Episode 189: Podcast Brief 3 - Ideation & Adaptability Gain Momentum

StrengthFinder Results Can Bring Clarity to Your Communication Patterns of Friction

Podcast brief 3 – Ideation / Adaptability

Podcast cover art with image and quote from Sarah Elkins

This week’s episode of Your Stories Don’t Define You is part 3 of a series I’m exploring to clarify how StrengthsFinder results can provide clarity around your life's patterns.

Two weeks ago I shared what it’s like to have Command in your top talents using the StrengthsFinder assessment, and last week I shared stories about my top two talents, Strategic & Activator: how they used to look to me, what they look like now in my life, and some of the strategies I use so they work for me instead of against me.

As a Gallup certified StrengthsFinder coach, I’ve taken opportunities to work with other coaches for two reasons, one is that I believe in this stuff, the idea that when we understand our own way of thinking, our natural, instinctive talents, and when we understand where we might be getting in our own way, we find more satisfaction in our lives. Another reason is that to be a coach and to have a coach demonstrates my belief that this works, that working with a good coach adds value. I know that the more I know about my own talents and blind spots, the more effective I can be for my clients.

Image of a hamster running in a wheel.

In this week’s episode I’ll round out a description of my top five talents with Ideation and Adaptability. Ideation being the one that I imagine as a hamster on a wheel in my head, constantly running, coming up with ideas about what I’ll do next, ideas to solve problems, sometimes completely random ideas about why things happen the way they do, how things work (usually unrelated to anything that actually matters in my life), and how to express concepts so they’re sticky and/or persuasive.

Adaptability is the talent that allows me to switch gears easily, and that makes me a good person to be around when a project goes sideways.

My top five talents combined; Strategic, Activator, Ideation, Command, and Adaptability are what make me great at what I do, they’re also the things that get me into trouble when I’m not using them with intention. When I look back at the experiences of significant friction in my life, I now know part of why they happened, how I contributed to my own struggles, and maybe ways I could have done things a little differently.

It doesn’t help, necessarily, to think about the “what ifs” directly, I like to think of it more as identifying patterns so I can make changes in my responses & reactions when similar situations appear, which happens a lot.

When I was 18 and struggling in a job, I told my mother I was thinking of quitting.

“Sarah, if you quit now, this same scenario will come up over and over again until you learn the lesson you’re supposed to learn from it. It’ll be different people, but a very similar struggle.”

I stayed, and yes, I did learn a lot from the experience. I was proud of myself for sticking it out, I felt strong, resilient, and ready for the next challenge.

Though I learned a lot about myself and the world around me in that job, it took another 20 years to truly uncover the pattern that began to emerge that year. That’s the beauty of self-reflection: When you uncover negative patterns from your past, you can begin to change them for your future.

Prior to about 2015, if you changed jobs more than twice in a 5 year period, you were considered a “job hopper”, which made hiring managers pretty uncomfortable when they looked at your resume. In the 2020s, between the lack of consistency in industries and the gig economy making waves, we’re seeing a much needed change in that way of thinking. Maybe I was just ahead of my time…

It wasn’t until I saw my results in the StrengthsFinder assessment, with Adaptability in large, bold font on the report, that I understood my self-created label of being a “2 to 3 year employee.”

When a job lasted longer than that, I can see in my rearview that the job shifted often enough to keep me moving, motivated, and interested. For instance, when I worked as a software consultant, implementing large-scale HR programs, the longest contract I was on lasted 14 months, and then my company would move me onto a new client project.

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Many years later I was a compliance officer for a Federal grant - and I don’t even like rules. Looking back, I know why I applied for the job – to get more financial skills to round out my business experiences after completing my MBA – but I have no idea why they hired me or why I accepted the position.

The first few weeks were spent reading the rules related to the grant, reporting requirements, and everything I could get my hands on to make sure I understood all the strings attached to the 2+ million dollars that would be moving through our project.

The next few weeks were spent with that hamster in my head that I mentioned, constantly coming up with ideas about how to collect the required data from our 44 sub-grantees, how to manage our budget, and how to make sure our sub-grantees understood their role in compliance.

Using Microsoft Access, I created a robust database for data collection and budget management. I created easy to use forms to enter data, using drop down boxes, radio buttons, and select fields as much as possible to limit typos and errors in formatting.

Looking back, I can easily see how my top strengths made me successful in that position, despite being in a job that wasn’t a great fit, and with a boss with significantly different motivation and perspectives on work and management.

