Now What? Strengths as Strategy

By Pearson, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Students, Director of CORE + Military Connection Center, Student and Campus Life, Old Dominion University, Cohort 6 AACRAO ASCEND Scholar

The first time I took the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment, I was concluding my third semester of my master’s degree program. My supervisor recommended it—she clocked the Achiever in me from the moment we met. That was in 2014, and it was the first time I can recall feeling confident in articulating what I brought to the table.

Although I had served in countless leadership positions, if someone had asked me what I was good at, the best answer I could have given was that I could get stuff done. I didn’t yet have the language to describe myself with precision.

Even after taking the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment in 2014—and again in 2015 after a semester in my first full-time role—participating in multiple brief team strengths coaching sessions, and seeing my strengths mapped within various team grids, I still found myself wondering: What am I supposed to do with this next?

For a long time, the assessment helped me name my strengths, but it did not immediately teach me how to fully apply them. The real work came later—learning how to become a careful observer of myself, studying my strengths in action, and developing deeper self-awareness—and then learning how to intentionally leverage those strengths to shape the way I lead, collaborate, and create environments where others can thrive.

One of the AACRAO ASCEND Leadership Development Program learning objectives is to leverage personal strengths for leadership excellence and I am grateful for the opportunity to get to know myself as well as I know SEM.

It is no surprise to me with the Relator theme, I sometimes I feel like I know more about my immediate family, my partner, and my close colleagues than I do about myself. However, through the ASCEND Program, executive coaching, and consultation with Dr. Mylene (Culbreath) Clark, I have developed a deeper understanding of how to use my strengths to continue discovering who I am becoming and intentionally cultivating who I want to be.

Strengths As Professional Development

While seeing my strengths mapped within various team grids has been insightful in helping me collaborate with my divisional colleagues and delegate to my team in alignment with their strengths, often the office retreat professional development is focused on how our strengths work together—which is important team development! But using my strengths as professional development meant shifting my focus to myself (for a moment). Sadly, I have not had a professional performance evaluation since 2020 (that’s a story for another day), so it has been challenging to identify what I am doing well and where are my areas for improvement.

So using my strengths as professional development has been my opportunity to get both curious and critical of myself. Through conversations with my coach, we have discussed this from a Peter Druker perspective—oversimplified, it is a perspective to lean into your strengths and spend your time, effort, and focus here rather than your weaknesses. This perspective aligns with the concept of combining your talent themes with effort and time to develop your strengths.

Whether revisiting consultation scenarios or reflecting on the difference between your reactions and responses through the lens of your talent themes, this exploration can illuminate when your strengths operate as powerful assets—and when they may unintentionally be experienced as threats by others.

Strengths To Reimagine Your Resume

I don’t have a strong opinion about highlighting your CliftonStrengths on your resume, but I recently explored updating my resume with my coach and one piece of feedback that I appreciated the most was that my resume read like a to-do list of my day to day tasks—not my best way to highlight my Achiever theme.

Do I have a daily, weekly, monthly, and semester to-list? Absolutely!

If I accomplish something that was not on my initial to-do list, do I add it to the list and then enjoy the gratification of striking through it? Nothing gives me more satisfaction!

Does my daily to-do list need to be articulated on my resume? No.

Using my Gallup CliftonStrengths talent themes helped me develop a career profile that not only integrates how my strengths drive execution across the various areas within my portfolio, but also how my strengths align with the core concepts of Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM).

Using Your Strengths To Navigate Complex University Change

My institution, as are many institutions, is experiencing a profound amount of change (good, influential, and inspiring change, but still considerable change) —and even more recently, a significant tragedy. Being surrounded by transformation and now trauma has, at times, left me with an overwhelming sense of insufficiency.

As we collectively read The Abundant University and explored the scarcity of raw talent (incoming learners and the enrollment cliff) and the creation of abundant instruction and abundant credentials through technological transformation, it has felt challenging not to see myself as significant in the shift and implementation of the abundant support and services that not only will our learners need, but also that our administrative professionals will need.

Change and tragedy can reveal a different kind of institutional prioritization that can feel like scarcity, but when you can devote time and effort to your talents to develop into strengths, you gain the confidence to use your strengths to navigate this complexity. You can find abundance in leading from where you are and with the strengths you have cultivated—spend your time, effort, and focus here.

Using your strengths to navigate complex institutional change helps sustain confidence in your contributions and fosters a sense of abundance in your work. Leverage your strengths by remaining focused on the priority and reminding yourself that we must learn to rise and accept that “just because we didn’t measure up to some standard of achievement doesn’t mean that we don’t possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. And just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn’t change it’s worth or ours” (Brown, 2018). Use your strengths to do what our senior leaders may not know needs to be done or do not have the capacity, strengths and/or desire to focus on. Our leaders and our colleagues need your contributions and the strength of your impact is immeasurable.

A Complex Compilation for Professional Development

Your strengths can be about more than just confidence in articulating what you bring to the table and being able to describe yourself with precision. They are a complex compilation that can be a good soil for whatever you are trying to harvest—professional development, building your resume, navigating complex university change—or investing in your team development, navigating your relationship with your partner, and expanding your campus partnerships. How will you spend your scarce time, effort, and focus?

Notes

References:

• Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead. Vermilion.

Author’s Top Talent Themes:

• 2015: Strategic, Achiever, Relator, Adaptability, Connectedness

• 2016: Deliberative, Strategic, Achiever, Input, Learner

• 2025: Relator, Achiever, Learner, Significance, Strategic