Leading With Strengths Launch With Gallup CEO Jon Clifton

Called to Coach Webcast Series -- Season 11, Episode 29

Below are audio and video plus a transcript of the conversation, including time stamps.

Do you want to accelerate your own development? Gallup CEO Jon Clifton has some good news for you. Leading With Strengths, an ongoing series of interviews with leaders, is now available to inspire you to take the next steps in your strengths journey. What key insights has Jon discovered as he has conducted these interviews, and how can you as a coach, leader, worker and/or student put them into practice? What is the big picture of CliftonStrengths^® globally, moving into 2024? And what potential role can AI play with CliftonStrengths in your development? Join us for a look into your strengths and your future.

[In creating Leading With Strengths,] we wanted to help accelerate people's development.

Jon Clifton, 9:07

In all the research, [we find that] if you want to break barriers, ... people need to ... see people who look like them within leadership positions.

Jon Clifton, 12:09

We need to keep thinking strategically about how [AI] can help elevate us.

Jon Clifton, 24:24

Jim Collison 0:00
I am Jim Collison, and this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on October 13, 2023.

Jim Collison 0:19
Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and independent strengths coaches share tactics, insights and strategies to help coaches maximize the talent of individuals, teams and organizations around the world. If you're listening live, and you don't see the chat room, whether they're on Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube, there's a link on our live page to it right above there. If you have questions after the fact, you can always send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or platform right there on YouTube, so you never miss an episode. Jon Clifton is my guest today. Jon is the Chief Executive Officer for Gallup and is located in our Washington, D.C., office. Jon, always great to have you on Called to Coach. Welcome back!

Jon Clifton 0:59
Thanks for having me, Jim.

From 1 Million to 31 Million

Jim Collison 1:01
Great to have you. We are here today to catch up a little bit with you. You're, you're the head of what we do, and you, you're out front on all the things that are happening. We just recently, from a strengths community standpoint, crossed over the 31 million complete mark, which, I got a Facebook message the other day -- you know how you get reminders on Facebook? -- of 15 million 7 years ago. So we are, it's accelerating. It's pretty crazy. But as we, Jon, as we think about 31 million, and you're, you've been traveling the world. What's that, what does that mean to you? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jon Clifton 1:35
Well, it means a lot. And also congratulations, Jim, because you've had a heavy hand in helping us and the entire strengths community reach 31 million, especially through this show that you do on a regular basis. But the reason that it's deeply personal to me is because, when Don Clifton, my grandfather, created CliftonStrengths, he had a dream that one day a million would go through CliftonStrengths. And to be honest, I know that some people thought it was kind of a joke that he would even suggest that a million will one day go through it. And I know it's true, because I was there. But that's all changed now, and now 31 million have gone through it. So the fact that, you know, this kind of invention that he was messing with, that so many of our colleagues had spent so many years working on, has now helped the lives of 31 million people, I just, I think is a remarkable thing. And I think it's really helped make the world a better place.

CliftonStrengths Around the World, in 2024

Jim Collison 2:34
Jon, you've been traveling the world recently. I think you've shown up in Japan and Singapore; I think you were down in Australia. Do you get a sense, as you're on the ground in those communities, do you kind of get a sense of the momentum that's happening there? What are you hearing from some of those locations. Do you get a different feel of the strengths community as you're in the different, in the different locations? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jon Clifton 2:56
Well, first of all, yes. It is definitely something that I hear about everywhere. In fact, I was in Boston on Wednesday night. I had a conversation with a number of colleagues, one that watches your show -- listens to your show, excuse me, she listens to your podcast on the way to work. She is a huge strengths fan; she started doing it in 2005. In fact, she has a notebook where she writes down everybody that she's ever interacted with on their Top 5 as her own personal reference. But when I was in Tokyo, we had a forum. And there were a number of people there that talked about how transformational strengths has been to them personally, and to everyone they've coached or that they've brought in. And of course, when I was in Australia, I had the pleasure of interviewing the Deputy Chief of Fire and Rescue New South Wales. He's the one that includes his Top 5 strengths on the cover of his notebook. He's the one that bravely led the fight against the largest fire, a megafire, that the world has seen in the past 200 years. And they take strengths very seriously at Fire and Rescue New South Wales. In fact, our colleague and I, Jane, went through the actual fire station there, talked to a number of their colleagues. And they do -- they all use strengths there. And it's one of the ways that they get to know each other and that they bravely fight fires like the one that they did in 2020.

