFirst Culture.
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Show Notes:
What makes CliftonStrengths assessments unique? In this episode, Adam Torres and Tiffany Weigand, Co-Founder & Talent Developer at Partner2Learn LLC, explore what it takes to build a StrengthsFirst Culture.
About Tiffany Weigand
In her 20+ years of marketing, branding and consulting, Tiffany has served regional and global organizations in numerous industries, including manufacturing, education, municipalities, healthcare, senior living, small business and nonprofit. Tiffany’s Gallup Certification and experience presenting to senior leaders and company owners with a focus on real life solutions and humor has added tremendous value to her clients.
About Partner2Learn LLC
Partner2Learn exists to guide transformational growth in leadership and process development, elevating performance of individuals, teams, and organizations.
Are you, your team, or organization ready to think differently? Take “weakness” out of your vocabulary and replace it with “Partner-up Opportunities.” Stop asking “is there a better way?” and get energized and excited to have the right people, in the right positions as you build a StrengthsFirst culture.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Tiffany Wigand, and she is the co founder and talent developer over at Partner2Learn LLC.
Tiffany, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. All right, Tiffany. So we’re going to be talking about assessments today. And I know you don’t know this, but I am obsessed with assessments. I probably taken them all in my life. Every business when I don’t know if I’ve taken your work through yours yet, but I’ve taken many, many throughout course of my career.
And we got our topic today is we’re going to learn about what it takes to building a strength. First culture and even what building a strength first culture means. And I guess just to get us kicked off here, Tiffany, like did you get into this business, like partner to learn your co founder, like, what sparked this idea?
Yeah, well, my undergrad was actually in marketing, so I worked in manufacturing for about 15 years and eventually transitioned out of manufacturing and I started my own marketing consulting practice. And as I was working in organizations or consulting for organizations, I kept kind of asking the question, why are some organizations really successful and why are some not?
So I kept asking why and trying to get to the root issue. And I was actually kind of disappointed where I was looking at myself to say, what am I doing wrong? if I was hired by an organization, I would have some successes and sometimes I wouldn’t. And I kind of reflect on what I could do differently.
But then I actually got hired maybe seven, eight years ago by an organization of a nonprofit that I, that was a part of my life as a kid. They hired me to do their marketing and branding. And so again, I’m really excited, love the opportunity. And shortly after I was hired by them, I, my first step in the process is to interview people ask them why they hired me, what’s working, what’s not.
And then I realized that some of the key leaders wouldn’t even meet with me. And then the leaders that were meeting with me started to tell me some of the dirty laundry, right? that basically there wasn’t alignment within the organization. And the leaders were kind of having that discussion of, can we come into alignment?
Or does the organization die? And I said, well, it kind of seems that some of you are thinking that the marketing was going to be the end all be all. It was going to fix everything. But was more of a band aid on a bleeding wound. So. And at that, at that point, I, similar to you I, I enjoy assessments. And so I’ve used many in my career often the different organizations I was with.
And at that time I was aware of CliftonStrengths formerly StrengthsFinder, so it’s through Gallup. And I was aware of it and about that time I had taken this assessment and it just really helped. It was very eyeopening for me. So. I actually reached out to somebody else and I said, I never thought I would say this, but I think I want to switch careers.
I want to actually help people get to the root issue because I feel that marketing isn’t always the solution that they think that they need. when did you know that this was going to be a was it gradual? Was there a moment in time? I always just kind of solidify this part.
When did you know that this was going to be like a serious part of your life? Like, you’re like, okay, I’m going to go out there and I’m going to create this company in this business. Like, when did you know that? I knew that when I started working with companies that would hire me, and I just have this feeling that can’t help them the way that they think they need help.
I can give them some tips, but it’s not getting to the root issue, right? sure. I can help you put together a branding exercise. I can help create awareness for you, but really you can’t address the root challenges of you not getting along with some of the other leaders and constantly fighting the things that are getting in the way of your success, The marketing isn’t going to work.
So I would say it was probably a six month process for me. And at the time my co founder that I found a partner to work with, he was already doing this in the nonprofit world. And so I started having conversations with him saying, you know, think I actually want to make a shift. I kind of said, well, are you hiring?
partly joking. And at that time, the nonprofit wasn’t looking to hire, but because I had so much experience in the for profit world, we kind of talked about how this could be really a good partnership for us , with his education and nonprofit background and my for profit background.
Wow, that’s amazing. And so now you go into the market, take me a little bit further down the continuum here. So you go get into the market, like what happened? Like, how does that start to, how do you start to grow this? So the nonprofit that my co founder Scott was working in we felt that we would get a handful of referrals from this nonprofit because the nonprofit obviously exists for a specific reason.
