STRENGTHS-BASED PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME: FIRST: KNOW YOUR POTENTIAL

This is a unique and very powerful programme for the Personality Development for students and corporate leaders, managers and employees. There are existing programmes for the Strengths-Based Education and Career options for students. For the corporates there are programmes for the Leaders, Managers and Employees: covering the aspects like Talent Selection, Delegation, Talent Management, Employees’ Engagement and Employees’ Development. But there is no tailored made programme for the Strengths-Based Personality Development.

This idea came to me when one of universities requested me to carry out Personality Development Programme for their students. The format suggested was to take lectures or whatever be the programme for 60 to 70 students at a time------ more like motivational lectures. I refused to run such a programme. This triggered me to think about a Strengths-Based Personality Development Programme.

I conceived this programme in FOUR MODULES.  I conducted this programme for the students of the Christ University, Bangalore, India. To begin with, there were 35 Students out of these 27 Students completed the Programme and benefitted

Module 1 is eight hours programme called Individualised Strengths Based Development.

   The first part of the Programme was to “Know and Understand Yourself” what in the Gallup Strengths term called “Name it” and “Claim It”. It involved taking the Strengths Finder Test. It was done in the University Computer Lab. One of the students who took the test and attended the programme was a final year Under Graduate Psychology Student. After the test, he told me that he was very careful in taking the test lest his knowledge of psychology would have impacted his answers. But I suppose in 20 seconds he would have had very little time to think and his psychology background would not have influenced his responses. His five signature themes were:  ADAPTABILITY, RESTORATIVE, RESPONSIBILITY, STRATEGIC, SELF – ASSURANCE and after 6 hours (out of planned 8 hours) of sessions he commented, to quote “My behaviours and my actions have changed. Every action I take is to better myself. I have got more stable with my emotions and inner conflict don't really seen like conflict anymore. I am able to see things/situations/problems clearly and from all the angles. Although, I need to learn to tend to important & urgent works first. I got carried away by an unimportant things like a TV serial instead of focussing on the assignment. Otherwise I would have got much better at interpersonal skills.”

         During the next part of this Module, students went through the exercise of determining their Theme Dynamics, Theme Insight, reading and highlighting words and sentences resonating them from the Gallup Theme Insight Report. Followed by audio video presentation on all 34 themes. The high point of this part was when, they were requested to select their values from the value cards. Each student was given a set of 28 Value cards and they were asked to select their 5 Core Values. Most of them thought that all the 28 values belong to them. But gradually by sort listing, finally they came to their Five Core Values. When, they matched their values with Signature Themes, I asked them to draw their values. They were given a white sheet of paper with a set of coloured sketch pens. Many of them were confused or did not understand and they wanted hints from me. I did not give any hint, just repeated several times ‘”Draw Your Values”. 60 Minutes were given to them. Many of them had not done any drawing, may be after their primary schools but finally they all drew their values.  Each one was given one minute to explain their drawing of their values by presenting to the entire class. For many, it was their first chance of knowing their values and public speaking. One student asked me “Sir, please tell my father that I have values. He thinks I have no values”.

What students wrote about learning their values were very encouraging to me as facilitator and coach.

One student whose signature themes are EMPATHY, ADAPTABILITY, RESTORATIVE, HARMONY, DEVELOPER, wrote “this class has helped me figuring out my strengths and core values which will help me achieve my potential. I'm keen on finding out the areas I need to work upon and turn them into my strengths. I'm going to try out on completing all that I've written today”

       This module culminated with the Students knowing their domains and choosing their action points. One of the students whose signature themes are CONNECTEDNESS, HARMONY, ADAPTABILITY, EMPATHY, DELIBERATIVE, wrote:

“Since last week, I have started discovering new things about my personality, my approach to a situation and also my thought process. For this week I have given myself a set of tasks that I will start implementing and I hope to achieve them in every way”.

    Likewise, I can go on narrating my experiences of running this module with the overall aim to use the strengths to develop the personality of students. The basic concept is based on the positive fact that one must know his/her potential prior to developing oneself. How can anyone develop himself/herself or even a coach or a mentor develop a person without knowing as to what are the potential of the person whom they are to develop?

Other Modules in the Next Blog.