Jim Collison 4:26
As we think about 2024, you, it's great to look back, but, but as a CEO here, you've got some unique ability to influence us, as we move forward in, in 2024. What, what, what are you excited about or what kind of things, what couple of things, as you look ahead, do we need to do in 2024 to continue to push the community forward, do you think?

Jon Clifton 4:50
Well, one is that we need to drive this to make it more of a global language. And it's, that aspiration is one of the reasons that we've built integrations like the integration that we did with Zoom, where now people can feature their Top 5 anytime that they're doing a Zoom conference. Because we want to make sure that everybody's Top 5 is top of mind in conversations that, where they want it to be. The same is true with integrations that we're building with Microsoft Teams. So that, again, if somebody is using Microsoft Teams, if they need to see a reference, that it will be there. And we also want to build it so that somebody can quickly make a Team Grid. If they're having a meeting, and they want to build that team grid so everybody can see the visual right there on Microsoft Teams or Zoom, they'll have the ability to do it.

Jon Clifton 5:40
The other way that we're trying to drive one language is now this series, Leading With Strengths. Now, Jim, you and I have talked about this before, but so many people have always said, "I wish I knew the Top 5 of world leaders. I wish I knew the Top 5 of global thinkers like Deepak Chopra or Arianna Huffington or prime ministers." That's exactly what we're trying to deliver. But it's not just know their Top 5. It's understanding how they use their Top 5 to inspire others, but also to help speed up their development. Because as we know with our own strengths journey, sometimes there are sort of revelations that we have with our own strengths. And if somebody who sees the world the exact same way that we do had that particular revelation and can tell it to us in a way that we understand it, maybe, just maybe, it'll help speed up our own development. So those are some of the activities that we're doing that I'm very excited about.

Jon Clifton 6:34
And then the other one, Jim -- this is something that's in a very nascent phase -- but we need to think about creating more of a community, more of a reference where it's easier for people to connect with their strengths. So we're doing preliminary investigation to build what this would look like. We know that through Cascade, people could even find things like their strengths twins. And we want to make that more of a reality on a platform that everybody could access. So we're looking into that right now, and I'm really excited about it. And I hope we can get it, bring it to fruition as quickly as possible.

Jim Collison 7:06
Yeah, I get excited about the strengths community, when I think about what I've been doing for 10 years and what it felt like 10 years ago, where it felt like when we, I was reaching customers in Australia or New Zealand or in Africa or in India, it felt really far away. Today, 10 years later, it feels almost -- this is, I know this is crazy, but it feels like next door. Like I make, I regularly make Zoom calls into those countries. You got to work a little hard to get the time zones right for everybody. But even then, you know, late at night, OK, let's, let's make the connect. And so I think the world's gotten a lot smaller from that standpoint.

Jim Collison 7:45
You mentioned some things. Well, yeah, you mentioned some things about some stuff we've done, I think, about the Warmly integration that we've done, to be able to get the, your themes in Zoom on screen, right? That was a big, a big recommendation. I think about the Credly integration we did for our Certified Coaching community, so that they can have a badge that they can display on LinkedIn and social networks. I love those. Those are kind of tip-of-the-iceberg things that we're doing going forward. By the way, as we think about tip of the iceberg, right now, we're live on YouTube and on LinkedIn Live and on Facebook Live, and I'd love for you guys to check in in the chat room while you're doing that. The comments on LinkedIn, the comments on YouTube are right there in the chat room on YouTube. Let us know where you're listening from. Throw your Top 5 in chat as well. And then, as we progress here, we want to take your questions going forward.