And then if they ever met people that were out of the scope of their, goals, they could refer business to us. So we found a partner to learn in 2019 with high hopes that we had a backlog for a few years where the nonprofit kept saying, we can’t serve these people. So we were thinking that we would hit the ground running and it went well at first, but obviously, as I said, 2019, a year into our organization, COVID happens.
So 2020 and 2021 were pretty scarce. We were kind of concerned if we were going to be able to move through it all. And then I would say near the end of 21, all of a sudden the floodgates opened where so many organizations were saying, you know what, we were in crisis mode for so long we stopped worrying about it.
We stopped thinking about our people and the culture, and we were just dealing with fires. Now it’s time to invest in our people again. So in 21, that’s where things. Finally started opening up and we’re seeing some amazing opportunities. that’s amazing and thank you for sharing that and it’s just love hearing these journeys because for other people that are listening and then for myself as well it just so inspiring to see you know because it’s not like.
Oh, you start this business, all these things happen, and everything just works perfectly forever. That doesn’t usually happen. Of course it would be, but that’s just not the way it works. So let’s get a little bit further into this strength side of things, especially for people that maybe aren’t obsessed with assessments like you and I maybe just give an overview of kind of Clifton strengths and just your processes overall, just to give a basis as we kind of get deeper.
Yeah, knowing that you’re aware of assessments, but others may not be some of the more common ones that you might be hearing right now would be disk Myers Briggs predictive index Enneagram. They all are great. They all value. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that those are not valuable to people that are using them.
However, in my experience, they were not helpful. They didn’t resonate with me though. The example I always tell people is every assessment I’ve ever taken. I feel like a 3rd of it. Yeah, absolutely. This is totally me a 3rd. I’m like, well, it depends. Sometimes this is me, sometimes it’s not. And then I started, I was like, don’t really see this in me at all.
So nothing really ever resonated. But what I say is with an assessment, it’s information, right? Hopefully it’s useful. You can take it all, you can take parts, whatever’s going to help you for personal growth. When I took CliftonStrengths, this was the first assessment for me personally where I felt 100 percent that this spoke to me.
It made sense when I looked back and I said, wow, I understand why I was successful in some roles and not others. It made sense as to why I got in so many disagreements with certain people, whereas I worked really well with others. So for me, it just, it made sense. And it was just confirming a lot of what has already happened.
And then I could say, okay, now this is useful. How can I use this to develop further in all of my relationship personally and professionally? let’s go a little bit further into the assessment and how it works. So, talk about that piece. Yeah, so CliftonStrengths is an assessment that asks you 144 questions.
So when I tell people that they kind of cringe and say that, that’s a lot. But. There’s definitely method to the madness. And the interesting thing about the assessment as well is it is timed. So it only gives you 20 seconds to answer each question. And I know some people maybe they have strengths like I do or they don’t like that.
They want to think things through. But the whole point of the the whole point of it being timed is to say I don’t want you to overthink it, right? It’s the idea of what would you do naturally without thinking. So then you get your results and you can either get your top five strengths or you can get your full report, which is 34 strengths.
And you do have all 34 strengths just in diminishing returns. So the idea with strength is what are your top strengths? Those are things that you just do really well without thinking. It’s just natural habit and it’s where you excel. And then everything that’s on the bottom, we say, you know what? I want you to take the word weakness out of your vocabulary and replace it with partner up opportunities.
So this assessment is very positive and it helps you to identify your uniqueness. So most people will say, this is the first assessment I’ve taken where I’ve read the results and I feel better about myself. I am accepting who I am. I’m seeing the value that I’m providing to other people in my life. and so what are some of the potential outcomes?
I know it’s a little difficult when we’re on a podcast, but like just to give a feeling of why they would feel about themselves. Like, what are some of the potential things? And I’ll give you an example. I mean, I, I think I think ENTJ, that was one of them. I don’t even remember what these are, by the way.
Like maybe it was Myers Briggs I took. That’s Myers Briggs, yeah. I’m sure I took the DISC assessment many, many times. That’s a big one, and some financial companies that I’ve worked for and many others. Like, what do some of these outcomes look like? And I know, it’s impossible to be like, oh, well, this percentage and this, because that’s why you have to do the 134 questions.
But just to give people a feeling for what that means. Yeah, so we often work with organizations, but we also do have some individuals that we work with. But really whether I’m working with an individual in the organization, it comes down to the individual, right? If you are not open to change, right?
There are some people who are like, I’m perfect just the way I am. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Well, okay. Well, we can’t really help you if you’re not open to that. Yeah. And then, yeah, and then on the other side of the spectrum, we have people who have just gone through so much in their life where maybe somebody that that raised them, you know, just was like, why can’t you be like somebody else?
