Shine your Strengths, Bring Down Systems

Your strengths brand is only as good as your consistency and investment to ensure it is known. When you get your CliftonStrengths® results back, it shows you your default wiring (top five) and where relationally the rest of your strengths live (34). We have all 34 in us, which means your brand is descriptive. It is about how well you know yourself and how well you can articulate and show your brand to others. However, the insulation of childhood, the drywall of experiences, the paint jobs of life will continue to distance us from our true wiring. We have to punch a burr hole in our wall of life to check that wiring out and to ensure it is working as designed. If not? We have to get in there and tend to the wires. 

white supremacy and all its children (patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, racism, etc.) want to keep you as distant from your strengths brand as possible. When we are confident in ourselves it means we are harder to control. When we stop assimilating, stop people-pleasing, stop picking up tools of oppression, then the system designers and leaders short circuit. It is much harder to face confident people and have honest conversations about our differences as a multiplier of awesomeness than it is to diminish, and hold assimilation as the standard. 

It’s why sometimes organizations will invest in CliftonStrengths® for their work places, but leave it at the novelty of new understanding and never take it deeper. When we start to really learn what is right and good about us, it can also be shocking, affronting, and too bright. When we understand that we may have been systematically shut down for what is right and good about us, then we start to release the external feedback and return to our own intuition. 

For example, I have Connectedness®. This is a strength about deep knowing. I know things quickly because I am naturally dialed into the archetypal, group, and individual level of humanity. I make connections easily and seemingly out of nowhere. When I work with people whose strengths are more in the tangible, it is hard for them to trust me and what I know. They ask me to “show my work” and if I can’t fast enough, then I am dismissed for outlandish ideas. I leaned into my Input and Learner talents so I had the story problem worked out, but it was exhausting. It was easier to shut Connectedness down. When I started to bring Connectedness back online and truly embraced this talent as the strength it is, I also figured out how to introduce it so people can trust it and not dismiss it. It is an articulated part of my strengths brand. 

Systems of Oppression cannot withstand authenticity. When we bring our strengths online in a meaningful way, we can embrace our unique talents, be more thoughtful about the systems we are operating within and see the cracks. When we show up appreciating our strengths brand and that of others, it is one way to shine a very bright light on the cracks within White Supremacy. 

Collectively, we can push on those cracks and bring the walls down, but it starts with the internal. Are you willing to embrace your strengths in a world determined to keep you in a fixed and deficit mindset? Are you willing to show up as you are so others can do the same? Can you examine your positionality within oppressive systems and invest in your strengths to create outcomes grounded in equity? It comes down to our very next choice.

What will you choose?