Why Leading With Strengths?

Jim Collison 8:32
Jon, you mentioned Leading With Strengths. That's been a big initiative here. If folks haven't heard of that yet, why haven't you heard of it? Go out to leadingwithstrengths.com, and you can get caught up on the 8 episodes we posted now, as of this recording, plus more coming here towards the end of the year. Jon, why -- you kind of alluded to this a second ago, but why do, we why do we need this? Why did we need Leading With Strengths? Why did we need to interview these leaders?

Jon Clifton 8:58
Well, as you had mentioned, Jim, it's something that people have been asking for, for a very long time. So No. 1, we wanted to get that forum. No. 2, it's because we wanted to help accelerate people's development. Again, if we can learn from a leader -- take Deepak Chopra, for example. I mean, this is a guy that's now written 90 books. He's known all over the world for the way that he's advanced, you know, his own thinking, his own philosophies. And for anybody that has Strategic^® in their Top 5, the way he's been thinking about how he uses his Strategic is remarkable. And there's a lot that we can learn from him that we can speed up our own development.

Jon Clifton 9:38
But the other reason that we wanted to create this was for students. We have about half a million young people every single year that go through CliftonStrengths. And a lot of times, when they get their Top 5, they'll see that they have Includer^®. And to be honest, a lot of them look at it and scratch their head, and they're like, "What's an Includer?" Do I even want this, you know, in my Top 5? And what we do then is then show a video of somebody like Tim Shriver, who of course, is the Chairman of Special Olympics, and talk to him about what does it look like to lead with Includer. And this is somebody who literally changed the world using his Includer. In fact, I had asked him this, I don't know that it made it to the final cut. I don't even know if we were recording. But I said to him, "When you first took strengths, what, what did you make of the fact that you had Includer?" And again, this is deeply personal to me, because I have Includer in my Top 10.

Jon Clifton 10:27
And he said to me, you know, "What I didn't know was, is I didn't know if I had Includer No. 1 because of what I do with Special Olympics." He said, "But then it occurred to me is that the work I do with Special Olympics is because I have Includer No. 1." I mean, again, this is a guy that has taken Includer to scale, where he's figured out how to include people all over the planet. And he's also figured out how to do multidimensional including. And so, again, when somebody just starts their journey, and they're like, What is this Includer? They can be inspired by somebody who has honestly changed the world in using that strength. And that's why we wanted to build it. And then, of course, somebody said, Well, we can't just build this for -- why don't we build it for everyone? Because all of us can truly, truly learn from this. And so that's why we did it.

Your Strengths Profile and Your Career Goals

Jim Collison 11:17
Yeah. One of the things I was, I admit, you and I had a conversation, maybe a year, a year so ago, and I was a little hesitant to bring out -- we get this question about famous people all the time. And I'm always a little hesitant to highlight that, because then people start trying to aspire to have the Top 5 of somebody else, or they have strengths envy, right. And they start saying, "Oh, I can't I can't be a leader if I don't have the Top 5 of Vint Cerf," right. Or "I can't be an entrepreneur if I don't have the," or "I can't be a mayor if I don't have the Top 5 of Justin Bibb," right. How do you, as, leading this, how do we keep that kind of strengths envy or looking at them and saying, "This is the profile of leaders" or "All leaders have to have this kind of profile"? Well, how do you respond to that? Because that's, that's my, always my hesitant, hesitancy as we think about these kinds of things.

