The Sixth Sense

Connecting with students

I’ve been working over the weekend on an idea for connecting with students in Sheffield. There are over 50,000 students at the two main universities and it is definitely a group of people we want to serve and impact.

We are looking to create some movement around two different areas really:

1. Gallup StrengthsFinder
2. Vox Sheffield

We really want to get the Gallup StrengthsFinder tool out to as many students as possible. It is such a helpful tool for understanding ourselves better and figuring out how we can play to our strengths.

And with Vox Sheffield, we’d love to create a student stream to this. Vox Sheffield is a movement we have set up to showcase creativity in Sheffield and work together to create a better world.

Our intention is to try and connect with 10 to 12 key students who we’ll invest in with a view to them becoming the catalysts that make this idea a reality.

I am confident about every stage of this apart from the first really. And that is the key to it all: connecting with the right students to lead this. We don’t really have many natural links into the universities at this stage and so I’m looking to come up with creative ways to try and attract the right kind of people.

Should be fun!

Tags: Leadership, StrengthsFinder, Students, VOX Sheffield

Yelo - Unleashing creativity, maximising potential

This coming Saturday Mosaic is running a special event called ‘Yelo’. It’s happening at Pizza Express in the centre of Sheffield and I can’t wait.

The aim of the event is to help people discover more about themselves in order that they are better equipped to use their uniqueness to impact the world.

At the heart of this event is a tool we’ll be using called StrengthsFinder by the Gallup organisation. This is such an amazing way of helping people understand more about how they’re wired. It gives a really useful framework and language for talking positively about our gifts and talents.

I’ve been working with StrengthsFinder with people for several years now and the affect it is on people is great. It’s amazing to see people become so energised as they discover more about themselves. I love seeing people have ‘aha’ moments too when some personality trait of themselves (or a friend, colleague, spouse) suddenly makes sense.

I am really hoping that through the Yelo event on Saturday we’ll be able to move people beyond just discovering five new words about themselves (as what Gallup give you when you take a StrengthsFinder assessment) and starting to make appropriate changes in work and life.

There are so many tools and assessments out there but how many of them do we ever properly process and apply? Hopefully this event on Saturday will help people move from information to application.

Tags: StrengthsFinder, Yelo

Strengths Coaching

mebeliTonight me and my friend Ryan are off to do some strengths coaching with a group of students. Really looking forward to it. It’s tied in with the Gallup StrengthsFinder tool. I got trained by Gallup last May and I love having the opportunity to help people discover more about how their wired and what’s great about them.

Running this session tonight should also be good preparation for the forthcoming ‘Yelo’ event we’re hosting in June.

I’ve found the StrengthsFinder tool to be a really useful means of having conversations about making the most of our talents. It’s great to have positive language to describe our natural talents and abilities.

For those of you who aren’t aware, StrengthsFinder is an online 30-40 minute assessment which helps you identify your top five talent themes. From this it is then much easier to focus on acquiring the relevant skills and knowledge and turning those talents into actual strengths.

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Tags: Coaching, Gallup, Strengths Coaching, StrengthsFinder