Transforming Your Core Talents Into a Competitive Advantage

Peter Drucker, management guru, said, “Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer.”

Left to Right: Gary Rifkin and Candace Fitzpatrick

Marcus Buckingham, coauthor of the best seller, First, Break All the Rules, and Donald O. Clifton, Chair of the Gallup International Research and Education Center, created a revolutionary program that helps individuals discover their talents and be able to build them into strengths. In their bestselling book, Now Discover Your Strengths, they featured the Internet-based StrengthsFinder ® profile, a 25 year, multi-million dollar study of two million individuals that identified the most prevalent human strengths.

Joining us to talk about how to turn talents into strengths with Strengthsfinder and more are:

• Candace Fitzpatrick: Founder and CEO of CoreClarity and
• Gary Rifkin: CoreClarity’s Director of Strategic Communications and Training

Candace, not happy with the direction her career at the time was taking her, went back to school for her MBA and discovered the Gallup StrengthsFinder, which changed her life and led to the founding of CoreClarity in 2004. Candace wanted to figure out the so what; “what can we do with these talents and information? How can we teach people how to use them and make them more accessible?” She adds, “this process points out the ingredients we already have in our DNA; those recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.”

The firm “works with individuals to discover their talents so they can intentionally build on those talents to create strengths, which in turn enhances personal productivity and improves interpersonal effectiveness.” As a consulting and training firm CoreClarity helps teams and organizations clarify internal roles, maximize group competencies and tap into their core competitive advantages. The firm offers facilitator training in the process and executive consultation.

As Gary says, “I’ve taken a lot of assessments, but this [Strengthsfinder] one takes it deeper, to a whole new level. There are 34 different talents, and when you take this assessment you get your top 5 talents from Gallup. It’s then important to know what to do with them.” And that’s where CoreClarity comes in.

CoreClarity puts the 34 Strengthsfinder talents into 4 separate categories. One in 5 individuals have talents in each of the 4 categories. The panelists reviewed Host Dennis McCuistion’s talents. A Guru– he is one who spends a great deal of time thinking and reflecting before arriving at a conclusion or decision. A Guru‘s mind does not turn off- it is always thinking.

Producer, Niki McCuistion, herself a CoreClarity facilitator is a Trail Blazer, one who combines the intellectual thinking talents with the drive to achieve something unique, like the McCuistion program she co-founded.

The CoreClarity team says, “Contrary to old-school management philosophies, individuals, teams and organizations excel by managing their strengths, not by fixing their weaknesses. Yet society is fixated on ‘fixing’ people, trying to make them well-rounded so that they fit in anywhere.”

They emphasize, “The truth is we are all gifted in different ways and trying to mold us into cookie cutter shapes is contrary to our very nature”.

Tune in to learn more about your own Strengthsfinder talents and contact Niki at Nikin@nikimccuistion.com for more information.

As always we continue talking about things that matter… with people who care.

Niki N. McCuistion
Executive Producer/Producer
Aligning Purpose, Performance and People
Corporate Culture Change Consultant and Problem Solver
(214) 394-6794
nikin@nikimccuistion.com
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