August 13, 2024 • 31 mins
Hey, Mama!
Today, I am thrilled to welcome Dan Schaal to the podcast. Dan is a Gallup-certified Clifton Strengths coach who I have personally worked with and had some amazing breakthroughs in my own strengths.
We are discussing the beauty of tapping into our God-given talents to uncover our fullest potential as individuals, spouses, and parents, while also learning how to navigate the strengths of those around us.
If you are interested in discovering and harnessing your strengths, be sure to contact Dan for a special discount on the assessment and a complimentary coaching call. Find out more about Gallup Strengths here!
Dan Schaal
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Episode 40. Today, I am so thrilled to welcome Dan Schall to the podcast.
Dan is a Gallup-certified CliftonStrengths coach who I have personally worked
with and had some amazing breakthroughs in my own strengths.
We are discussing the beauty of tapping into our God-given talents to uncover
(00:22):
our fullest potential as individuals, spouses, and parents, while also learning
how to navigate the strengths of those around us.
Be sure to listen to the very end for a special offer just for you.
Thank you. Hey mama, welcome to Divine Design Wellness, where we're putting
down deep spiritual roots and embracing our identity in Christ through holistic health.
(00:46):
Do you want to love your body and feel confident in motherhood?
Are you Googling quick workouts, devotionals, or time management tips?
Music.
Do you wake up with great intentions, only to find your littles take up most of your time and energy?
Hey, I'm Carolyn, holistic health and essential oils nerd.
I too was a mom of littles. I felt like my body would never be the same and
(01:09):
wish I could find time for myself.
I wanted the confidence and strength to fully enjoy life with my family,
but I kept telling myself I didn't have the time, energy, or discipline to prioritize my health.
That is until I took a holistic approach to mind, body, and spirit.
In this podcast, you will find spiritual encouragement, healthy lifestyle tips,
(01:31):
and quick self-care routines to build confidence in your body again.
If you're ready to see yourself the way God does and embrace your divine design,
go find that pile of laundry you've been avoiding, pop in those earbuds, and let's go.
I am so excited today. I have a special guest with me.
(01:53):
It's Dan Schall. He has four years of experience as a Gallup-certified CliftonStrengths coach,
and he specializes in relationships and communication for women and moms,
specifically in setting boundaries and improving relationships with their children.
So thank you so much, Dan, for joining us today to talk about strengths and all that good stuff.
(02:20):
I'm so excited to get to talk to you about this topic, especially,
you know, with my listeners, as it's played such a huge role in my journey of
growth over the past several years.
And I really think that every human out there, no matter, you know,
if it's moms, kids, you know, no matter what you do, everyone should be intimately
(02:45):
familiar with their strengths.
So before we dive into that, Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and
why you chose to become a strengths coach?
Well, first of all, I'm just honored that you would think of me to be a guest on your podcast.
It's just such a neat thing to know that I made an impact somewhat when we worked
(03:09):
together all those years ago.
So I'm really honored that you asked me. So I thank you for that.
I have always been someone who is willing to try to look at myself in a different
light, a different angle.
You know when my wife and i were dating in college she was like one of the first
people who was like hey let's read this book about how we can have better relationships
(03:34):
and do things differently and so i was all into that like hey how can we communicate
better and do those kind of things and,
i'm always willing to take the tests you know church
we did a love languages a sermon series
it was a series you know the pastor did it we all did a love languages test
and did a whole thing about that i've taken the enneagram my
(03:55):
wife's enneagram and do the myers-briggs and do all
these things and i i enjoy getting to
see myself in different lenses and so which leads us to strengths which was
something that as as a network marketing business we were both working with
suggested we take this assessment because it'll help you improve your whether it's your the leader
(04:20):
or just knowing how you work and do things your way.
So we took the assessment, we found out a little bit about ourselves.
I found it very intriguing, very interesting. And I sort of like did some things
as a teacher, as a parent, as a spouse, but this is pretty cool how I can see
how I do things. What does my brain do?
(04:41):
Want to do? And how do I do that most effectively?
I received some coaching from someone. It just totally blew me away when I put
those strengths into action.
It's easy to just look at the results and go, cool, that's really neat.
And just kind of put whatever information you get aside and just bluff it off.
(05:03):
I thought, this is really cool. I'm going to now put these strengths into action
and actually apply them in my everyday life as a spouse and a husband and a father and a teacher.
And it was overwhelming how I saw things differently.
And when I realized the impact it had on me, I said to my wife,
I go, I need to be a coach. Now, I'm a teacher.
(05:24):
I've been teaching for 28 years. I start my 29th year as a teacher this year.
I'm a middle school teacher now. I used to be elementary, now I'm middle school.
Even though the kids don't know, I'm I'm always like checking their strengths
and thinking about how, what are they saying that I could use to,
you know, help develop them and of course using my strengths in that way.
But I thought as a teacher, it's natural, like being a coach as a teacher.
(05:48):
And I thought that it was an easy transition for me to take.
It wasn't something that was difficult for me to speak to people.
I love the topic of strengths. I love the idea of strengths.
I love the idea of helping people. And I started to do it as a business model
first to help people improve their business.
But I quickly realized that's not where my heart was.
(06:09):
My heart was in people, not in the money part of it. And don't get me wrong. It's really important.
If you use this in a business model, it's very effective and very effective.
Useful, but my heart was in relationships. When I saw the impact I was making
in people's lives personally and relationally, I thought this is where I want to dive into.
And I've been for the past few years, I have a group that's called Thrive Relationship
(06:33):
Coaching, where I want people's relationships to thrive.
So I've researched on boundaries, on communication, how to really.
Understand what your strengths, how they work for you and how they work against
you, and how you can tell people up front so they're not getting blindsided
or surprised when your behaviors do something and they go, whoa, what's that?