Jon Clifton 12:09
Well, that concern can always be there, right? I mean, so even within organizations, where you might superadmire somebody, and you join a company, and, let's say, you know, the CEO of that company might have a particular Top 5, and that could influence them. But again, I think what's the beauty here is that we know that typically, when people go through strengths, you know, people are very candid about it. And there's been research about people's candor and honesty about who they are -- even studies done on Facebook -- where shockingly, when we, you know, you go in and audit their profiles and look to see, are they honest about who they are? Overwhelmingly, people are. They're very honest about who they are. And so, again, I think there's, the bigger risk would be that we don't do this. Because where we can learn and go deeper on the individual strengths and understand how somebody used them in a unique context or used them in combination with another theme in a particular industry, then I think we're doing a disservice to the people that are using strengths, because this is another opportunity for us to truly accelerate someone's development.

Jon Clifton 13:15
Because, again, one of the things that we know is that, in all the research, if you want to break barriers, one of the things that people need to do is they need to see people who look like them within leadership positions. But what if you also added another layer to that and said, what if they not only look like them, but what if they also see the world the same way that they do? Because that's exactly what strengths, of course, does, is it really decodes our talent algorithms, not unlike AI. And so, you know, if you have a similar talent algorithm to somebody else who's been successful with it, you can really, really speed up your learning and development.

Jim Collison 13:55
One of the things I've learned through this series is not to argue with your CEO when they're talking about a great idea.

Jon Clifton 14:01
You're using my strengths when you do; I have Competition^® No. 1, Jim.

Key Insights From Leading With Strengths Interviews

Jim Collison 14:06
You do. I remember vividly that conversation down in the dining room, which is why it's important to be together sometimes, right, as we think about getting together and having these conversations. But what have you learned? As you've, as you've done these interviews -- and we have a bunch in the hopper still coming, so you've done a bunch of these. Have -- you know, I got better at strengths. I got better at my own strengths as I interviewed people about it. Has that happened to you where you're learning from others? And what have you learned? What kind of insights have you seen?

Jon Clifton 14:33
Absolutely. So in my conversation with Vint Cerf, who you mentioned, the father of the internet, you know, when you go through and look at his strengths, where he leads with Futuristic^® and, you know, talking to him about how far he thinks into the future -- even the kind of content that he reads or fiction that he reads, I mean, you can tell this is somebody who is, totally leads with Futuristic. But one of the things I think that surprised me the most is that he has Communication^® No. 3. Again, because I think somebody who invented the internet, you might not necessarily guess that they lead with Communication. And again, this is why it goes back to our strengths learning, which is, you can never make assumptions about someone's strengths. And so to truly understand them, you have to have them go through something like strengths, so that you can really get to know them as a person. But it's not just the fact that he has Communication, but the advice that he has around it.

Jon Clifton 15:33
And so I said to him, you know, "One of the things that we've found in our research, in terms of competencies, is that leaders need to be great communicators. Now that you've had your experience with the internet, and also as somebody who leads with Communication, how can we be better communicators?" And he said, something that I will never forget, and I think it's an amazing discovery, and it's something that all of us can learn from -- and I certainly did. But he said, "One of the challenges that we have right now," he says, "is that technology has caused us to get sloppy in our communication." And he's right. Because right now, when you get emails, even from senior executives, sometimes it looks like they used their iPhone or relied on Siri in order to communicate their message. And the problem with that is that oftentimes, if they're not clear, in terms of what it is that they're communicating, they've effectively shifted the work to the reader, in order to figure out what it is that they're trying to communicate. And a lot of times, things get lost in translation. Microsoft even did a study and said that asynchronous communication is one of the single reasons that people become detached or have less of an understanding of what it is that they're supposed to be doing on a particular project.

