Each month we’ll be highlighting one of the 34 Clifton Strengths themes. We hope that by gaining a better understanding your team member’s strengths, as well as your own, your RSO can thrive! This month’s highlighted theme is: Communication
People with the Communication strength like to explain, to describe, to host, to speak in public, and to write. This is their Communication theme at work.
Ideas are a dry beginning. Events are static. They feel a need to bring them to life, to energize them, to make them exciting and vivid. And so Communicators turn events into stories and practice telling them. They take the dry idea and enliven it with images and examples and metaphors. They believe that most people have a very short attention span. People are bombarded by information, but very little of it survives. People with the Communication strength want their information -- whether an idea, an event, a product's features and benefits, a discovery, or a lesson -- to survive. They want to divert your attention toward them and then capture it, lock it in.
This is what drives their hunt for the perfect phrase. This is what draws them toward dramatic words and powerful word combinations. This is why people like to listen to them. Their word pictures pique our interest, sharpen our world, and inspire us to act.
Tips For Advising Someone Who Leads Through The Communication Talent:
•Ask this person to learn the stories of interesting events in your organization. Then give them the opportunity to tell those stories to their colleagues. They will help bring your culture to life and thereby strengthen it.
•Ask this person to help some of the specialist in your organization make more engaging presentations.
•Public speaking could be this person’s strong suit. Help them gain the skills they need to perfect their public speaking skills.