Understanding and Investing in Your Discipline Talent -- Season 4

To learn more about Gallup's additional strengths resources, visit
the Gallup Strengths Center: http://on.gallup.com/1l04XVZ.

Gallup's Theme Thursday is a live Webcast that targets strengths
coaches and enthusiasts to provide a deeper context behind the
language of strengths by talking in-depth about each of the 34
Clifton StrengthsFinder themes.

On this Theme Thursday Season Four webcast, Jim Collison, Gallup's
Director of Talent Sourcing, and Maika Leibbrandt, Senior Workplace
Consultant, talk about Discipline.

People exceptionally talented in Discipline enjoy routine and
structure. Their world is best described by the order they create.
Individuals with Discipline are detail-oriented and architects of
structure. They don’t just follow the rules that are in front of
them but they think in a way that creates rules. People with
Discipline are quite planned, they’re exact and exacting.

When Discipline is at its best, it brings order and stability to
chaos or to mess, not just bringing order and stability where there
already is some. Discipline is enhancing the current reality by
sorting it into predictable order. It’s thoughtfully moving through
tasks in a way that maximizes effort. With this, there is an
element of efficiency.

Get close to the measure of success on every team you’re on. Ask
where we are going, even if it seems no one else is asking this.
You can be a safari guide for others by moving people from the
current state to a desired state by incorporating a plan. A plan
for someone like you is a vehicle, and your best tool you can
offer. You know that a plan has a start, a middle, and an end and
that’s the best tool for you to make the best sense of chaos in
your own life. Also think of a plan as an opportunity for you to
raise your hand and offer your best to other people. Break big
projects into manageable plans, you can break something complicated
down into something trackable.

Ask for rules, metrics, and clear understanding of what the best
outcome should be and ask for that in a way that isn’t left up to
interpretation. Ask for the black and white evidence of whether
something is on track. Ask for overt permission or agreement to
sort and organize. You can run into trouble if it feels like
everyone is sorting and organizing.

Worry less about doing things differently for the sake of doing
things creatively. You should pay attention to improvement and
measure it, but don’t throw your hat into the ring when it comes to
creativity for creativity’s sake. Your Discipline can be a benefit
to other people if you can separate it from ownership. It can be a
great tool to other people if you can use discipline in more of a
leadership capacity. Help other people plan and let go of the
ownership of the outcome.

Expect practical relationships with what is. It’s about dealing
with what’s in front of you than a matter of what if. Understand
the moving pieces that are in front of you instead of dreaming
about what they can be. Expect a value of what is promised. Those
with Discipline are always on the way to a goal, so shifting goals
or priorities will need to be obvious and overt.

Recognize the safety or the order they’ve created for others.
Recognize them with data and statistics to back up why you believe
something is positive. Don’t just say “that was great.” Instead,
talk about the effect of their work, their process, or their
structure. Explain to them because of their approach, you achieved
XYZ.

Stretch by asking for the most important goals they’re facing, and
then ask how you can stretch them in meaningful and achievable
ways. Tap into their process for achieving goals to help them
achieve their own. Ask them what they could do more efficiently, or
even times of the day they are more disciplined than others.

Support those with discipline by offering metrics when you have
them, and create them when you don’t. There is always something you
can rate, rank, or sort and that makes chaos more organized. It's a
benefit to be a thought partner to this executing theme. Discipline
is how do I move towards a goal, not just how do I think in a
really clear manner. You can be be a great thinking partner by
helping someone with Discipline get something they need done, done
by thinking and talking it through.

If Discipline is one of your Dominant Themes, invest in it this
week through the following challenge items:
1. Develop your trusted set of routines for when flexibility or
change is required. 3-step response system.

2. Add “3 big priorities” to your calendar for each day.

3. Name a time your Discipline created excellence for someone
else.


If Discipline is not one of your dominant themes, invest in it this
week through the following challenge items:
1. Find an accountability partner (Relationship-Building): Who
keeps you honest in pursuit of your goals? Host a goal-meeting date
where you talk both about where you want to go and where you are
currently going.

2. Name a habit you’ve been meaning to acquire. Take one small step
toward this habit every single day, at the same time of day, for 1
week.