Table of Contents

• Happy New Year!

• Leading with Our Strengths

• 1% Solutions

• Things I’m Reading

• Need Strategic Support Quickly and Effectively?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! In what may prove to be an apt metaphor, I roared into 2025 with a list of goals and intentions- only to be kicked on my butt on January 1 with a nasty cold that I’m still battling. As Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

I’m actually still working towards most of my intentions, like reading, eating more protein, and logging my Peloton minutes. And I know I’ll get back on track with my steps once I can stop coughing like I have the plague. So, perhaps this is all an opportunity to practice adaptability and resilience? I think we’re going to need it this year (and for the next four).

Leading with Our Strengths

A few months ago, I had decided that 2025 would be the year I leaned back into leadership development work. I entered the world of talent via leadership training- I developed my organization’s in-house leadership training program, which not only fueled our organizational growth, but also expanded the number of leaders of color, increase leader retention and served as a basis for developing our back office leaders. It was some of the most fulfilling work I’ve done. Given the coming challenges ahead, the best investment folks can make is in their people, and I’m excited to role out a few new offerings and a manager training cohort later this month (stay tuned!)

So, I spent December honing those skills. First, I became DiSC certified. And the last working week of December, I traveled down to DC for Gallup’s Global Strengths Coach training. Perhaps not my wisest decision to double up, but doing both back to back helped me to think more deeply about leadership and the different supports that different situations warrant.

I’ve had more familiarity with Strengths, having taken Strengthfinders 2.0 as a new principal What a lifeline it was! Instead of focusing on all of the things I didn’t know how to do or didn’t do well, focusing on my strengths gave me a clear, actionable and doable path to be a better leader. It’s not that I didn’t have work to do or that I could ignore my gaps, but I then felt like I had the tools within me to start. With leaders today facing SO many challenges, why wouldn’t we want to give them (and their teams) a similar lifeline?

This is not just about feelings, but about the data behind leveraging strengths. A few that stand out to me (all from Gallup):

• People who have the opportunity to use their talents and strengths are 6 times more likely to be engaged in their jobs- a striking number given that only 34% of the global workforce reports as being engaged at work!

• People who have the opportunity to use their talents are also 6 times as likely to strongly agree that they have the opportunity to do what they think is best every day- a key question from Gallup’s employee engagement poll.

Leveraging strengths is not about positivity in the face of everything. Certain jobs require certain skills, certain industries require certain mindsets, and organizations at different stages of growth require ways of working. The idea behind strengths is to figure out how to leverage your strengths to close up gaps while managing the things you don’t do well. It’s also about determining how to work alongside others so that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.

Our strengths are also not a shield from criticism. But neither should we try to overcorrect in a way that isn’t healthy or productive. Two lines from our instructors stood out to me:

• We are the boss of our talents, not the employee

• We don’t need to tone down our strengths, but we do need to channel them

File this under things I wish I had learned years ago. Like any assessment, we are more than one thing and definitely more than a label. It s how we use the learning from an assessment that matters. In the same way that Strengthfinders gave me that lifeline years ago, these two quotes again gave me something TO do and a path forward. I hope they do the same for you!

If you are interested in how Strength Based Coaching or DiSC can help you, your team, your organization as whole, let’s talk. Also, if you are onboarding new leaders, are internally promoting, or developing a leadership development program, I’ve found these two assessments to be a great way to kick of the self-awareness and self-discovery needed in leadership. You can find a time to talk here, or just reply to this newsletter.

1% Solutions

• Stay Conversations as a Retention Tool- Don’t wait until a teammate is sharing they may be leaving or an exit interview, and don’t assume teammates will always be proactive in raising issues. Instead, having quarterly or biannual stay conversations can go a long way in helping to keep a pulse on how folks are feeling. Questions you can add to your next check-in:

  • What do you love most about your work?

  • What keeps you working here?

  • If you could change something about your job, what would that be?

  • What are your long-term goals?

  • What is something you’d love to learn or try?

  • If you were in my shoes, what is one thing you’d either want to change or invest more in?

• Improving Onboarding- 89% of employees feel an effective onboarding makes them feel more engaged, and there are countless studies that show effective onboarding has significant impact on retention. One quick way to improve yours? Ask folks who have been hired within the last 6-12 months two questions, and revise your processes as necessary:

  • What is one thing you learned in onboarding that helped you feel effective in your role?

  • What is one thing that if we had included in onboarding would have made you feel more effective at your role?

• Succession Planning/Prepping your next leaders- You likely have folks that you will be promoting- individual contributors to managers, managers to directors, etc. As capable as these folks are, they are entering a new role and will need onboarding to help them succeed. How to focus your energy? I’d have them self-evaluate (with your input) using the evaluation of their future role. Then think through with them 1-2 high-leverage adaptive or tactical leadership skills for them to start focusing on and ways to support them in that development.

Things I’m Reading

• Language Bias in Performance Bias in 2024, by Textio- I’m leading a few workshops on mitigating bias in performance reviews, and this report shared so many helpful statistics and examples to make my trainings more robust. The stats on how we give biased feedback to our highest performers was especially eye opening. P.S. Textio has a few free courses on performance reviews and feedback that can also be helpful. These are quick, to be the point and clear.

• 2024 Employment Law Trends and 2025 Predictions- Many of us across sectors are trying to anticipate how this coming administration will impact us in our work. GovDocs recently led a webinar on updates and predictions. I’ve attached the link to the overview but you can still access the webinar by signing up here. Some things to note:

  • captive audience bans have passed in 12 states;

  • employers utilizing AI should consider having a policy in their employee handbooks from a liability and risk standpoint to provide the guidance of how employees may use AI in the workplace

  • while it is unlikely that the EEOC’s recent guidelines on gender identity will be revoked, the administration has the ability to impact enforcement and if the agencies are shrunk it will limit agencies’ ability to investigate and enforce the new guidance broadly. 

Need Strategic Support Quickly and Effectively?

Do you have capable team members but are lacking bandwidth to set strategic vision or action planning around recruitment, talent development, culture or engagement? I’ve designed a few packages that allow busy leaders to get focused strategic support that their teams can then run and implement. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, email me at [email protected] or set up a time to talk here.