In this special Season Finale, we’re closing out Season 10 with a fun, reflective conversation inspired by a few of our favorite things. As we take a short pause from the podcast, we share some of our favorite strengths-based questions, hands-on tools, and learning approaches that actually stick. This episode is full of ideas you can use right away, whether you’re a coach, leader, or strengths enthusiast.
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p.s. - as we wrap Season 10, the podcast is taking a short pause—but we’re still here and would love to stay connected. Reach out, explore the resources we shared, and keep strengths flowing while we’re away!
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Turn existing team themes into Strengths conversations
You don’t need a brand-new initiative to apply strengths. Take whatever theme your organization is already focused on—innovation, change readiness, bravery—and ask how each person’s strengths help them show up in that area. This simple shift creates deeper, more engaging conversations.Start with the individual, not the Team Grid
Team grids can be interesting, but they’re not the magic. The real power comes from individuals knowing, owning, and intentionally using their strengths. A well-balanced grid doesn’t matter if people aren’t actually applying their talents.Less can be more when learning Strengths
Focusing on just one strength at a time helps people learn faster and apply more confidently. Exploring domains, execution, and collaboration through a single theme makes strengths development feel accessible instead of overwhelming.Engagement increases when learning is tactile
Using tools like strengths card decks adds a physical, interactive element that draws people into the conversation. When participants can touch, move, and discuss strengths together, learning goes deeper and lasts longer.
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Try a Strengths Lens QuestionTake a theme your team is already talking about and ask: How do my strengths help me with this? Start with a short reflection or discussion and notice how the conversation shifts.
Choose One Strength to Focus OnPick one theme from your Top 5 and pay attention to how it shows up at work and in life. Name it, notice it, and practice using it with intention.
Experiment with a New Strengths ToolIf you facilitate strengths conversations, try incorporating a card deck or prompt-based activity to create more engagement and deeper dialogue.
The CS Strengths Deck from StrengthsPlayground is a versatile, hands-on tool for strengths conversations, prompts, and exploration.
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Lisa: I'm Lisa.
Brea: I'm Brea.
Lisa: and we are here in our moment to close out season 10. Brea, it's a wrap.
Brea: It's a wrap, and not a delicious spinach wrap or a tomato basil wrap, but wrap like we're just gonna take a pause, take a break. Yeah.
Lisa: So as a listener, you're going to hear a pause for a minute, and we thought we could wrap up the season and do a little bit of a favorite thing style.
Brea: These are a few of my favorite things.Lisa: Oh, that is such a perfect cue up for just the things that I adore, the best things. So we can talk about the best things in the strengths world. Oh, good setup. Good melody. Brea, yay.
Let's talk. Let's do just a best question, a favorite question, a question you love in that and when I say question, it can be a prompt question, a reflection, something that gets a great conversation going on the topic of strengths. Do you want to start? Or do you want me to start?
Brea: Go for it.
Lisa: Oh, okay. I love working with a team and getting a theme, because teams always have a thing, you know, they always have an initiative or a word or something that they're trying to get everyone to think about often. It could be something simple, like, oh, everyone is talking innovation. We want to be more innovative. It's our theme for the year. Or maybe they have a big change, and it's about being, change, ready. Change ready. Change ready. And it's the thing they're hearing all over the place, or something like, you know, the team has been talking about how to be brave during some difficult situation. So it's taking any theme and then using it with a lens of strengths to have a conversation. So if you took innovation, it would be like, how do your strengths help you be innovative? How do your strengths help you feel change ready? Or, how do your strengths allow you to feel brave, like you could take any of those examples and just turn it into a Strengths question, and it is amazing how well it goes over. And it's just really simple. It's taking something that the organization or the team is already trying to do, that bang, that drum, over and over and over again, and trying to get people to think. But because the strengths lens is so different from what, where they're usually thinking, it brings it into a whole different conversation. So I love that approach.
Brea: Yes, I love it. I mean, it's really the core of strength application, right? I mean, that's what it's all about, is looking at things through your particular unique lens of strengths, and that's where your superpower lies. You know? Why don't we do it more? I know we just don't. We don't. So what a practice to to engage in?
Lisa: Yeah, nice when it's simple and easy, also, like it's really easy to come up with questions like that based on what's already relevant. So a lot of times what's simple can be a lot of mental effort, but that doesn't take much to come up with this question, these kind of questions,
Brea: I love it. I love it. Anyone can do it. And the beauty is, each individual person knows their own strengths the best if they don't have all of the knowledge that an expert would have, they still can, can ask those questions of themselves, and that exploration is really where the learning and the discovery happens. And that's the most important thing, not that you have all the right textbook answers, but that you're using your strengths and applying them with intention. So that's perfect.
Lisa: You're so right. That's so well said. That's perfect. That's what this is all about, is getting somebody to explore their own and remember that they have the superpower that they could aim at this thing, and they just hadn't been thinking about it like that. Yeah.
