How to Use CliftonStrengths as a Powerful Tool in Building Trauma Informed Workplaces
Most of us have had plenty of experience with personality assessment and self-awareness tools in the workplace. Like most leaders, I have a favorite.
And while there are many reasons CliftonStrengths (previously StrengthsFinder) is my preferred tool, the number one reason is it is the best option for a culture that seeks to be trauma informed.
What is a Trauma Informed Workplace Culture?
Trauma informed cultures center supportive, informed environments where everyone has the opportunity to be successful. These cultures prioritize eliminating workplace trauma and actively avoid re-traumatizing survivors.
I
t is important to note that Trauma Informed Cultures DO NOT seek to diagnose or treat trauma. Nor should there be an expectation that individuals are under any obligation to share their traumatic experiences.
I’ve interpreted the Trauma Informed Care Principles developed by SAMHSA in 2014 to focus on application to all organizations and a focus on internal culture versus a client-focused approach.
At the core of Trauma Informed Culture are seven principles that help ensure supportive environments for all members of the team- regardless of their experience with Trauma.
What is CliftonStrengths?
The CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly known as the StrengthsFinder assessment) is a popular tool developed by Don Clifton and the Gallup Organization to help individuals discover and develop their unique strengths or talents.
Based on the belief that people are more successful and fulfilled when they focus on their natural abilities and talents, rather than trying to fix their weaknesses, it was a novel change from the current state of the field of psychology.
The field of psychology was focused more on interventions that decreased an individual’s misery or problems before Clifton created this tool. But he saw an opportunity to supplement this traditional science — a way to build the “enabling conditions of life.” Strengths science answers questions about what’s right with people rather than what’s wrong with them.
Clifton initiated early work on strengths and received a Presidential Commendation from the American Psychological Association (APA) as the father of strengths-based psychology and the grandfather of positive psychology.
When Clifton studied human behavior, he noted hundreds of positive characteristics and saw that many of those characteristics had commonalities. Based on those common traits, he distilled them down into the 34 talent themes central to the CliftonStrengths tool; identified and rank-ordered using the assessment. But to turn those talents into strengths, you must invest in them — practice using them and add knowledge and skills to them.
Here’s a quick summary of how the CliftonStrengths assessment works:
Assessment: Individuals take an online assessment that consists of a series of 177 questions. The assessment is designed to identify and rank top talents which can be leveraged as strengths.
Results: After completing the assessment, individuals receive a personalized report that lists their top strengths. These strengths are also organized into four domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking, to help leverage the results for relationships and teams and create a common language.
Understanding Strengths: The assessment provides detailed descriptions of each of the identified strengths, including insights into how these strengths may manifest in an individual’s behavior, thinking, and interactions with others.
Application: The CliftonStrengths assessment encourages individuals to focus on developing and leveraging their top strengths. Gallup emphasizes that it’s more productive to invest in areas where one has natural talents and abilities, as opposed to trying to overcome weaknesses. This is a powerful perspective to promote self-acceptance and growth in tandem.
People can apply their knowledge of their strengths in various aspects of their lives, including their careers, personal relationships, and personal development.
Team Building: The CliftonStrengths assessment is also used in team building and leadership development. By understanding the strengths of team members, leaders can assemble teams that are well-balanced and can work together more effectively.
Self-awareness tools can play a crucial role in helping individuals become more trauma informed by enabling them to better understand their responses, triggers, and emotional states and helping understand those around them. Where CliftonStrengths stands far above other self-awareness tools is the incorporation of self-acceptance into the purpose and outcomes of the tool.
CliftonStrengths isn’t about finding what is wrong with you and fixing it; it’s about finding what is right and natural talent and leveraging it to be the absolute best version of yourself.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of self-acceptance in personal development and growth. I shared that self-acceptance doesn’t mean you won’t change and grow; we all change of course, and our self-acceptance will flex with those changes. It may be helpful to think of self-acceptance as acceptance of yourself now- as you are and acceptance of who you can become.
Self-acceptance also includes recognizing what you will not become or what is not available to you and accepting it. It may seem challenging to let go of who you can never be, but it is also powerful. Don’t mistake this for a limiting belief, rather it is a focus on the reality of ourselves and what we can and cannot change.
This aspect of recognizing who you will not become- who you are not — is sometimes overlooked, but it is key to self-acceptance. CliftonStrengths allows you to recognize this in a safe, empowering way.
How to Leverage CliftonStrengths to Build Trauma Informed Cultures
Trauma-informed awareness can help people not only in their healing journey but also in their interactions with others who may have experienced trauma, including coworkers and direct reports.
Here’s how CliftonStrengths can facilitate this process:
Personal Awareness and Regulation: At the heart of CliftonStrengths is better understanding of yourself, your motivations and your natural tendencies. This is accomplished in a way that looks to maximize your strengths versus creating shame around things that may not be natural talents. Whenever each of us can better understand how our behaviors can impact both ourselves and those arounds us- we are better team member and can be more conscious in efforts to prevent trauma or re-traumatization of our peers and ourselves.
Identifying Triggers: When we get to know ourselves better, we better understand our potential triggers. CliftonStrengths can help us with this. It can be as simple as giving us the tools to understand why we may be approaching something differently than a co-worker; because we have different strengths.
Continuous Self-Reflection: CliftonStrengths and the robust tools for ongoing use of the assessment for personal and team development make continuous self-reflection and growth a key component of the tool. Continuous reflection is important in shaping humility and responsiveness- one of the key principles of trauma informed workplaces.
Building Empathy for Ourselves & Others: Becoming trauma informed a involves understanding the experiences of others and ourselves. Self-awareness tools can help individuals develop empathy by encouraging them to reflect on their own experiences and emotions. This, in turn, can make them more sensitive and compassionate when interacting with others.
Effective Communication and Common Language: CliftonStrengths helps create a common language about who we are as individuals, what we need, and what we can bring to the table. By creating this common language that is focused on what is right with each of us and prioritizes elevating our strengths, communication is rooted in empowerment.
Creating Safe Spaces for Acceptance & Growth: Because CliftonStrengths focuses on strengths for each of us — and there are no bad strengths- discussion and working to better ourselves and focused on continued growth feels safer.
Driving Empowerment: When we talk about trauma informed workplaces, empowerment includes choice, strengths-leveraged, recognition, and growth. CliftonStrengths is an excellent facilitator of all these aspects of empowerment. And the tool works across all levels of the organization and any type of role.
We focus heavily on systems and processes to build trauma informed workplace cultures, but it’s important to never overlook the individual impacts each of us can have on the workplace- both positive and negative.
The beauty of the CliftonStrengths tool is it works for a dedicated individual, a team, all the way to a full, strengths-based organization. All of which are key bricks in building a trauma informed culture.
If you’d like to learn more about CliftonStrengths and how to leverage it yourself or your team, reach out and schedule a discovery call with me here. Or check out Gallup.com