What’s wrong with you? You’re a terrible person. So they, they grow up feeling like they don’t necessarily have self worth. And then, then sometimes that can be a challenge because they can’t hear anything positive. And I actually joke with people. I’m like, if you’re giving me a compliment, my thing is I’m always waiting for the butt.
You did a good job, but right? So when we’re coaching people, we kind of try to hear where are they at right now? What, may be mindset is getting in their way. So when you talk about outcomes helping people understand, okay, maybe you never saw this as a strength before. So for example, one of the strengths people will have is empathy and people will say, well, so the definition of empathy is you can feel the emotions around you.
So if you, Okay. Somebody in your organization that has empathy in the negative side, you might look at them and say, Oh, they are so emotional. They’re always I can see them crying. And, you know, we start to look at things from a negative perspective. That’s just how we tend to think. Yeah. Well, if we shift it for a positive to a positive spin to say, you know what, you have empathy, you know, how people are feeling.
So when I come in as a leader, and I say, and I have to come in and deliver bad news, we’ll say, we’re not meeting our goals. We got to try harder. You know, we got to focus on this. And I come across as harsh. I can tap into and partner up with that person’s empathy and say, how did I do? Did I upset anybody?
Do I need to have some one on one conversations with somebody? So now all of a sudden that person with empathy goes, you know what? I was my whole life. I thought that empathy was a weakness and you’re telling me it’s a strength. I, I just shifted the mindset for myself that that’s actually a good thing.
And now you’ve given me some action steps on how to use it in my relationship. So you’ve been, you’ve been doing this for a long time. You’ve worked with a lot of organizations on this journey of working with these organizations and conducting, you know, hundreds and hundreds of these, of these assessments and getting to see the results and otherwise and also to see the effect that people have, you know, re received by getting their results and seeing them.
And I know because I, even though I haven’t taken this particular assessment, I’ve taken others and even just the fact of taking an assessment gave me so much introspection, like into my life and, just to thinking about like why I operated a certain way or who I work best with, or like certain characteristics I had that I didn’t even know I had.
I remember one of them, I forgot which one it was, but I took it twice because I didn’t believe it. I was like, no, I don’t believe this. I was probably in my early twenties, by the way, a little bit more, mature. More hard headed, we’ll say at that point, Tiffany. But when you took it, when you took it the second time, were the results the same?
Yeah, they were, and that was just me, and I was just being a hard headed early 20 year old that thought they knew something. That’s all it was. Yes. , so I just know what a different assessments have made in my life in general, like into being able to, but I’ve never considered from the standpoint of the instructor, like the person that was actually giving them.
So I’m just so curious as to, from your vantage point, has anything surprised you on this journey?
the things that have surprised me is I hear more often than not kind of what I’ve seen before of people will say things like Tiffany. This is the 1st time that I’ve been told something good about myself or this particular trait. I’ve been told that. Wow. That’s beautiful by the way. Right? You wouldn’t expect that.
And like in an employer, situation right where they’re at work. Like, that’s amazing. It is. Yes. that example that I just shared, I mean, that was a 40 something man, right? And then to have them start to cry on you to think, wow, like, you know, I always kind of pause.
had it happen at numerous times in the first few times. I’m thinking, what did I do wrong? I feel terrible. I certainly don’t know for you. I’m sorry, Tiffany. You’re like, As you can tell, I have a little bit of empathy in me, right? Yeah. Well, that’s good. And then I’m like, excuse me, this isn’t about you, right?
come to ask questions, give them time to kind of process why they’re feeling that emotion. And they’re like, no, this is a good cry. This is like validating that I can actually use this now I can look back and say, you know. Whether it was somebody not understanding that emotion or something else going on in their life that was getting in their way so that’s very powerful for me So when I go into a one on one coaching session with somebody I tell them my goal over the next hour hour and a half.
It’s for you to feel better about yourself, right? So whatever’s getting in your way, how can I help you see the value that you bring to everybody around you? So no matter what you’re going through at home or at work, this is going to positively impact you Yeah, that’s super valid. And I think that now like post pandemic, and we all went through that shared experience that depending on what age group, you know, the facility can affect everybody differently.
But if you were in the workforce, and you were of that age to where, you know, this is, it affected you in that way for because you’re, you’re working, I feel like that particular group of people are able to now even have that a different concept in conversation versus like at home versus at work and like this assessment in the past, I don’t know how long it’s been around, but I just mean in general, even pre pandemic, like, just because in the workplaces in general, we weren’t having that type of conversation at home personally versus work.