Brea: You know, it reminds me of a lot of times when I'm invited to do a workshop or an activity with a team. They want to do all the things, you know, they ask for the moon, and I'm like, Okay, well, maybe we start with this grain of sand. You know, it's always, always difficult to try to manage expectations, but one of the things that people want is Team grids. They want to look at the team grid. They want to see where the talents lie, where the gaps are, where they should hire to fill gaps. You know, all these well intentioned thoughts about how to apply strengths, but what people forget is that it's not the talents that show up on the team grid. It's. The squares that are filled and not filled, that gives us the most incredible data, because the talent that's shown is actually a person, and if the person that's represented on the grid is not aware of their talents, if they don't know what their talents are, and use them with intention, then it doesn't matter what the grid shows, right? Yeah, people get so hung up on what, what does our grid look like, and what do we need to do to get a well represented grid when actually the data shows and common sense tells us, start with your people. Make sure that the talent that shows up on the grid is actually being well used, that people know what their strengths are and how to use them, and that's what makes a strong team. So that's where you start. You start with the individual
Lisa: that would be an interesting activity there, looking at your grit, looking at your own and saying, if these represent my instincts and preferences in, what areas Am I not allowing those to come out in a productive way?
Brea: Yeah, I just was having a conversation with a leader yesterday. He's in a regional management position and and I asked him to focus on empathy, so he had one talent to focus on in between our meetings. That was his homework, was to just kind of pay attention. Name it, claim it, aim it when you can, but just tell me where, where did it show up for you? Where did you notice it? Where was it helpful? Where was it not helpful? And he started off immediately saying, well, it doesn't really come up at work. I think it only works in my personal relationships. And then he gave me, like, a million examples of how he saw it at home. And so, of course, you know, the coach and me circles back around and like, okay, let's talk about work. Like you said, it doesn't really show up. This is what I heard. I heard that it actually was showing up a lot. He just didn't recognize it, and there weren't opportunities for him to use it, to lead with it, to be intentional about it. So how it was showing up at work, he was either subconsciously blocking because it wasn't valued at work. So he had to kind of shut it down, you know, or there just weren't a lot of opportunities for it to really take the lead and be valuable. It was just more responsive. Like empathy is, you know, it's very receptive in nature. So that's that was kind of coming up, but he didn't really see it as useful at work. So how many times are our talents wanting to show up, wanting to be used with intention, but either we or someone else is shutting it down or blocking it out and not allowing it to contribute in the way that it can, which hopefully will add value, not only to the team or the outcome, but also just to our lives.
Lisa: Yes, I love that. I think you've also mentioned this little snippet right there about one thing. You had them focus on one thing. And I think you've told me before about an exercise where you really have done a lot of things in your work where you get people to focus on one talent theme. Can you say a little bit more about an exercise you like in a team environment
Brea: Yes. Okay, so this is something that I do. It's a little different than most people. Actually. I've never heard of someone else doing this when I'm doing workshops, when I'm doing intro workshops, especially instead of starting with the full 34 or even the top five, it's just a lot. It's a lot of information in short amount of time. It's a lot of bowling balls for people to hold, right? So I just say, look, let's pick one theme. Pick your number one. Pick you know, any of your top five that you want to focus on, and focus on that theme today and as we go through the whole workshop, or as we are in our coaching session or whatever, it's just so much easier to learn the concepts of let's take domains. For example, just because you don't have any executing themes Brea doesn't mean that you can't get things done, right? You just use your other themes to do it, like we can talk in concept, but so much easier to be like, okay, look, communication. You're number one. It's an influencing theme. How do you use your communication to execute? Boom, right? That's so much easier to understand when you're thinking through one theme throughout the day, and you get to explore it in all the different concepts of strengths learning and strengths development. So I think less is more 100% when we're learning new things, and the positive feedback that I get from clients is we loved just having one thing to focus on. Learning and doing different exercises and activities around that one theme,
Lisa: Bold move. I love also how it's clear, it's simple. And also, if they say, okay, and I have these other ones now, how do we incorporate the other? Incorporate the other ones? You have the opportunity for reinforcement and keep the relationship going, and to help them not make it the flavor of the year, the flavor of the month, thing that happened, and then they go home and forget about it.
Brea: Yeah, well, and that's the beauty, is that when you know, when we're in a workshop, everybody's choosing their own theme, but we're covering a lot of ground. We're still talking about all the things that we would talk about in an intro workshop. We're learning all the things that we would learn. We're just thinking about it through one lens, so at the end of the workshop, they can go back to their other top four and do all of the same exercises that we did at the workshop, just through their other themes, like I've given them everything they need, and they understand it because they've actually done the work through the lens of one theme. So they've put it into practice. Now they can go and apply it on their own with the other themes. No problem. You know, right?
Lisa: Yeah, you're equipping them with the tools to now have, yes, much richer conversations.