(06:55):
So there's a lot of things that go into it, but I just love watching people
develop into the awesome human beings they are and reach their potential.
I love making that happen for people. Yes. And I have personally been a part of that.
It kind of seems like a whole nother lifetime ago that we worked together. Yeah.
(07:17):
Three years ago. Yeah. So much has happened and changed in that time.
And like you were saying, you initially looked at strengths from a business perspective.
That's what initially brought me to strengths, but I had no idea how much it
was going to impact every other facet of my life in my relationships, in my marriage,
(07:44):
in parenting, just so many
things now that I do look through the lens of strengths it's
changed so much about my life
and I I really am so grateful that that was introduced to me and that I've had
the opportunity to really work through that and I actually it's kind of been
one of those things I put on the back burner for a little bit but it's definitely
(08:07):
something I want to reinvest into to again and fine tune and work on it more.
So I'm sure everybody's asking, well, what are strengths?
So can you tell us what this whole thing about strengths is?
Sure. So tell us what this whole thing about strengths is.
(08:28):
Sure. So Don Clifton was a psychologist many years ago, and he was investing
in what makes people, what makes businesses most successful. That was his initial.
Idea. And he interviewed many, many people and he looked at how these corporations
or these business entities were successful when people were allowed to be themselves
(08:52):
and use what makes them great in the proper settings.
It wasn't like what we think about forcing a round peg into a square hole.
He was against that. He wasn't saying you must make the employee conform to
what we need, it was like, let's find the right employee for the job.
So this was more like an assessment to see, okay, would you fit in this particular role?
(09:15):
It's evolved over time into many different areas, into marriage,
into parenting, into leadership, into lots of different areas.
But the assessment reveals that we all have 34 strengths.
There are 34 strengths or talents. I'm sorry. They're called talents at first,
but then as you look at them, they become come your strengths.
(09:37):
Everyone has 34 of them. And they're broken into four categories,
executing category or domain, which is all about getting things done,
how you work and be productive.
There's influencing, which is how you get other people to move and do things.
Relationship building, which is how you connect to people and what's the methodology
(09:57):
behind that, what kind of group it is.
Is it more intimate or is it a widespread type of environment?
And then there's strategic thinking, which is how you take information.
How do you analyze information?
How do you process it? What's the best way? How do you use it the best way?
So when you take the assessment, you get a report. It's a very long report.
25 pages would be very overwhelming.
(10:19):
That's what I commend to kind of make sure people don't gloss over the important stuff.
Stuff but we look at how it's
really important that the mindset of our country
for years the way our culture in america is work on your weaknesses work on
(10:39):
your weaknesses and so we would typically ignore what we're great at and like
god we're just we're still going to be great there but if we if we're well-rounded
if we really make sure we we tie up these loose ends at the bottom will be better all around people.
But it doesn't work. What happens is when you become well-rounded,
sometimes you lose what makes you a star.
(11:00):
And I don't know when this will be put on the air, when you actually produce
it and release it, but it's Olympic time right now.
I don't want to reveal anything that's too... Everyone probably will know what
happened here. But that pothole horse.
Male pommel horse guy. He only has one specific skill that he works on.
(11:22):
He realized a long time ago that he could not be the all-around champion,
but he was really good at pommel horse.
So he dedicated all of his time to that one specific thing.
He knew it was his strength and he worked on it. He worked on it and he improved
it to the tune of getting a bronze medal at the Olympics, helping his team win
a bronze as a team, but also themselves.
So that idea that, yes, Yes, we have to work on a lot of aspects in our lives
(11:49):
to make sure we are successful.
But there are certain traits that we have that are really, really,
that we focus and harness our attention and our energy on.
We will become great in those specific areas.
Yeah, I love the shift in being able to kind of come away from how culture has
(12:09):
really pushed for people to focus on their weaknesses and or just only focus on,
you know, just picking something and and forcing yourself into that rather than, well,
let's start working with what you have and make that even better.
Absolutely. And I think that that applies to anyone and everything.
(12:34):
So, you know, this podcast is specifically for moms.
And so how can you encourage moms to be able to look at using strengths in parenting,
in their relationships, and specifically, you know, you specialize in communicating boundaries.
(12:55):
Yeah. How does that all tie together?
So much of me as a parent, I realized that we sort of like allow the rest of the world,
we're so influenced by what others are doing, that we try to like,
you know, keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, right?
(13:17):
And we want to parent one way because we, you know, we see the way we're supposed
to be parenting. parenting, we're communicating, you know, so we want to try
to find that like, well, this is what works for them and what's worked for me
too. And I must be broken if it doesn't work that way.
What I realized is that, and I've done, you know, there's great books out there,
strengths-based parenting and other, other places are like, we,
(13:38):
you, you have empathy high, number one on your, on your strength report, right?
I did a little research, right? So an An empathetic ear, what does that look like for a parent?
If you have empathy high, it means that you're going to have to be more mindful
of how you listen to your children differently,
(14:03):
how you have to validate,
listen to their feelings, show them that they are heard.
Making their emotions valid and not fluff them off.
People who are high executors might be like, okay, enough of the emotions,
let's get something done.
But a lot of children sometimes need to be heard before they can move on.
(14:28):
So someone like you with empathy high, you're probably going to be able to have
a more open and welcoming environment.
Discussion, conversations, right? And you're going to embrace that and encourage that.
Now, if you know that about yourself, let's make sure you harness that and practice
that and use that and understand the best ways to ask the right questions.
(14:51):
Because there are different ways to ask questions. There are different ways
to elicit a response that's going to allow people to kind of grow and open up, become vulnerable.