It was. Pretty compartmentalized, depending on what industry you were in. Definitely in finance and some of those definitely compartmentalized, like we weren’t looking at each other necessarily as humans, it was just like, that’s our work people, that’s our home people. So now looking at the implications of an amazing assessment like this, it even broadens it, I didn’t even think about that implication that, wow, that can possibly even now help you in your personal life, if you’re looking at it in that manner, just from the standpoint of the, overlap, if you will.
That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sometimes if we’re working with an organization, what will come out of it is, can you do this with my spouse? Can you share this with them? And we just maybe have a couple’s coaching session to kind of understand each other? Because again, you know, and that would never happen like in the nineties, probably depending on the industry, right?
Like that, like the husband or the wife, vice versa, like whoever, like the husband or the wife, whoever was taking the assessment at work during, they weren’t going to be like, Oh, this is amazing. Like, can you do this for my, that wasn’t going to happen in the nineties, probably and definitely not in the eighties or something.
I mean, I wasn’t in the workforce then, but I, I can’t imagine it was. I can’t imagine it was that much more inclusive in terms of, like, bringing in the spouse. Hey, we do this assessment at home? That’s amazing. That’s great. It’s progress for humanity, I feel. Absolutely, yeah. We’re way past the Mad Men era, right?
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s great. So you mentioned you work with organizations and that’s the primary means of, of delivery. Like talk to me how that works. Cause there’s a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives that listen to this program that are in decision making seats, and maybe they want to bring you in and your team in to, to help their organization.
so how does that work? Absolutely. As we’re talking to organizations, we try to find out what’s getting in their way. what’s keeping them up at night, right? And oftentimes they might start with, oh, we’re not reaching our goals. But once you dig deeper, it’s what’s really getting in the way. And typically it has to do with interpersonal appreciation for each other.
There’s, you know, constantly dealing with fires, people not getting along, whatever it might be. So for us, again, with all the strength talk, it’s again, as an individual, helping them have a strength first mindset, again, seeing their value, but then building that strength first culture. So we do individual coaching.
We do team building based on strength again, so we can understand how to best partner up with each other again, to realize that, you know, Adam, you’re amazing at certain things, but you’re not good at everything. Right. And that’s the same for everybody. So instead of you spending your time doing things that don’t necessarily energize you, you don’t have a passion for, you’re not good at, you know, I’m sure even in your business world, you’re surrounding yourself with other people that are complimenting you.
So what I often say is people should not be well rounded. The team itself should be well rounded. So what value do you bring, right? So Adam, if all of a sudden I said no more podcast for you, you have to do something else. And then we switched it up and somebody else had to do the podcast and you had to do something else.
Well, both of you are thinking, but I loved what I was doing. Why are you taking that away from me? So it’s the idea of strength. It’s the habit of what you do naturally. So for us, it’s energy management instead of time management. So these organizations, we’re helping them say, let’s give your employees permission to say, you know what?
There’s certain parts of my job. I don’t enjoy doing, I don’t give you permission to stop doing them today, but as you’re putting together a career development plan, or if you’re looking at a reorg, all right, a year or two from now, I would love it if I didn’t have to do a, B and C anymore. And then guess what?
There’s somebody on your team. That’s probably thinking I would love the opportunity to do that and take that off of your plate. So all of a sudden you’re shifting things and you’re doing more of what you love. So you’re being more efficient and then so is the rest of your team. And then once we have people understanding their value, understanding and appreciating the partner up opportunities with the rest of their colleagues Then the organizational strategy just all of a sudden seems too easy, right?
The strategic plan we know who’s doing what based on their strengths based on their passions And now we’re more easily achieving those goals. We have increased engagement retention, etc Amazing. Tiffany, this has been great, and I can talk to you about assessments all day long. I’m not going to go into the love languages on this one, but I’ve taken all the assessments, so I’m going to have to get into this Clifton one as well, because I do not believe off the top of my head I have done it.
But that being said, we’re about out of time for this episode. If somebody wants to continue the conversation with you and your team and follow up, how do they do that? Yes, I would encourage them to visit our website, partner2learn. com, and it’s the number 2, not T O. So partner, the number 2, learn. com, and then reach out there.
I’d be happy to have a conversation with you, and Adam, I’d be happy to Help make sure you can take this assessment and add it to your list of assessment results. I love it. I’m in, I’m in. And speaking of that for the audience, we’re going to put the notes in the website and all that good stuff in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over, definitely check them out over at partner to learn.
And speaking of the audience, this is a daily show each and every day we are releasing new episodes. If you have not. Hit that subscribe button. Yeah, this is your personal invitation. Hit that subscribe button each and every day. We’re bringing you new entrepreneurs, new stories, new inspiration, new lessons.
So we can all learn and grow together. So that’s the whole goal here at mission matters. And Tiffany, again, thank you so much for making some time for us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.