When I look back now, I realize I knew two things when I started, even though I didn’t think intentionally about them at the time:

1)    To ensure compliance from our sub-grantees, I needed to have strong, positive relationships with them. They must WANT to be compliant, rather than HAVE TO be compliant to make this work smoothly and get the most positive impact out of the investments we were making.

2)    I needed structures and processes that made sense in collecting data, managing the budget, and creating required, accurate reports, because I knew myself well enough to know that once I got into maintenance mode, I was unlikely to be as good at managing details.

I mentioned the boss & I had some friction… This is what happens when your strengths are significantly different from others in your team, and communication styles aren’t addressed early in the relationships.

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My mouse hovered over the send button.

The email message was pointed—direct—and I felt strongly that these words needed to be shared with my boss and a director of the agency. But I hesitated as my mouse hovered.

I had felt lethargic throughout the weekend. From the time I left the office on Friday evening until Tuesday morning, I couldn’t shake this lack of motivation. A few minutes after I sat down at my desk on that Tuesday morning, I looked up at my calendar, and the lightbulb in my head went on. Monday had been my two-year anniversary at that job.

When I left my previous position, I made a “deal-breaker” list. It was basically my top priorities for my next job. A micromanaging, cruel boss was at the top of my list of deal breakers. Next was my workspace. An internal cubical, small and without windows, was also a deal breaker. There were a few others, but those were the big ones.

As I walked into the building for my third interview, and was shown to what would be my third-floor office with huge windows and a fantastic view, I knew this would be mine. And here I was, exactly two years later, feeling lethargic and sad despite this phenomenal view from my desk.

I shifted the mouse pointer away from the send button and reread the message.

A memory from my previous position floated to the front of my brain.

My mouse pointer had hovered dangerously over the send button two+ years prior at my previous job. I absolutely knew this message was likely to create drama with my boss. I rationalized hitting the send button: “It’s a reasonable thing to forward. I’m not doing anything wrong.”

I totally underestimated the drama, and seconds after I hit the button, my boss was next to my desk, her voice rising in pitch and volume.

I blushed, angry at the overreaction and embarrassed at the attention she was drawing to our cubicle, as I tried to explain why I sent the email. Nothing I said made a difference, and she stomped away from me, furious.

A few minutes later, as I was walking around the building to get some fresh air and perspective, it dawned on me. I totally earned that embarrassment. I poked the bear. I knew I was going to poke the bear. I knew I was antagonizing her when I hit the send button on that message. No matter how rational and reasonable the content of that message, I knew I was stirring up trouble and I did it anyway.

Why?

At that point in my job, I was in maintenance mode. I had set up systems to manage reporting and compliance, and most of my days were spent reviewing spreadsheets and building reports based on the data I was collecting. It was relatively quiet for our team that week, and I was probably bored, so I sabotaged myself.

Fast-forward two years later as my mouse pointer hovered over the send button, my memory of the other experience vivid and ready to be applied. I stopped myself. I reflected. I was bored, and I was about to sabotage myself . . . again.

I realized that if I was bored, it was up to me to find a more constructive way to address it. In that job, I had a lot of autonomy and freedom to work on projects, so I took some time to think about what I wanted to learn more about, what projects would truly benefit the organization and our community, and those I could persuade my boss and other leaders in the organization to support and implement. Making a list and starting to carefully word my next proposal, I saved that email message for another time, and as a reminder to avoid sabotaging myself again.

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Now that you know how my Strategic, Activator, Ideation, Command, and Adaptability show up, you could probably pinpoint exactly where they served me well, and where they didn’t in my past.

Without being conscious of my top talents, I can be very good at what I do, but there will always be a limit to my growth. Not only because I’m not practicing with intention to grow my use of those talents, but because I would be unaware of the ways my talents are creating unnecessary obstacles and struggles.

The only way we grow as humans, the only way we can truly find satisfaction in our relationships, is to be self-reflective. This is not the same as being hyper critical of ourselves!

Being self-reflective means understanding our role in every situation, in every relationship. What am I doing to move this conversation in a positive direction? What was my role in the conflict with my coworker? What natural talents am I using in ways that are positive, and where am I getting in my own way?

Please send me a message if you enjoyed this series of podcast briefs! If they were useful to listeners, I’ll do another series in the future.

Next week’s episode of the Your Stories Don’t Define You podcast features Terre Roche, vocalist and guitar player famous for her performances with her sister and their band The Roches! Hearing her stories of touring across the country at 17 years old, her love for music, and her accidental career will inspire you to look at your life in a different way. Don’t miss it!

ABOUT SARAH:

Elkins Consulting logo with image of Sarah and her dog.