And empathy high, you want the other person
to people are now i'm not but empathy isn't you know
you don't have to have empathy one like you
do to be a great mom right you can have you know
(15:12):
restorative high which is a problem solving strength
right and that person can be like hey let's
see how when your kid comes with an issue or concern you can have the problems
the solution ready for them to move forward right so knowing what that strength
is knows you can be able to have a plan of attack um how you're going to to
(15:33):
respond to the situation that you need to yourself.
I'm looking at your thing right now, you have command number 32, right?
And which is not, you're laughing, but it's okay to have strengths low.
We all have them low, right?
And if something pops up, the way that your strengths are set up,
knowing you have command low, you're not going to want to dive in and go,
(15:57):
all right, let's take the bull by the horns and do the, you know,
it's like, let's slow it down.
Let's think about this. Let's get our feelings under control.
Let's make a plan. How can we get there? Let's really think about it.
You're a thinker too with your intellection. So there's some strengths that
you're going to slow it down.
And if you know that about yourself, you can make yourself the best version in that way.
(16:21):
When your children come to you, mom, I need something.
They're going to know mom's going to be able to listen to me.
She's going to hear me. She's going to validate my feelings.
We're going to come together with a very thoughtful response on how to move forward.
If you try to be something you're not, invader, let's go. That's 31 on yours. Man, 32.
(16:42):
You're going to be like, it's not going to work.
So when you know that about yourself, you'll put yourselves in situations to
parent more effectively and more honestly and more authentically.
Yeah. And I, I'm just laughing because it's so accurate.
(17:03):
There are times that I try to pull command up from the bottom of my strengths
and it does never, it never goes over well.
And it, it just makes me feel just so drained and yuck.
So I have learned that it's not worth trying to go there.
(17:27):
It's just because it's not me. It's not who I am.
Well, you make a point there. So for those who are...
Unaware of what strengths are, there are 34 of them. And we'd like to look at them as tools.
Your strengths are your tools. How do you use these strengths or tools in everyday situations?
(17:48):
Communicating, getting things done, thinking, whatever it may be.
How do you do the things you do every day?
And so an analogy we use to kind of make people understand a little bit better
is that your top 10 is where we want you to be.
We want you to exist in your top 10 as much as as possible, use your top 10 strengths.
And the more that you're aware of those, the more you're going to be able to
(18:09):
navigate those awkward situations where you're like, oh gosh.
But you've already figured out
how to adjust and adapt and overcome those obstacles using your top 10.
So your top 10 is like the tools you have in the kitchen or that area or the pantry.
They're easy to get to. They might be even in the junk drawer.
(18:30):
You know exactly how to to use them. You pull them out. I feel comfortable and
confident with success when I use these.
Numbers 11 to 25-ish, they're the middle strengths.
Those are the ones that if you think about tools that are maybe in the garage,
they're just outside the door. You open the door to the garage, they're right there.
You have to walk a little bit of a distance, but they're there when you need
(18:51):
them. You pull them in, you use them, and when you're done, you put them right back.
You don't even think about them. They're there when you need them.
They're not going to be used every day the bottom 10
or so they're the ones that used to be drain you
emotionally physically they will drain
you they're the ones if you have a base that are very deep in the basement in
the in the dark damp dank room or somewhere in the attic in the back corner
(19:16):
somewhere far away that you're like i gotta use this i know i know i can you
i can do it i'm not gonna like it i'm not gonna do it well,
I'll be a little bit awkward or uncomfortable or drained, but.
Yeah, I got to do it sometimes. So we're not saying you don't use it.
You have to sometimes use them.
But let's learn that we don't need to always go there. We don't need to be forced to use them.
(19:41):
Try to use your other strengths first, your other tools first,
so you don't get drained.
Yeah, and I was just thinking about my empathy strength and how,
you know, I love that strength in a lot of ways.
But sometimes there are aspects to empathy that I feel make me very susceptible
(20:05):
to taking on too much emotional baggage of other people's.
So can you kind of talk just a little bit about how, you know,
our top strengths can actually have some of those other sides that we have to
be careful of, you know, not only setting boundaries,
you know, for others, but for ourselves, too.
(20:28):
Right. Well, every strength we have has there are negatives.
I don't want to say they're bad, but when we use them incorrectly,
they can become a problem.
When we're not aware of some aspects
of that strength we have what's called blind
spots areas when you are like using
(20:49):
it incorrectly so a blind spot
for someone's empathy is you know just paying attention to your emotional levels
when someone like it's it's easy to fall into the trap if you have the strength
empathy hide I have it number one as well so it's easy for me to to kind of
communicate this with you.
(21:10):
But sometimes you put other people first so often you forget about yourself and you get burned out.
And so it's okay to disconnect from other people.
That's a problem sometimes that we do with high empathy.
And every strength has this. When you overuse the strength and you are constantly
in that high gear of that strength, you get a little bit of this.
(21:32):
It's called a blind spot, and you just crash.
And Gallup calls them blind spots.
I kind of make the analogy that we have a car now, and most of our cars have
the backup up cameras and beepers and monitors and everything going on.
So we've kind of become lazy reversers.
You know, we don't like in the olden days, we had no backup cameras,
(21:54):
we had to find our blind spot.
And if we didn't see our blind spots, we would crash.
With our strengths, we need to have people whether we become aware of those
blind spots or someone else, we put we ask others in our lives,
our loved ones or people who care about us to be our blind spot monitors.
So if you have someone in your life who's close to you who knows you
and say caroline you are running on
(22:17):
empty you need to disconnect for a while recharge your
battery before you like use yourself like you're emotionally emotionally drained
right that could be something that happens because you're giving so much ask
someone like you know say hey husband best friend somebody please if you notice
i'm doing this, this, or this.
(22:37):
Pull me aside. Let me recharge.
Another thing that empathy high people have is they seem to be,
or sorry, it's called a basement, right?
