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I hear a lot of curiosity about how to apply your CliftonStrengths talent theme of Harmony to your career.

In this series, I break down one strength per post \\u2014 so that you can add to the insights from your StrengthsFinder report and make a better alignment between your job and your strengths.

- If you\\u2019re exploring this concept as a manager, use this series for career development ideas and even new clues about responsibilities you could give a person with this talent theme so that they can show up at their best.

- If you\\u2019re exploring this concept for yourself, use this as a chance to build a reputation for your strengths so that you\\u2019re more likely to be given assignments that live in your strengths zone.

You\\u2019ll get three layers to chew on:

1. Career Branding

2. Red Flag Situations At Work

3. Fresh Application Ideas

Career Branding When Harmony Is Your Strength

You probably already have a reputation for what you know. Think about your personal resume, CV, or your LinkedIn profile, I bet it\'s full of \\u201cthe what,\\u201d which are things like job titles, skills, knowledge, expertise, or the degree you earned. What\\u2019s missing is usually "the how,\\u201d and this is where your StrengthsFinder talent themes live.

Chances are good that you are a lot like my StrengthsFinder training clients, where you don\\u2019t physically see your teammates and customers every day. That\\u2019s why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding. It\\u2019s how your teammates, customers, and vendors go look you up before a meeting - to see who they\\u2019re about to talk to. And rather than only telling them what you know, you should also give them a peek at how it is to work with you.

So here are a bunch of Harmony-related adjectives to consider using in your career branding efforts and your LinkedIn profile:

• Agreeable
• Mediator
• Pragmatist
• Diplomat
• Tactful
• Ambassador
• Sympathetic
• Diplomatic
• Ruffled Feather Smoother
• Similarity Spotter
• Consensus Finder

Red Flag Situations For Harmony

These are the cultures, interactions, or situations that feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone with the talent theme of Harmony. They might even make you want to quit the team. So I\\u2019ll give you a couple of these to be on watch for \\u2014 because if they fester, you might get the urge to quit the job or become detached and disengaged at work.

Here are two Red flags for Harmony:

1. The Awkward Hushes: Imagine the situation where you walk into the kitchen at work, and you hear two of your teammates talking about another colleague and how to undo that thing that they all got pressured into. This makes you feel super uncomfortable, because you don\\u2019t like constant conflict - and it bugs you that they won\\u2019t work it out in a healthy way in the room together. If you see a lot of closed-door conversations or offline conversations that seem secretive, this environment might feel toxic to you.

2. The My Way Or The Highway Team: Lets say you\\u2019re are a member of a team that has a few very strong personalities. Instead of focusing on what needs to be done during a meeting, many of the team members spend a good chunk of the time re-hashing things that you thought were addressed last week. They tend to do this. When they don\\u2019t get their way, they won\\u2019t let a topic die. This meeting deja vu is wasting your time, and it might crush your mental energy because you can so clearly see the common ground that they can\\u2019t see because they\\u2019re unwilling to hear the other party\\u2019s point of view.

3 Fresh Application Ideas for Harmony

These are ways to apply the talent theme of Harmony at work, even when the job duties on the team feel pretty locked in. If you\\u2019re exploring this concept as a team manager, be sure to have a conversation around these ideas. You\\u2019ll both be able to come up with places to apply them.

For someone who leads through Harmony, put this talent to good use with one of these options:

1. Find The Same Page. When you\\u2019re on a team that has a lot of unproductive fighting, ask your person who leads through Harmony to give voice to the things that they agree on. It can add a lot of value to the team to say, \\u201cIt strikes me that we agree on these 4 things, and that item #5 is the only one we need to work out.\\u201d It will feel like Mr. Obvious to someone with Harmony, yet often with internal battles, people get lost in the argument and can\\u2019t stay clear and objective about what they\\u2019re negotiating.

2. Set Agreements In Advance. If you see an issue that will likely lead to conflict with your team member who leads through Harmony, have them consider what could go wrong in advance. Have them chat about expectations with their teammates before the issue happens so that when it comes up, it\\u2019s easier to raise the situation. This will keep them out of conflict avoidance mode.

3. Get A Wing Man. Ha! Not in that way. It\\u2019s a talent wing man. This is to have the person who leads through Harmony to match up with a person who leads through Command or Self-Assurance or Activator, basically, someone who will not waffle on a topic - they\\u2019ll be a partner who can help things move along and not get stuck when conflict arises. This partner can sometimes take over the conflict resolution. And, this person can also be a conflict-mentor who helps the person with Harmony see how things go down when they are addressed immediately and firmly. Although the person with Harmony won\\u2019t deliver the messages in the same way, they\\u2019ll get some resolution ideas and confidence by watching the masters at work.

So there you have it. It\\u2019s a quick tour for building your career through the talent theme of Harmony. So, here\\u2019s your homework:

1. Go take action on your LinkedIn profile with the career branding section. Challenge yourself to write one sentence in the Summary section of LinkedIn that captures how you collaborate as a teammate at work.
2. Then think over the red flags to see if there\\u2019s anything you need to get in front of before it brings you down.
3. And finally, volunteer your talents through the application ideas. And if you\\u2019re a manager, have a conversation with your team members about which of these things sound like something they\\u2019d love to have more of.

Rock Your Talents As A Team

If you\\u2019re thinking about doing a virtual or in-person event to kick off your strengths-based culture, head on over to our training page to see if our current offerings are a good fit for you. Until next time, thank you for being part of this powerful strengths movement that helps people unleash the awesomeness already inside them.

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