EA195: How to Use StrengthsFinder to Find YOUR Place in Architecture [Podcast]

How to Use StrengthsFinder to Find YOUR Place in Architecture We all have strengths and weaknesses. If we focus on finding, developing and building our strengths instead of filling in the gaps caused by our weaknesses, we’ll be more successful. This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, How to Use StrengthsFinder to Find Your Place in Architecture with Erin Poppe of Charrette Venture Group. Background Erin Poppe is Charrette Venture Group‘s leadership and strengths expert. She facilitates the development of strategies that allow teams to focus on and invest in their unique abilities. Prior to CVG, she revitalized the StrengthsFinder initiative at Kansas State University and presented on Strength Engagement at Gallup’s inaugural Clifton Strengths Summit. Origin Story Erin is the daughter of an architect who graduated from Kansas State University. Her parents were married on campus and then moved Washington where her dad started working for a small design firm called HKP Architects. Erin was always raised in the architecture world, knowing the language, purpose and value. Through her own studies unrelated to architecture, she began to talk to others about what makes people unique and how they can own their individual strengths. After graduating, she connected with Charrette Venture Group‘s Todd Reding. They quickly realized a real need for this conversation within the architecture community. Now she spends her time talking to people in the architecture world about what makes them great. What is StrengthsFinder? The StrengthsFinder assessment helps to identify areas of a person’s greatest potential for success. For a long time, the conversation has been centered around weaknesses and how to become a more well-rounded person. Instead, how much further can you go by investing your energy into something that you’re naturally good at? Doing that helps people see exponential growth in the long road. The assessment is founded in research that studies a wide variety of talent functions that assess your natural areas of greatness. In about forty-five minutes, you learn the top five ways you innately think, feel or behave. Erin’s top five strengths are: strategic, ideation, individualization, connectedness, and learner. What does that mean? It means that most of all, she’s a strategic thinker. She loves ideas, dreaming, and making connections with others who have ideas and want to take them to the next level. However, she’s not very talented in execution. Having the assessment puts this information in front of her and helps to put language to the behaviors to better communicate with those around her how she is best of value. Are all architects similarly skilled? As you can expect, industries tend to cultivate talents. So far, Charrette Venture Group has found an abundance of strategic thinkers and executers within the architecture world: they can dream up ways to innovate, and they can do it too. The gap then comes into play when they don’t excel at communicating their worth. Based on those results, Charrette Venture Group aims to encourage architects to own what they do well and adapt to fill the needs of what they don’t do well. Can your strengths change over time? Your strengths can change over time based on major life shifts like a new job,...

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