So basement, there's a balcony and a basement at every strength.
The basement is like, these are behaviors or traits when you are on fire.
Your balcony is like your top flooring it. You're living large.
(22:58):
You create trust. People will come to you with problems.
You know exactly how to approach people. You'd have all the right words and
things are like, emotionally, you're helping people feel better, right?
The bottom, the basement is when you're like, things aren't going well,
you get like a little over involved.
Again, you get a little moody, you get a little soft and people, it's just not working.
(23:21):
So if you notice yourself doing those things as well, you have that trust in
person and you can communicate.
If I become this, this, or this, please help me, remind me to take a step back,
remind me to do this. Now, every strength has that.
So when you know your report, you can read over it.
You get, you know, you look at it and you say, how can I, what words can I use
(23:44):
to tell my husband, to tell my bestie, to tell my kids, if mommy starts doing this,
please gently remind her so we can, almost like in the TV shows or movies,
they throw a glass of cold water on you to wake you up, to snap you out of it, right?
(24:04):
Sometimes you need to be snapped out of it. You don't even realize you're doing
the thing and become detrimental. mental.
So we want you to use your strengths for good, not evil.
But we need to be reminded that, oh gosh, we've taken a step too far and now it's backfiring on us.
Yeah, I love that. And it's, it's important to be reminded that we, we can ask for help.
(24:26):
I know moms are notorious for trying to do everything on our own until we're
just, you know, down on the floor cry.
So yeah, it's a great reminder to be intentional about asking for support and
help with their strengths.
And moms are so, they're the harshest critics are moms,
(24:47):
because they they I mean
I've been married just me to celebrate her anniversary this week
27 years and so I've been thinking
thin with her you know with every area I have an autistic child as well so we
had a lot of issues with that and her trying to be the perfect mother all the
time and when we discovered our strengths back in 2018 and we saw what it was it was like
(25:13):
opening up, like someone was reading inside of her brain and it made things okay.
It showed us that we aren't broken. We're not wrong.
We're not like different or whatever it was. It was like, oh,
wow, this is how I do it best.
And this is how you do it best as a husband and wife partnership.
(25:37):
And so it was like, you, that's why you do what you do.
And that's why you do what you do. let's not criticize each
other for doing it differently let's embrace it
let's encourage let's become our
cheerleader for each other and encourage us to go that direction if they're
trying to change each other and i think moms sometimes think they need to be
(26:00):
superheroes all the time but like you don't know what you don't know and once
you get this information like you said you You know how you can,
you shouldn't try to be an activator, which means jump right into things and
just go right off the bat.
You need some time to reflect and contemplate and think about,
hmm, is this the right way before we take a job?
(26:22):
And where other people could be that. So you have to figure out who you are
so you don't compare yourself to others.
I can give you statistics. I can go through the whole thing.
You're never going to have someone with the same report as you.
Don't even try. It's astronomical. economical. It's one in like, I think it's 23 zeros.
That's how big the number is, right? So it's never going to happen.
(26:43):
So don't try to compare yourself to others.
It's being you, be authentically you, because you are perfect the way you are.
Yeah, and I love, I really loved getting to see that when I was learning about strengths,
it just reminded me so much that, you know, we are all completely uniquely created
by God to all come together to offer a totally different perspective and different strengths to make,
(27:11):
you know, a world that has,
we don't need to be well-rounded because God already made our strengths to come
together for the world to be well-rounded. So I just love that picture.
Well, and that is my favorite verse.
There's a gazillion translations. And I like the new living translation of this
(27:34):
particular verse. It's Ephesians 2.10.
I love it because it's the word masterpiece. We are God's masterpiece.
He created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us all now.
Not us, he. E and masterpiece means perfection.
Other translations have handiwork, you know, and I think handiwork,
(27:57):
some people like handiwork, whatever, like a masterpiece though is like perfection.
You are perfect. Stop trying to change or compare.
Use the gifts you've been given from our creator and then honor him by using
those gifts and stripes.
Yes, I love that. So if my moms want to, take a deep dive into strengths and
(28:21):
learn how to use them to improve relationships with their children and their
marriage, where can they find you?
Well, the first thing is to email me.
That's one way. Email me, dan at danshall.com. This is all going to be in the show notes.
I have a website, danshall.com. I have a Facebook group, Thriving Relationships
(28:46):
Community for Women. But if you email me, I will definitely send you the link
and invite you into the group.
And I have various ways in which I coach people. I coach people individually.
I have a small group. I'm hoping this fall, I've been working on creating a
course for parents and for teenagers.
(29:07):
I think teenagers, really, it's beneficial for your teenagers to take this because they can.
And the doors that will open when you know your strengths and your teenagers
know their strengths is so incredible.
I have two, I have an adult daughter and my youngest is going to college in
(29:28):
this year. I guess I'm an adult son now. I don't know. It's a college freshman and adult.
I think so, but he's, you know, but when I learned their strengths,
I realized that I was parenting them totally wrong, totally different because
they were totally different human beings.
And I was trying to be one size fits all the consistency strength,
which is a one size fits all thing.
I need to be not there, you know, but so I'm looking to do that this fall as well.
(29:53):
As some groups with that area.
But emailing me first, and I can give you all the information about how to get things done.
And because I'm here with you and you've honored me with this opportunity,
there is the assessment, the link for the assessment.
I don't know if we can add that to the show notes, but it's a long assessment.
(30:15):
With FinStrengths, the assessment does cost $60.
I can provide a promo code for $10 off for you to take the assessment as a gift to you.
When you email me, I can honor you with that promo code.
And then once you, if you've taken the test, once you take the test,
(30:36):
when, not if, when you take the assessment and get your results,
let me know and I'll send you up with a free 30-minute complimentary call to
break down your strengths and get you started with some tips and pointers.