"Uncovering the right stories for the right audiences so executives, leaders, public speakers, and job seekers can clearly and actively demonstrate their character, values, and vision."

In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.

My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.

The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!

Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.

Episode 101: Impulsive But Not Stupid

Stories We Tell Have an Impact On Our Perceptions of Ourselves

“Just to make sure I understand this: If I sign the lease before the other two women in the house, I have the option of bringing a small pet. If I don’t choose to have one, I still have one of only two leases with that clause, which means if I don’t bring a small pet, that will be one fewer pet in the house. Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Excellent. How much is the deposit again?”

It was the end of the spring semester and I was signing a lease to share a four bedroom house with three other women starting fall semester at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. A few minutes later, I was on my way home to my parent’s house in Colorado Springs to spend the summer working and saving money for the next school year.

It was a fun summer working in a fancy restaurant, mostly lunch service, with a ridiculously fun crew, and the weeks flew by quickly. Just a few days before I was scheduled to move into the house in Fort Collins, I got a phone call from the landlord.

Her father bought the big house for her to live in and manage for the time she was going to be in school. As a student in the pre-veterinary program, they knew she’d be spending at least 4-6 years there and made a very wise investment by buying a house for her instead of renting. If I have any regrets in life, it’s not finding a way to buy a small house there while I was in school. Just a few years later, Fort Collins became a bedroom community for the Denver area, and still retains its lovely, small-town feel, and the property values have sky-rocketed there.

I answered her call to hear an abrupt, challenging tone:

“I’ve decided you can’t have a small pet in the house after all.”

“But that was in the lease I signed, Jessica.”

“I know, but I changed my mind.”

“Um… that’s not legal. Besides, what changed your mind?”

“I was only going to bring one of my cats from home in Albuquerque but I decided I want to bring both, and my dad said we couldn’t have more than two cats in the house.”

I’m not normally unreasonable, and I certainly wasn’t a particularly spiteful 20 year old, but her challenging, abrupt, aggressive tone really put me off. If she had just explained the situation and apologized for trying to change a legal document, I’m sure I would have been fine with it. But she wasn’t. And I was, well, 20, and pretty impulsive.

“What if I already got a kitten?”

“Can you take it back?” Again in a challenging and aggressive tone.

“What? Take it BACK? Are you serious? No! I can’t just TAKE IT BACK.”

“Okay then. We’ll just have to hide him when my dad comes to visit.”

Seconds after hanging up the phone I grabbed the newspaper off the kitchen table and combed the classifieds for free kittens. Two hours later I was driving home with my sister, with a kitten on my lap in my ’74 gold VW Super Beetle, stopping to pick up a cat box, cat litter, cat food, and a couple of toys for a kitten I couldn’t afford, didn’t really want, and hadn’t considered naming yet.

I can’t even imagine what my parents were thinking when I brought that kitten home. We were a dog family, through & through, and hadn’t had a cat since I was five years old. I didn’t even like cats.

But Clawed became an important part of my life, the only stable, reliable thing I experienced for at least six years, until I met my husband. He was all the things a cat can be: Mischievous, snuggly (on his terms), playful, and loving. And he was mine, completely mine. He tolerated other people, but I was HIS. I loved that cat for 9 years through multiple moves, the final one from Washington DC to Montana, where he died just a few months later. He brought me comfort in times of uncertainty, and gave me memories that have become legendary stories in my family. He was a beautiful accident to come out of a spiteful, impulsive decision.

I’ve been describing myself as impulsive for as long as I can remember, and most people who know me well would agree. And while I can be impulsive sometimes, I realize now when I look back, that most of the time my behavior was not as spontaneous as it appeared at the time. 

It wasn’t until I started getting deeply into my StrengthsFinder results that I saw myself and those quick decisions as less impulsive and more strategic. As I mentioned in an earlier episode, my top strengths are Strategic and Activator, and it took me at least four months to see where strategic showed up in my daily life.

That’s one of the cool things about that particular assessment: It opens your eyes to the possibility that something you considered a weakness before can be shifted to be seen from a different perspective, even as a strength.

Summit looking south east, Mt. Helena, Helena, Montana

In that earlier episode, I mentioned that my strategic shows up in my hamster-brain thinking process as I’m getting ready to do something. The example I used was that in the seconds it took me to bundle up for a hike on the mountain behind my house, I had a plan for the route I would take that day, complete with an explanation for every part of my plan: I’d take a steep trail up to get my heart rate up and warm my core, I’d take the two-block route to the trail that would allow for the dog to poop where it could easily be picked up and disposed of, and I’d be sure not to take the steep trail back because my knees were a little achy.

