The Power of Positive Psychology in Leadership: Embracing Your Strengths with Dana Williams

Welcome back to Innovators Unleashed, where we try bring you thought-provoking conversations with inspiring leaders and change-makers. In this episode, I had the privilege of sitting down with the remarkable Dana Williams, a visionary in the realm of leadership and management. Join us as we dive into the power of Clifton strengths and how embracing them can unlock leadership potential and personal growth.

Clinton Henry: So, Dana, I'm thrilled that you're here for a multitude of reasons. I have a personal fondness for Clifton strengths that it's a passion that spans almost a decade. I would love to hear how you came upon Clifton strengths and why you think knowing your strengths is important in order to function as an effective leader and employee in an organization.

Dana Williams: Yeah. Thank you. Clinton And thank you for having me as a guest on your show today. My journey started in 2012 when I had been over 25 years in marketing and leadership at Southwest Airlines had been in different roles of the company, but mostly marketing. And we were trying to find a really good tool. I think we had a leadership meeting coming up and we were trying to find some, what we were going to do. And one of my girlfriends brought at the time it was called StrengthsFinder, now they call it Clifton strengths. And she brought the assessment in and we all took it and really kind of liked it and started kind of playing around with it and using it within the department and then went to our HR department and said, Hey, can we do this? And they're like, No, not right now. You know, we're doing Myers-Briggs, but you can do it. So we started doing our own thing with it and worked with Gallup, whose Gallup owns Clifton strengths and I just saw massive change in my personal life.

I saw it at work that once people find their unique talents, all of a sudden they're feeling valued. They can tie who they are to their work. So they all of a sudden meaningful work, which we know is important, was happening. And then the big thing that I like to talk about is it's really about managing your energy and not your time. And so as a leader, you're dealing with so many things. And when you're in your strengths every day you're energized. So I just came off a session where we were training and people were recognizing their coworkers that were opposite of them. And they said, This is so great that you have these talents I don't have and I don't have to use them every day. And so it was like this sparks going off in the room when people were aware. So I said to myself, This is going to be what I do for my next chapter of my career. And started coaching on the side and then launched my business in 2020. So here we are. Yeah.

Clinton Henry: That's wonderful. So can you talk a little bit about. I think historically we all are like, Hey, where's my blind spots? What are my weaknesses? What's the mind shift around positive psychology and focusing on your strengths? And why is that important?

Dana Williams: Yeah. Think when Dr. Clifton created this in the 50s, he said, What if we study what's right with people instead of what's wrong with people? So you probably know this. Clinton I did this. I always had a list of everything I was good at and everything I needed to work on and the list of everything I needed to work on was much longer, right? It wasn't until I found my Clifton strengths that said, I don't need to focus on that area. I need to focus here on my strengths because those are the areas I can instantly grow. Whereas your weaker areas are you can't improve them much, just a little bit. But your top ten strengths, you've got all kinds of opportunity to improve those. But what's interesting when you mentioned blind spots is you can go we call it a balcony and a basement or a help and a hindrance. Even your top strengths, you could go in the basement or it could be a hindrance to you. It could be if you overuse it too much or. I have ideation. So I can't just pop in a room and start throwing out ideas. I have to process them, write them down, process, use emotional intelligence, and then bring it out. So, it could go in the basement if I didn't manage it, if I didn't turn it down like a knob on the stove. So that could be a blind spot for me.

Clinton Henry: Yeah, don't worry. I have competition is my number one, so. [Oh, okay]. Yeah.

Dana Williams: Yeah. Tell us your top five. I want to hear.

Clinton Henry: My five: competition. Strategic, maximizer, analytical and futuristic. So.

Dana Williams: Yeah, I think those are great. So, a lot of thinking talents you have. So you do by thinking whereas people that have high executing talents do by doing but you're actually doing, you're just thinking about it. Does that ever come in your mind when you're thinking, Oh, these people are doing all this stuff and I'm just thinking about things?

Clinton Henry: Oh yeah, absolutely. I try. I try to tell my wife that all the time. Hey, I'm doing a lot of work up here, you know?

Dana Williams: Yeah, yeah. And making sure you have that time to do it every day, which I love. And the strategic what you have. I have that one also. And that one can quickly spot the patterns in anything and move plan A, plan B, plan C, but a blind spot for that one is that we're moving so fast we need to let our followers know here's what we're doing and here's why? Because this plan is going to be quicker, but they can't see the patterns if they don't have strategic. But we can. So it's helping bring people along with you when you're making those mid-course corrections.