That get you on your journey.
All right, thank you so much, Dan. I'm excited for my ladies to take a look.
(30:59):
Music.
At their strengths so that they can really start making forward progress in
being able to parent and be in relationships,
in strengths rather than struggling, trying to do things through weaknesses.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Hey friend.
Music.
Welcome to Episode 40. Today, I am so thrilled to welcome Dan Schall to the podcast.
Dan is a Gallup-certified CliftonStrengths coach who I have personally worked
with and had some amazing breakthroughs in my own strengths.
We are discussing the beauty of tapping into our God-given talents to uncover
(00:22):
our fullest potential as individuals, spouses, and parents, while also learning
how to navigate the strengths of those around us.
Be sure to listen to the very end for a special offer just for you.
Thank you. Hey mama, welcome to Divine Design Wellness, where we're putting
down deep spiritual roots and embracing our identity in Christ through holistic health.
(00:46):
Do you want to love your body and feel confident in motherhood?
Are you Googling quick workouts, devotionals, or time management tips?
Music.
Do you wake up with great intentions, only to find your littles take up most of your time and energy?
Hey, I'm Carolyn, holistic health and essential oils nerd.
I too was a mom of littles. I felt like my body would never be the same and
(01:09):
wish I could find time for myself.
I wanted the confidence and strength to fully enjoy life with my family,
but I kept telling myself I didn't have the time, energy, or discipline to prioritize my health.
That is until I took a holistic approach to mind, body, and spirit.
In this podcast, you will find spiritual encouragement, healthy lifestyle tips,
(01:31):
and quick self-care routines to build confidence in your body again.
If you're ready to see yourself the way God does and embrace your divine design,
go find that pile of laundry you've been avoiding, pop in those earbuds, and let's go.
I am so excited today. I have a special guest with me.
(01:53):
It's Dan Schall. He has four years of experience as a Gallup-certified CliftonStrengths coach,
and he specializes in relationships and communication for women and moms,
specifically in setting boundaries and improving relationships with their children.
So thank you so much, Dan, for joining us today to talk about strengths and all that good stuff.
(02:20):
I'm so excited to get to talk to you about this topic, especially,
you know, with my listeners, as it's played such a huge role in my journey of
growth over the past several years.
And I really think that every human out there, no matter, you know,
if it's moms, kids, you know, no matter what you do, everyone should be intimately
(02:45):
familiar with their strengths.
So before we dive into that, Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and
why you chose to become a strengths coach?
Well, first of all, I'm just honored that you would think of me to be a guest on your podcast.
It's just such a neat thing to know that I made an impact somewhat when we worked
(03:09):
together all those years ago.
So I'm really honored that you asked me. So I thank you for that.
I have always been someone who is willing to try to look at myself in a different
light, a different angle.
You know when my wife and i were dating in college she was like one of the first
people who was like hey let's read this book about how we can have better relationships
(03:34):
and do things differently and so i was all into that like hey how can we communicate
better and do those kind of things and,
i'm always willing to take the tests you know church
we did a love languages a sermon series
it was a series you know the pastor did it we all did a love languages test
and did a whole thing about that i've taken the enneagram my
(03:55):
wife's enneagram and do the myers-briggs and do all
these things and i i enjoy getting to
see myself in different lenses and so which leads us to strengths which was
something that as as a network marketing business we were both working with
suggested we take this assessment because it'll help you improve your whether it's your the leader
(04:20):
or just knowing how you work and do things your way.
So we took the assessment, we found out a little bit about ourselves.
I found it very intriguing, very interesting. And I sort of like did some things
as a teacher, as a parent, as a spouse, but this is pretty cool how I can see
how I do things. What does my brain do?
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Want to do? And how do I do that most effectively?
I received some coaching from someone. It just totally blew me away when I put
those strengths into action.
It's easy to just look at the results and go, cool, that's really neat.
And just kind of put whatever information you get aside and just bluff it off.
(05:03):
I thought, this is really cool. I'm going to now put these strengths into action
and actually apply them in my everyday life as a spouse and a husband and a father and a teacher.
And it was overwhelming how I saw things differently.
And when I realized the impact it had on me, I said to my wife,
I go, I need to be a coach. Now, I'm a teacher.
(05:24):
I've been teaching for 28 years. I start my 29th year as a teacher this year.
I'm a middle school teacher now. I used to be elementary, now I'm middle school.
Even though the kids don't know, I'm I'm always like checking their strengths
and thinking about how, what are they saying that I could use to,
you know, help develop them and of course using my strengths in that way.
But I thought as a teacher, it's natural, like being a coach as a teacher.
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And I thought that it was an easy transition for me to take.
It wasn't something that was difficult for me to speak to people.
I love the topic of strengths. I love the idea of strengths.
I love the idea of helping people. And I started to do it as a business model
first to help people improve their business.
But I quickly realized that's not where my heart was.
(06:09):
My heart was in people, not in the money part of it. And don't get me wrong. It's really important.
If you use this in a business model, it's very effective and very effective.
Useful, but my heart was in relationships. When I saw the impact I was making
in people's lives personally and relationally, I thought this is where I want to dive into.
And I've been for the past few years, I have a group that's called Thrive Relationship
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Coaching, where I want people's relationships to thrive.
So I've researched on boundaries, on communication, how to really.
Understand what your strengths, how they work for you and how they work against
you, and how you can tell people up front so they're not getting blindsided
or surprised when your behaviors do something and they go, whoa, what's that?
(06:55):
So there's a lot of things that go into it, but I just love watching people
develop into the awesome human beings they are and reach their potential.
I love making that happen for people. Yes. And I have personally been a part of that.
It kind of seems like a whole nother lifetime ago that we worked together. Yeah.
