Strength-based Decision Making

By Karey Robinson

Sometimes it’s better to start from the inside and work your way out. Many illustrations I use to talk about talents come from my 6 years working at Starbucks as a barista and later as a regional barista trainer. When we looked at the inside view of my Top 5 talents, Bert and I understood why that job was such an energizing time for me. It fulfilled and energized beyond the hours, pay and benefits.

Then a friend recruited me to work as a bank teller with her. While I enjoyed certain aspects of the teller role, I often went home drained and uninspired. It was clear I wasn’t working from all 5 of my top talents, especially my top talent, Developer. Halfway through that year, Bert found himself stretched by the amount of administrative work needed for Inpowering People’s growing business. I began taking PTO from the bank to travel with him and help as we began discussing what it might look like for me to come to work for him full time.

We began to talk through not just the external pros and cons of schedule, salary and benefits, but took a deep dive into how leaving the bank to work with Inpowering People might work for, or against my talents as well as my CoreDrill:

Developer: I had almost no opportunities to mentor or train at the bank, but coaching and teaching the CoreClarity concepts through Inpowering People would allow me to use that talent continuously.

Empathy: Cranky customers weren’t new to me, but I couldn’t solve people’s problems of an overdrawn bank account as easily as I could re-make a poorly crafted cappuccino. I knew I’d experience joy seeing people’s faces light up as they experienced the life-giving concepts of working from Strengths. However, Bert and I needed to consider and make plans for the possibility of his Command talent overwhelming my Empathy talent as my “boss.”

Input and Intellection: I was excited to learn more about CoreClarity and about other ways to help people grow like Emotional Intelligence, where my opportunities to learn new and interesting things at the bank were limited. My Intellection worked overtime as I tried to sleep at night worrying about an unbalanced cash drawer or an unpleasant interaction with a customer.

Relator: I longed to spend more time going deeper in relationships instead of the 30 second interactions with customers at the desk.

My Passionato CoreDrill was ready to dive into the mission statement of Inpowering People, but we knew that my lack of Energize talents might be a challenge as I would need to structure my administrative work without anyone creating my schedule for me.

As you can see, there were so many energizing possibilities as well as potential challenges as I worked through the options, but the conclusion was clear that joining Bert in his work was the right decision. Knowing ahead of time the issues we might encounter gave us the opportunity to take proactive steps to mitigate and plan for those possibilities.

Consider a decision you need to make or have made recently. What were the criteria you considered? Was it salary? Location? More of the common considerations one puts on their Pro/Con List? Reach out to Karey for the Personal Decision Matrix and see how you might look at your next decision in a new light and experience the joy, like me, of working out of all 5 of your Top 5 talents.