Clinton Henry: So, what you're doing now is something that I encourage everybody to try. So, first off, do the Clifton strengths survey, but have your team do it because it allows you to have much more effective coaching conversations with them. Because once they realize what their strengths are and you know what they are, you can first off, give them activities that lean on their strengths and leverage their strengths too when you're creating small tiger teams, you can create a balanced team with a lot of different strengths as opposed to people that, you know, are kind of heavily concentrated in a couple areas. And [] that lets you sort of take a step back and have a common language and vernacular when you're talking about addressing issues or improving or or tweaking things.

Dana Williams: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think one of the things I see as I go out into corporate America right now and work with a lot of different corporate teams is they might have done strings down the road, but they just put it in the drawer. And I'm a big believer, this you got to be in this daily. You can't just, oh, here's my shrinks. And the reason I like Gallup is because it is science based. And so all the research, like you're 1 in 34,000,000 that have your strengths in this order. So when you find out how unique you are and you can be that every day, there's a freedom there. And there's a freedom, as you're talking about with teams to help get the right teams, people in the team to help each other.

Clinton Henry: So, when you work with your clients and either a corporate level or on a 1 to 1 basis, I know you do individual coaching. I know that you've taken the Clifton strengths, but you've actually done a lot more innovation around that. Can you talk a little bit about what your approach is?

Dana Williams: I think that typical thing you might see is somebody at the company decides they're going to do Clifton strengths. You said you got to do it in your company of 200. They might hire somebody to come in and do like a Strengths 101. But then it kind of stops there. I'm like, no with a group today I had it was 30 in that group and I see them at least in a year program to help become a strengths based organization. So first, always first start with the leaders. So if you're a leader and listening to this, it's really about not only you learning the basics of strings, but then you going on and as a leader and learning boss to coach, learning how you can lead with strengths, how you lead yourself, and then how you can lead their team. And then we have team dynamics where each person gets in team section with their team specifically and works through because their strengths grid is going to show up differently depending on what that team is right then the bigger organization. So all that's kind of going on at the same time. But then I'm a big believer in you've got to work on your strengths daily because you want to be able to improve them, right? And so you can improve them infinitely, as I said.

And so I created the Strengths Journal, which is a daily companion guide to the Clifton strengths assessment. And right before this call, it was so exciting. I got a voice text from a client. She's a Co-coach and she had just started using this. She goes, Oh my gosh. She goes, I have bills I needed to send to clients. Invoices and I hadn't done it. And I started using your journal. She kept saying, I don't have discipline. It's number 34. But because in the Journal we ask you to figure out what is your goal of the day and why, and then what are the three big things you're going to do that day and what are the strengths you're going to use to help you get them done? Well, she was using one of her other talents that was in one of her influencing talents to help motivate herself to get it done. But once she understood her why, she made it happen. So, those kind of stories I love for when people can help manage their day because you're either designing your day or somebody else's designing it. [Yes]. So why not design it around your strengths? Because it's about managing your energy and not your time. So that's why I created it. And we've been getting it out now to thousands of people and helping them live daily that way.

Clinton Henry: And you gave one example there. I know this has been out for a while, so what sort of overall feedback have you gotten? You know, you gave that specific example, but like, let's say I adopted, I've done the Clifton strengths survey. I know what my strengths are. And I start leveraging the Journal. What sort of impact will it have on me and how there are different ways to use it?

Dana Williams: Yes. So I actually have a online course that will go with this. But just bottom line is people they don't get to just get in there and write their strengths When they get the book, they need to write their mission statement. What is their one liner? What do they stand for? And as a leader in the marketplace, you should have a one liner that's on your LinkedIn, that is your personal leadership brand. When you're going out there, what is that? And then identifying their core values, because underneath all of this are your values. And then once you identify those core values and put those in the book, this is all at the beginning. Then you start seeing how they align with your strengths. So, let's use you for example, you've got maximizer that's taking things good to great. What would be a core value that you think you have that would probably I would say, just tell me a few of your core values. For example, I'll give you some of mine if you [] don't have one that pops up. Do you have one that's popping up?

Clinton Henry: I have a couple, but I'd love to hear some of yours.

Dana Williams: Okay, so for me, I have futuristic, so I'm an innovator. So I like innovation. I like pioneering. That's one of my core values. I want to innovate. So that's why I created this, right? So, tell me yours. Tell me one of your core values.

Clinton Henry: Well, so I have, like you said, I have maximizer. So I'm always looking to find excellence when things are just good. And that's something that motivates me. And it plays nicely with competitive and so I am with competition and the strategic those are kind of all in the same area. Like you said, I spend a lot of time ahead but trying to. Typically I can't build something from the ground up, but if I'm dropped into something that's operating inefficiently or it's doing fine, I'll come in and I can fix it in a way that maybe someone who, like has been in a while just can't. And so I've always seen that. But yeah, seeking excellence is a big thing for me.