(07:17):
Three years ago. Yeah. So much has happened and changed in that time.
And like you were saying, you initially looked at strengths from a business perspective.
That's what initially brought me to strengths, but I had no idea how much it
was going to impact every other facet of my life in my relationships, in my marriage,
(07:44):
in parenting, just so many
things now that I do look through the lens of strengths it's
changed so much about my life
and I I really am so grateful that that was introduced to me and that I've had
the opportunity to really work through that and I actually it's kind of been
one of those things I put on the back burner for a little bit but it's definitely
(08:07):
something I want to reinvest into to again and fine tune and work on it more.
So I'm sure everybody's asking, well, what are strengths?
So can you tell us what this whole thing about strengths is?
Sure. So tell us what this whole thing about strengths is.
(08:28):
Sure. So Don Clifton was a psychologist many years ago, and he was investing
in what makes people, what makes businesses most successful. That was his initial.
Idea. And he interviewed many, many people and he looked at how these corporations
or these business entities were successful when people were allowed to be themselves
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and use what makes them great in the proper settings.
It wasn't like what we think about forcing a round peg into a square hole.
He was against that. He wasn't saying you must make the employee conform to
what we need, it was like, let's find the right employee for the job.
So this was more like an assessment to see, okay, would you fit in this particular role?
(09:15):
It's evolved over time into many different areas, into marriage,
into parenting, into leadership, into lots of different areas.
But the assessment reveals that we all have 34 strengths.
There are 34 strengths or talents. I'm sorry. They're called talents at first,
but then as you look at them, they become come your strengths.
(09:37):
Everyone has 34 of them. And they're broken into four categories,
executing category or domain, which is all about getting things done,
how you work and be productive.
There's influencing, which is how you get other people to move and do things.
Relationship building, which is how you connect to people and what's the methodology
(09:57):
behind that, what kind of group it is.
Is it more intimate or is it a widespread type of environment?
And then there's strategic thinking, which is how you take information.
How do you analyze information?
How do you process it? What's the best way? How do you use it the best way?
So when you take the assessment, you get a report. It's a very long report.
25 pages would be very overwhelming.
(10:19):
That's what I commend to kind of make sure people don't gloss over the important stuff.
Stuff but we look at how it's
really important that the mindset of our country
for years the way our culture in america is work on your weaknesses work on
(10:39):
your weaknesses and so we would typically ignore what we're great at and like
god we're just we're still going to be great there but if we if we're well-rounded
if we really make sure we we tie up these loose ends at the bottom will be better all around people.
But it doesn't work. What happens is when you become well-rounded,
sometimes you lose what makes you a star.
(11:00):
And I don't know when this will be put on the air, when you actually produce
it and release it, but it's Olympic time right now.
I don't want to reveal anything that's too... Everyone probably will know what
happened here. But that pothole horse.
Male pommel horse guy. He only has one specific skill that he works on.
(11:22):
He realized a long time ago that he could not be the all-around champion,
but he was really good at pommel horse.
So he dedicated all of his time to that one specific thing.
He knew it was his strength and he worked on it. He worked on it and he improved
it to the tune of getting a bronze medal at the Olympics, helping his team win
a bronze as a team, but also themselves.
So that idea that, yes, Yes, we have to work on a lot of aspects in our lives
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to make sure we are successful.
But there are certain traits that we have that are really, really,
that we focus and harness our attention and our energy on.
We will become great in those specific areas.
Yeah, I love the shift in being able to kind of come away from how culture has
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really pushed for people to focus on their weaknesses and or just only focus on,
you know, just picking something and and forcing yourself into that rather than, well,
let's start working with what you have and make that even better.
Absolutely. And I think that that applies to anyone and everything.
(12:34):
So, you know, this podcast is specifically for moms.
And so how can you encourage moms to be able to look at using strengths in parenting,
in their relationships, and specifically, you know, you specialize in communicating boundaries.
(12:55):
Yeah. How does that all tie together?
So much of me as a parent, I realized that we sort of like allow the rest of the world,
we're so influenced by what others are doing, that we try to like,
you know, keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, right?
(13:17):
And we want to parent one way because we, you know, we see the way we're supposed
to be parenting. parenting, we're communicating, you know, so we want to try
to find that like, well, this is what works for them and what's worked for me
too. And I must be broken if it doesn't work that way.
What I realized is that, and I've done, you know, there's great books out there,
strengths-based parenting and other, other places are like, we,
(13:38):
you, you have empathy high, number one on your, on your strength report, right?
I did a little research, right? So an An empathetic ear, what does that look like for a parent?
If you have empathy high, it means that you're going to have to be more mindful
of how you listen to your children differently,
(14:03):
how you have to validate,
listen to their feelings, show them that they are heard.
Making their emotions valid and not fluff them off.
People who are high executors might be like, okay, enough of the emotions,
let's get something done.
But a lot of children sometimes need to be heard before they can move on.
(14:28):
So someone like you with empathy high, you're probably going to be able to have
a more open and welcoming environment.
Discussion, conversations, right? And you're going to embrace that and encourage that.
Now, if you know that about yourself, let's make sure you harness that and practice
that and use that and understand the best ways to ask the right questions.
(14:51):
Because there are different ways to ask questions. There are different ways
to elicit a response that's going to allow people to kind of grow and open up, become vulnerable.
And empathy high, you want the other person
to people are now i'm not but empathy isn't you know
you don't have to have empathy one like you
do to be a great mom right you can have you know
(15:12):
restorative high which is a problem solving strength
right and that person can be like hey let's
see how when your kid comes with an issue or concern you can have the problems
the solution ready for them to move forward right so knowing what that strength
is knows you can be able to have a plan of attack um how you're going to to
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respond to the situation that you need to yourself.