It was that “ah ha” moment on the mountain that I could finally see that strategic showed up a LOT in my life, like when I am in the car, and before I even click my seatbelt on, I know exactly the route I will take to run errands, and the reasons for the route.

And in the time between that discovery and today, I’ve started to see how strategic was showing up in my past, impulsive-looking decisions.

Getting Clawed was absolutely impulsive, there’s no sugar-coating that decision, when my Activator went crazy and Strategic took a back seat.

But the time (seemingly out of nowhere) I asked my husband to marry me after 8 months dating wasn’t nearly as impulsive as it seemed. And the time, two days after we moved from Washington DC to Montana, I drove our 218,000 mile Honda Accord into the Subaru dealer parking lot with a failing transmission and drove out less than two hours later in a Subaru Outback Sport. And the time I walked through an 1890 Victorian home for a few minutes, called Bob to come look at it, and made an offer at 4:00 that afternoon. And the time I talked to Neil Hughes in late October about maybe starting a podcast, and launching it on December 26, 2017 with a handful of episodes in the hopper for a weekly publication. Was I thinking long term about any of those things? Absolutely not.

22 Anniversary, Bob and Sarah at the Missouri River, 2019

And yet, here I am, married for more than 22 years (and still like him an awful lot, but that’s another story), driving our third Subaru since purchasing that first one in 1999, all from the same awesome dealership, living in a charming, “project house” for nearly 20 years with loads of extraordinary memories of raising two wonderful boys, hosting guests, parties, and music in it, and here we are at episode 101 of that crazy idea of a weekly podcast I had nearly two years ago.

So. This is what Strategic-Activator looks like in me. None of those decisions were actually impulsive in the sense that they were exclusively spontaneous. Now – to someone with Deliberative or Intellection in their top strengths (like my husband), they certainly look that way, but that’s because a) they’re not in my head with me, where a ridiculously detailed but very fast internal dialog has happened before I take a step, and b) I haven’t taken them along for that ride.

Before asking my husband to marry me, my hamster brain had spent considerable effort (but not time, necessarily) thinking about things like: I haven’t ever wanted to spend this much time with one person, especially a guy, he treats me like I matter, like I’m smart and insightful, beautiful and sexy, reliable and practical (mostly), he brings me an espresso in bed every morning we’re together, which looks a lot like “love” and “cherish” to me, he’s kind, challenges me, is crazy-smart, warm, and tolerates my crazy – and my family’s crazy, with patience and is even mildly entertained by it. Those all felt like real things to me at the time, they still do, and asking him to marry me just felt right.

Buying that first Subaru wasn’t an instant decision either. And I had seen enough houses in the area we wanted to live, that I knew the deal-breakers for me. Of course, I didn’t REALLY understand what he meant when Bob said: “You know this is a project house, right?” But we haven’t ever regretted those decisions, nearly 20 years later. They were both good, reasonable decisions.

And when I took on that podcast project? I knew I had the support and resources to make it work long before I recorded the first episode. So no, it wasn’t even part of my imagination to consider I’d still be doing this, 101 episodes later. But then, at 20 years old, I thought the only thing I’d ever do for more than 20 years was breathe… and have a cat for a while.

I told a story at a live storytelling event a few years ago, explaining the thought process before getting my one and only tattoo at 44 years old. It’s called I’m Impulsive, Not Stupid.

I’ve been telling myself for most of my life that I’m impulsive, maybe somewhat smart, but definitely lucky for how most of those impulsive decisions turned out well. I told myself I simply trusted my instincts. And yet, as I become more intentional with my strengths, I’m able to see those decisions from a completely different perspective. It has shifted my confidence in a big way, and as a communication coach, has offered me incredible insights into others, particularly those with similar - and opposite - strengths from mine.

Being more aware of how my strengths work has also improved my communication with my husband, family, and close friends. When I’m working through an important decision, I now take those involved for the ride on that hamster wheel in my brain, so they can hear the reasoning behind where I’m leaning in that decision. And even more important, they can see the flaws and/or beauty of the reasoning to help me make those decisions more thoughtful and reliable.

If I surrounded myself only with people who thought like me, I’d miss out on making better decisions, and on recognizing and demonstrating that I value the strengths in the people around me, which is always good for relationships.

What is one thing you’ve been saying about yourself for decades? What are the stories you share that give you and your listeners the perceptions that match that thing you’ve been saying about yourself, confirming those characteristics in a positive or negative way?

Consider where those characteristics might not be what you’ve been telling yourself all these years, and maybe, just maybe you’ll see yourself in a more true, positive light.