Jon Clifton 16:46
In fact, they, they did a study recently that's just absolutely remarkable to me, where they took married couples that had very good marriages, and said, You know what? Take some of your key communication, just move it to text. And what they found is that there was more difficulty for them to understand each other when doing it through the written word. And so what he said is, is that for us to get better at this, because now that we're communicating so much more asynchronously -- doing it on Teams or text or email -- he said, one of the best things to look at is go back 2, 300, 400 years. Because when we had to communicate to the other side of the world, we had one shot. One shot. Because whatever piece of information that you were sending them to them, it was going to take 7 to 10 days by boat in order to get there. So the care that was taken for every single word was remarkable. And if we use that kind of care when we're sending out important pieces of information, or even going back just once or twice, editing a text before you send it -- even to a group chat to your friends and family -- we will make huge improvements in how we understand each other, if we can just do a little bit of editing and treat it a little bit more like we did a few hundred years ago. And that kind of advice from the father of the internet is absolutely remarkable. And again, just those little things, I think, can go a long way, in terms of how we understand each other as humanity.

CliftonStrengths and AI

Jim Collison 18:16
We are, as we record this on October 13. His interview actually will go live on the podcast on next Monday, live on the site on Wednesday. Check it out leadingwithstrengths.com. You should listen to those interviews a couple times. As, Jon, as we think about that communication, I think, you know, I've learned to live in a world where we do these webcasts and I get all this feedback via chat. In fact, I don't know if I could do my job without a chat room. Right? It's important for me to hear in real time, what's kind of happening. I don't, in this setting, I don't run into that a lot. But I do know, I've had the saying, "That email probably should have been a meeting," you know, kind of flipping that, because we oftentimes, we get 1,000 emails going on, and it gets kind of crazy. What do you think, when we think about AI, and we're just, I mean, we are on the early cusp of this. We've been spending a lot of time talking about it and thinking about it here at Gallup. But does that continue to perpetuate this? Because I can put, "Write an email for me that recognizes so-and-so for this," and, and ChatGPT can write that stuff for me. It can, it can do that work for me without me thinking about better, worse? Any thoughts on that, as we think about, especially in using our own strengths in that area?

Jon Clifton 19:36
Well, everyone's concerned about AI. In fact, we just did a survey with Bentley University on this very topic, and I think it was 75% of Americans said that they are concerned that AI is going to be very disruptive, with respect to people's jobs. But I think what many are missing is the fact that AI also presents a massive opportunity. And now there are studies -- in fact, one that shows just how much more efficient we are when we are leveraging AI. And I think the same is true if we could leverage AI to be better communicators. For one, an experiment that Paul Allen and I were doing recently, and I'd asked if he would help and just kind of think about this, but what if we could actually write emails, and then we ask AI to rethink the communication through the lens of the strengths of the recipient?

Jon Clifton 20:33
So, for example, if the reader has Arranger^®, go in, ask ChatGPT, and say, Using CliftonStrengths Arranger, can you please edit this email to make it something that they would be more interested in? Now, again, now, you're speaking their language. And so there are ways for us to leverage AI to better understand each other. And I think that's one of the things that we, we have to do to accelerate it. The other thing is not just understanding, because again, Dr. Ella Washington at Georgetown has done amazing research around how strengths can really improve attitudes of inclusion. And of course, we featured it on our website. But that kind of research, and maybe there are ways that AI can help us accelerate that, would be amazing.

Jon Clifton 21:17
But the other piece is development. And, Jim, all the content that you have on Called to Coach, and this is another one of the reasons that we're doing Leading With Strengths, is because we need to do a better job indexing that type of content and allowing AI to help us create mechanisms so that we can feed more-specific information to people with their strengths to help accelerate their development. Because right now, or in the past 10 years, when we rely on that information, there really are no perfect ways to index it, other than just tagging things by word and saying, Hey, you know, does this have Individualization^® anywhere in it, and that I can go to it? But is it the type of content that I need for the problem that I'm wrestling with? Does it have Individualization coupled with Relator^® in a way that's uniquely helpful to me? This is one of the ways that we are going to leverage AI, and we are going to be able to customize our content for everybody to speed up their development.