I'm looking at your thing right now, you have command number 32, right?
And which is not, you're laughing, but it's okay to have strengths low.
We all have them low, right?
And if something pops up, the way that your strengths are set up,
knowing you have command low, you're not going to want to dive in and go,
(15:57):
all right, let's take the bull by the horns and do the, you know,
it's like, let's slow it down.
Let's think about this. Let's get our feelings under control.
Let's make a plan. How can we get there? Let's really think about it.
You're a thinker too with your intellection. So there's some strengths that
you're going to slow it down.
And if you know that about yourself, you can make yourself the best version in that way.
(16:21):
When your children come to you, mom, I need something.
They're going to know mom's going to be able to listen to me.
She's going to hear me. She's going to validate my feelings.
We're going to come together with a very thoughtful response on how to move forward.
If you try to be something you're not, invader, let's go. That's 31 on yours. Man, 32.
(16:42):
You're going to be like, it's not going to work.
So when you know that about yourself, you'll put yourselves in situations to
parent more effectively and more honestly and more authentically.
Yeah. And I, I'm just laughing because it's so accurate.
(17:03):
There are times that I try to pull command up from the bottom of my strengths
and it does never, it never goes over well.
And it, it just makes me feel just so drained and yuck.
So I have learned that it's not worth trying to go there.
(17:27):
It's just because it's not me. It's not who I am.
Well, you make a point there. So for those who are...
Unaware of what strengths are, there are 34 of them. And we'd like to look at them as tools.
Your strengths are your tools. How do you use these strengths or tools in everyday situations?
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Communicating, getting things done, thinking, whatever it may be.
How do you do the things you do every day?
And so an analogy we use to kind of make people understand a little bit better
is that your top 10 is where we want you to be.
We want you to exist in your top 10 as much as as possible, use your top 10 strengths.
And the more that you're aware of those, the more you're going to be able to
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navigate those awkward situations where you're like, oh gosh.
But you've already figured out
how to adjust and adapt and overcome those obstacles using your top 10.
So your top 10 is like the tools you have in the kitchen or that area or the pantry.
They're easy to get to. They might be even in the junk drawer.
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You know exactly how to to use them. You pull them out. I feel comfortable and
confident with success when I use these.
Numbers 11 to 25-ish, they're the middle strengths.
Those are the ones that if you think about tools that are maybe in the garage,
they're just outside the door. You open the door to the garage, they're right there.
You have to walk a little bit of a distance, but they're there when you need
(18:51):
them. You pull them in, you use them, and when you're done, you put them right back.
You don't even think about them. They're there when you need them.
They're not going to be used every day the bottom 10
or so they're the ones that used to be drain you
emotionally physically they will drain
you they're the ones if you have a base that are very deep in the basement in
the in the dark damp dank room or somewhere in the attic in the back corner
(19:16):
somewhere far away that you're like i gotta use this i know i know i can you
i can do it i'm not gonna like it i'm not gonna do it well,
I'll be a little bit awkward or uncomfortable or drained, but.
Yeah, I got to do it sometimes. So we're not saying you don't use it.
You have to sometimes use them.
But let's learn that we don't need to always go there. We don't need to be forced to use them.
(19:41):
Try to use your other strengths first, your other tools first,
so you don't get drained.
Yeah, and I was just thinking about my empathy strength and how,
you know, I love that strength in a lot of ways.
But sometimes there are aspects to empathy that I feel make me very susceptible
(20:05):
to taking on too much emotional baggage of other people's.
So can you kind of talk just a little bit about how, you know,
our top strengths can actually have some of those other sides that we have to
be careful of, you know, not only setting boundaries,
you know, for others, but for ourselves, too.
(20:28):
Right. Well, every strength we have has there are negatives.
I don't want to say they're bad, but when we use them incorrectly,
they can become a problem.
When we're not aware of some aspects
of that strength we have what's called blind
spots areas when you are like using
(20:49):
it incorrectly so a blind spot
for someone's empathy is you know just paying attention to your emotional levels
when someone like it's it's easy to fall into the trap if you have the strength
empathy hide I have it number one as well so it's easy for me to to kind of
communicate this with you.
(21:10):
But sometimes you put other people first so often you forget about yourself and you get burned out.
And so it's okay to disconnect from other people.
That's a problem sometimes that we do with high empathy.
And every strength has this. When you overuse the strength and you are constantly
in that high gear of that strength, you get a little bit of this.
(21:32):
It's called a blind spot, and you just crash.
And Gallup calls them blind spots.
I kind of make the analogy that we have a car now, and most of our cars have
the backup up cameras and beepers and monitors and everything going on.
So we've kind of become lazy reversers.
You know, we don't like in the olden days, we had no backup cameras,
(21:54):
we had to find our blind spot.
And if we didn't see our blind spots, we would crash.
With our strengths, we need to have people whether we become aware of those
blind spots or someone else, we put we ask others in our lives,
our loved ones or people who care about us to be our blind spot monitors.
So if you have someone in your life who's close to you who knows you
and say caroline you are running on
(22:17):
empty you need to disconnect for a while recharge your
battery before you like use yourself like you're emotionally emotionally drained
right that could be something that happens because you're giving so much ask
someone like you know say hey husband best friend somebody please if you notice
i'm doing this, this, or this.
(22:37):
Pull me aside. Let me recharge.
Another thing that empathy high people have is they seem to be,
or sorry, it's called a basement, right?
So basement, there's a balcony and a basement at every strength.
The basement is like, these are behaviors or traits when you are on fire.
Your balcony is like your top flooring it. You're living large.
(22:58):
You create trust. People will come to you with problems.
You know exactly how to approach people. You'd have all the right words and
things are like, emotionally, you're helping people feel better, right?