Brea: I love it. What about you? What? What's a secret sauce or a favorite thing or something that goes over really well when you're working with groups.
Lisa: So a favorite thing I have lately is using the CS strengths decks. So the for those of you who've never seen this or heard of it, Nick and call over at strengths playground.com they have these strengths decks. I buy multiples of these, and there are prompt cards, and there are talent cards. And I love these for many reasons, because you can use them in 100 ways. I mean, it is so easy to be creative with them, because you can go down blind spots. You can go down bright spots. You can do the great side of a talent. You can do the shadow side of a talent. The way that people get to have this tactile element while they're having conversation, it's just so incredible to watch what happens in the room, the way that people process them. They're pretty simple, the definitions on the cards, but because the prompts become central, and then the conversations that riff off of it, and then how they use their talents to describe I feel like it creates an environment where you have to break it up. It's one of those exercises that it almost always feels like you're stopping it early on people, because they're just so into touching the cards, having the conversation, hearing someone else, moving it around, flipping them over. And they're so into it because of the way it's engaging them. It's it's just such a great tool. Because of that, I've been loving it because I just, I love exercises where you're like, I'm going to have to break in and be the person who transitions it, versus half the group's done and half the group's not, and you're trying to play out when to move on and when to not. And this is one where they could just talk infinitely, and the cards must make it so easy for them to be in that mode, because it happens every time, no matter how I use the cards.
Brea: That's amazing, awesome. Love that. Shout out. Shout out to the guys over at strengths playground. Go check it out. We'll put the link in the show notes so you can have an easy access to go buy your own decks.
Lisa: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well, hey, as we're wrapping up the wrap up, and we want to make sure that we're on pause, but we're not paused in terms of interacting with listeners. Let's keep the conversations and or strengths learning flowing for people while we're paused.
Brea: Yes, okay, so we're wrapping season 10. We're taking a pause from the podcast, but we're not pausing our businesses. So you can find me at Brea roper.com you can find me on email Hello at Brea roper.com or the strengths hub.com you can come and join me and other coaches there. How about you, Lisa,
Lisa: I definitely say connect with me on LinkedIn, if you're not already lead through strengths.com, and then come to if you're a coach, come to tools for coaches. It's definitely a Strengths community hangout. Focus on your business kind of place. If you are a coach leading things, if you're a team leading things, then definitely stay connected on LinkedIn or go over in the top navigation of my site. I also have a link called 34 strengths, and there's so much it leads to so many pages and resources. It would be a great start to use to dig in with your team to take things further while you're. Are waiting for more free resources to come your way. Awesome.
Brea: And if you want to do business together, I would love to come to you. So I'm definitely still in the travel phase of my business. So if you need need someone to come on site do a Keynote or workshop, I would love not only to stay in touch, but to come your way. Feel free to reach out, and we can make that happen.
Lisa: I bet you could even get Brea to sing that in her version of a few of my favorite things.
Brea: These are a few of my favorite things. Like gosh, I love it so much. Maybe we might even do a little dance, you know, like sound of music. I just kind of love it. I kind of love it.
Lisa: I can tell it'd be easy to go do into that. Is that the same one with an umbrella? Okay, I'm imagining her being in Switzerland with an umbrella, is that the same musical, or is this a different one?
Brea: I'm literally going through like, every scene in my head right now, like a view finder, like, click, click, click. I don't see any umbrellas. No, that's Mary Poppins, maybe that you're thinking of, also played by Julie Andrews, the iconic Julie Andrews,
Lisa: I don't know what I'm missing. Last one I saw was the teen or Tina Turner musical and a beautiful noise with Neil Diamond
Brea: icon, icon, yeah. Okay. Sound of Music. If you love sound of music, sound of music as much as I do, please. Let's be friends. Come find me. Let's be friends.
Lisa: All right, everyone, well, we'll see you around. We adore you. Keep strengths flowing, and we'll see you until next time,
Brea: until next time. Adios.
“Remember, hard work doesn’t have to feel hard. Aligned with your strengths, it actually feels easy, energizing, and fun!”
MEET YOUR CO-HOSTS
BREA ROPER
Communication | Woo | Activator | Futuristic | Connectedness
If you need a Strengths Hype Girl, for yourself or your team, connect with Brea at brearoper.com. She’s ready to deliver an inspirational keynote, empowering training, or transformational workshop. If you’re looking for an expert guide to support your internal Strengths efforts, reach out today!
LISA CUMMINGS
Strategic | Maximizer | Positivity | Individualization | Woo
To work with Lisa, check out her resources for independent coaches, trainers, and speakers. Get business tools and strategy support with her Tools for Coaches membership.
The Fine Print: This podcast is not sanctioned or endorsed by Gallup in any way. Opinions, views and interpretations of CliftonStrengths© are solely the beliefs of Lisa Cummings and Brea Roper.