Jim Collison 22:15
Yeah, since, in the last 5 years, we've been providing full transcripts for every single episode of Called to Coach, Theme Thursday, and The CliftonStrengths Podcast. Those are available on gallup.com. I can go to the AI and say, Bring me back some helpful quotes around Individualization, and only use this site, right, type deal, and it can pull, it'll go, it'll go back, pull that. It's still a little sketchy. We're working with it, though. But we are, I mean, the exciting thing is we are knee deep in it, working with it, seeing what can it do? I think Craig asks a good question, Jon, for you. And he says, What, what do you think is the greatest threat or challenge that AI brings to the coaching world? Most of the folks who will be listening to this are a Certified Coach or a coach in some capacity, or maybe a strengths champion inside an organization. Your thoughts, as we think about AI, we mentioned maybe it'll, it'll decrease the amount of communication or the quality of communication. Other thoughts on that, as we think about that, as far as coaches go?

Jon Clifton 23:13
Well, look, this, this, quote has become so famous that now some wonder if AI has actually created the quote itself. But it says, You're not going to lose your job to AI, but you will lose your job to somebody who knows how to use AI. And I think one of the things that we need to do is look to AI to accelerate our coaching, to help us brainstorm about, How can we better serve the people that we're coaching? And how can we use AI to accelerate their development? If there ever was a risk, I do think there are some instances of AI that are a bit concerning. There was, something that I noticed was everybody said, Well, you know, maybe there's some technical aspects that AI can help us with, but AI can never show empathy. Apparently, that's not true. Because there was even some research within healthcare, where there were some instances where actually AI was better at showing empathy than people. And the other thing is, is that AI never tires. And of course, we as humans do.

Jon Clifton 24:23
So again, I think we need to keep thinking strategically about how it can help elevate us. That could become a place where it would be disruptive, seriously, to all of us -- even just Gallup in general. And to be quite candid, I don't know what answers would be around that. But I don't know necessarily that AI and the community are quite there yet. And I think right now, for the time being, AI is just going to be a partner for all of us, to help with our productivity and to help with our impact. So I think we all need to be leaning into it, seriously, as much as possible.

Additional Learnings From Leading With Strengths

Jim Collison 24:58
Yeah, I was doing some queries yesterday, and there was just some wrong stuff coming back in it. And you're like, OK, yeah, it's gonna still continue to need a lot of intervention and a lot of learning on its side. And so we've got some great, I think we've got some great opportunities with it. Coming back to Leading With Strengths, Jon, there's still some episodes coming up. You mentioned some of the folks that have been on it. But as you think ahead to maybe some interviews that, that you've done with folks we haven't released yet, anything in those that, that you kind of pull out and you get, just a memorable moment of thinking about someone who might have said something or a surprise for you -- something you learned new in the interview? Some of these folks, you know. And so did you learn anything new in these interviews?

Jon Clifton 25:41
Well, one of my favorite comments -- this one's already live -- is when Deepak Chopra, I've asked him about this before, but the way that he talks about his Strategic is amazing to me. Because he talks about it in a way where only he can talk about it, where he says, "I do it subconsciously." And if you think about it, that's actually what all of us do with our strengths. I mean, this is sincerely the way that we have decoded our talent algorithms, you know. And in fact, the guy that won the Turing Award for originally creating AI, if I understand it correctly, he said that AI was actually an accident. And the reason he created it is because he was trying to replicate neural networks. And I think one of the things that's amazing about strengths is that it was, ultimately, one of the ways that we were decoding these neural networks of humanity. Because when we're given prompts, not unlike a prompt is given to ChatGPT, when our strengths are given prompts, sometimes you know that we're going to respond in a predictable manner. At least for those of us with Competition, you know, we know and we're coached around the very idea that a basement means that we can be baited into something that we shouldn't necessarily be working toward. And one of the ways to master our strength is to not allow that necessarily to take place.