Dana Williams: Yeah. And that is when you know that you've got excellence and you look and you match it up, it matches with your maximizer because maximizer is taking things from good to great, then it knows I've got to bring excellence into this. I'm going to bring excellence. So when you start identifying your values, you've got your mission, your values, and then your futuristic is going to love this because then we have you develop your goals. You know, three years out. Where do you want to be in three years? And then we break it down, reverse engineer it. What does one year look like for now. If you're going to be there? What is six months look like from now? And then what are your 90 day goals? So that's just the beginning of the journal. And then every day you're writing in, you know, what is my desired outcome for today and why? And then three action [items], the strengths. And sometimes I use 2 or 3 strings to get things done. And then what are you grateful for? Because we get energy when we're. And especially right now in the culture we're in, there's so much divisiveness and so much negativity. So taking a moment to be grateful for the now what's happening right now and then you probably would appreciate this one with your strategic talents. But the end of the day, what did I learn today or fear I conquered today? Just when we're being curious, we can't be fearful.

So how can we step out in that fear and grow and make something happen? So you're documenting that. And then at the end of the week, I actually have you evaluate yourself, like instead of waiting till the end of the year or the end of the month, every week you're saying I was energized last week when and you'll see your talents come up the blind spots I need to navigate. We just talked about some blind spots that could happen. What is your intention for next week? And then what are you going to conquer that you have not. Either has been a fear or something that you haven't achieved towards your weekly, monthly, yearly goal. And so it really helps you stay on track. The thing I'm most excited about, too, that I put in here two years ago before we even. Actually I created this in 2018 and we launched it in 2020, was the fact that you get to do your well-being every week, and well-being is huge right now. We're in a mental health pandemic right now. And so if you can evaluate, you know, the five areas of well-being every week here is so easy, you just rate yourself 1 to 5. How am I doing? And the five areas are purpose, your career, like what you do every day, your social, how are your relationships, your financial. You have enough for what you need your physical. It's not only working out, but what are you putting in your body and then your community. Are you engaged in your community? Are you safe where you live? And you see that and then you can apply your strengths to it? Oh, my physical was a three last week. I only worked out once instead of three times. What am I going to do next week to better that? So it helps you kind of stay on top of that.

Clinton Henry: So, you know, when people are starting a business they put together a business mission statement and they talk about their values, what the goals of the business are, what's going to differentiate them in the market and their plans and their goals one, three, five years. And we so rarely do that for ourselves. [Right] And this, I think, is a lovely way of treating yourself like you would treat a company, managing yourself, doing check ins, you know, getting good data and creating a feedback loop so you can continue to improve. And, you know, as you as strive towards those ultimate long term goals. So have you seen people when they get this say, oh, I do this for everything else, I should be doing this for myself.

Dana Williams: Yeah, it's amazing. I have a group with some other guys that we started called the Coaching Exchange, and it's for new coaches or people in corporate that are coaching and they're thinking they want to go on their own. And we have several coaches in there that have been coaching 15, 20 years. They just need a boost. Nine out of ten of them haven't spent time on their personal brand and they haven't spent time on their mission. Some of them haven't spent much time on their website because they're just getting corporate clients and they don't really need to. That all the sudden they're realizing that if they don't develop their personal leadership brand, whether they're in a corporate or on their own, then everything else is a commodity. So how do you show up as you every day and be uniquely you? And this really helps because we start with the strengths and the core values as the basis. And because of my marketing background, I'm big on, well, who is Clinton and what does he stand for and what is his one liner and how do we make sure everything he does is around that? How does he do that? Is it helps you with your no's when you have to say no to something or when you get to say yes.

Clinton Henry: Yeah, absolutely.

Dana Williams: So many opportunities. Yeah. So.

Clinton Henry: Well, Dana, I'm thrilled that I got a chance to talk to you about this, that I got to see many like minded who loves Clifton strengths or as we knew as StrengthsFinder previously and who has, I think, innovated in a way that was desperately needed in the market because people will do that and they don't know. They'll get this data of like, Oh, these are my strengths, but they don't take any action items beyond that. And this gives you an actionable approach to live your life and going to define who you are and work towards your ultimate goal. So I'm grateful one for your time, but two that you put this together for everyone. Thank you so much.

Dana Williams: I kind of did it for myself because I was like, wait, I need some frameworks, I need something to put this in or else I'm not going to be energized every day. And like the call I got today, she said, I am so energized because I'm using this now and if I can get those, you know, I don't get to hear from everybody. But when I do, it's exciting to hear that.

Clinton Henry: Well, that's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dana. I really appreciate the time.

Dana Williams: Thank you. Thank you for having me.