The bottom, the basement is when you're like, things aren't going well,
you get like a little over involved.
Again, you get a little moody, you get a little soft and people, it's just not working.
(23:21):
So if you notice yourself doing those things as well, you have that trust in
person and you can communicate.
If I become this, this, or this, please help me, remind me to take a step back,
remind me to do this. Now, every strength has that.
So when you know your report, you can read over it.
You get, you know, you look at it and you say, how can I, what words can I use
(23:44):
to tell my husband, to tell my bestie, to tell my kids, if mommy starts doing this,
please gently remind her so we can, almost like in the TV shows or movies,
they throw a glass of cold water on you to wake you up, to snap you out of it, right?
(24:04):
Sometimes you need to be snapped out of it. You don't even realize you're doing
the thing and become detrimental. mental.
So we want you to use your strengths for good, not evil.
But we need to be reminded that, oh gosh, we've taken a step too far and now it's backfiring on us.
Yeah, I love that. And it's, it's important to be reminded that we, we can ask for help.
(24:26):
I know moms are notorious for trying to do everything on our own until we're
just, you know, down on the floor cry.
So yeah, it's a great reminder to be intentional about asking for support and
help with their strengths.
And moms are so, they're the harshest critics are moms,
(24:47):
because they they I mean
I've been married just me to celebrate her anniversary this week
27 years and so I've been thinking
thin with her you know with every area I have an autistic child as well so we
had a lot of issues with that and her trying to be the perfect mother all the
time and when we discovered our strengths back in 2018 and we saw what it was it was like
(25:13):
opening up, like someone was reading inside of her brain and it made things okay.
It showed us that we aren't broken. We're not wrong.
We're not like different or whatever it was. It was like, oh,
wow, this is how I do it best.
And this is how you do it best as a husband and wife partnership.
(25:37):
And so it was like, you, that's why you do what you do.
And that's why you do what you do. let's not criticize each
other for doing it differently let's embrace it
let's encourage let's become our
cheerleader for each other and encourage us to go that direction if they're
trying to change each other and i think moms sometimes think they need to be
(26:00):
superheroes all the time but like you don't know what you don't know and once
you get this information like you said you You know how you can,
you shouldn't try to be an activator, which means jump right into things and
just go right off the bat.
You need some time to reflect and contemplate and think about,
hmm, is this the right way before we take a job?
(26:22):
And where other people could be that. So you have to figure out who you are
so you don't compare yourself to others.
I can give you statistics. I can go through the whole thing.
You're never going to have someone with the same report as you.
Don't even try. It's astronomical. economical. It's one in like, I think it's 23 zeros.
That's how big the number is, right? So it's never going to happen.
(26:43):
So don't try to compare yourself to others.
It's being you, be authentically you, because you are perfect the way you are.
Yeah, and I love, I really loved getting to see that when I was learning about strengths,
it just reminded me so much that, you know, we are all completely uniquely created
by God to all come together to offer a totally different perspective and different strengths to make,
(27:11):
you know, a world that has,
we don't need to be well-rounded because God already made our strengths to come
together for the world to be well-rounded. So I just love that picture.
Well, and that is my favorite verse.
There's a gazillion translations. And I like the new living translation of this
(27:34):
particular verse. It's Ephesians 2.10.
I love it because it's the word masterpiece. We are God's masterpiece.
He created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us all now.
Not us, he. E and masterpiece means perfection.
Other translations have handiwork, you know, and I think handiwork,
(27:57):
some people like handiwork, whatever, like a masterpiece though is like perfection.
You are perfect. Stop trying to change or compare.
Use the gifts you've been given from our creator and then honor him by using
those gifts and stripes.
Yes, I love that. So if my moms want to, take a deep dive into strengths and
(28:21):
learn how to use them to improve relationships with their children and their
marriage, where can they find you?
Well, the first thing is to email me.
That's one way. Email me, dan at danshall.com. This is all going to be in the show notes.
I have a website, danshall.com. I have a Facebook group, Thriving Relationships
(28:46):
Community for Women. But if you email me, I will definitely send you the link
and invite you into the group.
And I have various ways in which I coach people. I coach people individually.
I have a small group. I'm hoping this fall, I've been working on creating a
course for parents and for teenagers.
(29:07):
I think teenagers, really, it's beneficial for your teenagers to take this because they can.
And the doors that will open when you know your strengths and your teenagers
know their strengths is so incredible.
I have two, I have an adult daughter and my youngest is going to college in
(29:28):
this year. I guess I'm an adult son now. I don't know. It's a college freshman and adult.
I think so, but he's, you know, but when I learned their strengths,
I realized that I was parenting them totally wrong, totally different because
they were totally different human beings.
And I was trying to be one size fits all the consistency strength,
which is a one size fits all thing.
I need to be not there, you know, but so I'm looking to do that this fall as well.
(29:53):
As some groups with that area.
But emailing me first, and I can give you all the information about how to get things done.
And because I'm here with you and you've honored me with this opportunity,
there is the assessment, the link for the assessment.
I don't know if we can add that to the show notes, but it's a long assessment.
(30:15):
With FinStrengths, the assessment does cost $60.
I can provide a promo code for $10 off for you to take the assessment as a gift to you.
When you email me, I can honor you with that promo code.
And then once you, if you've taken the test, once you take the test,
(30:36):
when, not if, when you take the assessment and get your results,
let me know and I'll send you up with a free 30-minute complimentary call to
break down your strengths and get you started with some tips and pointers.
That get you on your journey.
All right, thank you so much, Dan. I'm excited for my ladies to take a look.
(30:59):
Music.
At their strengths so that they can really start making forward progress in
being able to parent and be in relationships,
in strengths rather than struggling, trying to do things through weaknesses.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Hey friend.
Music.
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