Jon Clifton 27:03
Another thing that I learned, Jim, that I thought was just remarkable, when I interviewed the Deputy Commissioner for Fire and Rescue, New South Wales, is, again, he has Learner^® No. 1. And so at one point, I just said to him, "How does a firefighter use Learner?" Because just, to me, it's just, it's really a fascinating question. And at first he laughed, and he said, "Well, when my colleagues heard that I had Learner, they gave me everything under the sun to read." But he said, "The way that I really use Learner is," he said, "when we arrive at the scene of an emergency," he said, "I use my Learner to become a microexpert on everything that's happening." He said, "So what I do is, I start to ask questions. What I want to know is, how is this machine made, if this isn't working?" Because remember, not every emergency that they're called to is necessarily a fire. And he said, "So whatever it is that we need to tackle, I have to become a microexpert immediately, in order to make sure that we can solve this particular problem."

Jon Clifton 28:04
And I thought it was fascinating, because those with Learner -- it's one of the strengths that I deeply envy; I don't necessarily have it; I don't lead with it, excuse me -- is that, you know, they go so, so, so deep, and they can't turn it off. And that's one of the reasons that I admire it so much. But for him, he has to do it quickly. And he has to do it as fast as he can and go as deep as he can, but in a way to make sure that he's saving lives. And so again, it's such a unique way to hear about how Learner is applied. I think there are so many that can learn so much just from that particular dialogue.

Leaning Into Your Top 5 as a Leader

Jim Collison 28:39
I love that example. We've talked about Deliberative^® in that way, where how does an EMT worker who has high Deliberative get through that if they, if it apparently may slow them down in predetermined decisions? In other words, knowing all the things that have to happen, I've already made these, I've thought through them, and I've already made these decisions. I love that concept of, How does that apply to them? Right. This is we, we're hearing it from them. I think, Jon, we'll wrap it on this question. I was going to ask you a form of it, but Lisa asked it a little bit better. She says, How do you and the executive team keep strengths at the forefront? Right? I was gonna, the question I was going to ask you is, How are you leaning into your Top 5 in your current role in what you're doing? How do you, how is that working from a, from a leadership perspective? Can you give, in the last minute or two we have left, can you give a little bit of insight on that on how we do that?

Jon Clifton 29:30
Well, I can assure you this: There is no need for us to have reminders or anything, because we constantly talk about it from two things. I mean, No. 1, we have a shared goal to hit a billion. And we are so committed to it that we are going to innovate, make commitments to things that even sometimes in the process may not look great. You know, there's that famous quote that Winston Churchill says about Americans, where he says that Americans always figure it out, but only after they've tried virtually every option available. Sometimes I say that Gallup is the same way, and that sometimes we try every option available before we actually get it right.

Jon Clifton 30:09
We're constantly doing that with strengths. I mean, I talk about strengths with my colleagues every single day. And again, not just from the innovations and how we get to a billion, but we also do it with each other's strengths. You know, take Shari Theer, for example, our CMO. She and I often talk about the fact that she has Harmony^®, that I have Command^®. She and I oftentimes will see something exactly the same way in a particular meeting. And we know that I'm probably going to come in like a complete wrecking ball and say something that is probably not diplomatically the best. Whereas her Harmony knows exactly how to do that, because people with Harmony are among the world's best diplomats. And they can, you know, bring even warring factions together.

Jon Clifton 30:54
So it's just, again, I don't know if the question was necessarily, How do we make sure that Gallup is strategically thinking about how we're constantly taking strengths to the next level? We're always doing that, and the Ideation^® is borderline out of control at times. And if, if, if, if it gets too reckless, you can blame that squarely on me. But on the other hand, how do we make sure it is just individually, and it is seriously a topic that we are talking about. In fact, I just left a meeting right now talking about the design of some of our reports and how we do it in a number of different languages. So yeah, it's, there aren't, it's almost how do we make sure that the Ideation doesn't get too out of control? And again, that's my fault if, if, if that ever happens.

Jim Collison 31:41
No, it's good. I think we spend, I mean, I have lunch down here in the atrium with different groups all the time. I eat with our sales folks a lot. And it's amazing how many strengths conversations just happen in the context of lunch as we're, "Oh, that's my _____," "We're thinking about this," or "How am I doing that?" Or "you're driving me crazy with that," you know, kind of thing. And it really, it's hard here to get away from those kinds of conversations. I think a lot of organizations really desire to have more of those conversations internally. And, and here, as Lisa, I think, to the heart of Lisa's question, we do it a lot. Let me ask you individually, Jon, as you think about your role for 2024, what theme or what strength will you use to lean into that in your leadership? Maybe I'll just do a quick Leading With Strengths on you. What are you going to lean into in 2024?

Jon Clifton 32:35
I think Command, Jim, because, you know, we have objectives that we want to hit. And sometimes that needs to lead to candor and calling out some things that I think, you know, sometimes get to be uncomfortable. And for those of us with Command, we're OK with that. I can't help it. But also, you know, those of us with Self-Assurance^®, sometimes we can be, in an annoying and unhelpful way, but iconoclasts. We challenge things, but we naturally gravitate toward that. And once, and everybody's moving one way; we can't help it, but naturally, we want to move the other way. But I do think that's helpful. I think it's something that all of us can drive within organizations to make sure that we're not headed in the wrong direction and challenging those things. So I'm definitely gonna lean into both of those.

Jim Collison 33:21
Good. Well, I'm glad you are.

Jon Clifton 33:22
But hold on, Jim. Now which one, now what strength are you going to lean into in the next year?

Jim Collison 33:27
I like it! Yeah, No. 1 Arranger for me, and I've been telling people, there's a lot of moving parts going on right now; there's a lot of things happening. Lots of things are changing, and as I'm looking at my role we've, we've, we've, from some of the media, if you've listened to Called to Coach, you know the frequency has gone down a little bit. We did 150 of these episodes in 2020 and 2021; we're probably down to more like 100 now, because I pulled back a little bit to say, What's next? What are we doing? Where are we going with this? What, how, you know, I have Communication as well. And so that always drives how, what's the next, best way to influence the community to do great things with strengths, right? And so those are all the things that I'm leaning into, as we think about 2024. I think we have some challenging, and some exciting, times ahead here. And I'm excited about it as well. So Jon, thanks for being a part of this. Thanks for leading us so well. It's always, I'm always excited and super nervous when you, when you come on to do this with me. But I appreciate your candor. I appreciate your leadership. Thanks for doing what you do. And thanks for coming on today.

Jon Clifton 34:31
No, thank you, Jim. Thank you for doing this amazing podcast, because this is a community that needs to be kept together. This is a community that needs to keep talking. But most importantly, this needs to be a community that we grow tremendously, because this is a community that can, honest to God, make a huge impact on the world, and the world has never needed it like it does today.

Jim Collison 34:50
Yeah, can and is making a huge impact in the world, just in some of the examples that you brought up today. Don't forget, you can find all of those, leadingwithstrengths.com. They'll be listed there. Subscribe to it on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app. We have those available for you to consume in any way. Jon, hang tight for me one sec; let me wrap this up. We'll remind everyone to take full advantage of all the resources we have available, Jon mentioned it, in Gallup Access. Head out to my.gallup.com for that. For coaching, master coaching or if you want to become a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, and many of you are, but if maybe you're listening to this, and you've been thinking about it, and you're like, I'm ready to pull the trigger, send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Stay up to date with all the webcasts just by searching "CliftonStrengths" on any social platform, and find us there. We want to thank you for joining us live today, whether it was on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube or right there on our live page ... time I've done that many this way. So we'll have to go back and see how it goes. But thanks for joining us today. With that, we'll say, Goodbye everybody.

Jon Clifton's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Competition, Self-Assurance, Achiever, Relator and Command.

Gallup^®, CliftonStrengths^® and each of the 34 CliftonStrengths theme names are trademarks of Gallup. Copyright © 2000 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.