Podcasts Business Lead Through Strengths Career Branding When Relator Is Your Strength

Career Branding When Relator Is Your Strength

Published: Dec. 16, 2018, 8:30 a.m.

I get tons of questions about how to go deeper to align your CliftonStrengths talent theme of Relator with your career. So in this series, I break down one strength per episode.

That way,\xa0 you can add to the insights from your StrengthsFinder report and make a better match between your job and your strengths.

\u2013 If you\u2019re reading 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.

\u2013 If you\u2019re reading 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.

Today, the talent theme of the episode is Relator. You\u2019ll get three layers to chew on:

  1. Career Branding
  2. Red Flag Situations At Work
  3. Fresh Application Ideas

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Career Branding For Relator

You probably already have a reputation for\xa0what\xa0you know. If you imagine your resume or your LinkedIn profile, I bet it\u2019s full of \u201cthe what,\u201d which are things like job titles, skills, knowledge, expertise, or the degree you earned.

What\u2019s missing in most resumes and profile is \u201cthe how,\u201d and this is where your StrengthsFinder talent themes live. This is an overlooked use for LinkedIn. That\u2019s why it\u2019s not just for job seekers \u2013 it\u2019s also about shaping your career.

I bet you are just like my StrengthsFinder training clients, where you don\u2019t see your teammates and customers every day. That\u2019s why LinkedIn has become so important for career branding. It\u2019s where your teammates, customers, and vendors go look you up before a meeting \u2013 to see who they\u2019re about to talk to.

Rather than only telling them\xa0what\xa0you know, you should also give them a peek at\xa0how\xa0it is to work with you. So here are a bunch of adjectives you can consider using in your career branding and your LinkedIn profile. People who lead through Relator often have a tight-circle, a good BS Alert System, and are often:

  • Friendly
  • Genuine
  • Loyal
  • Transparent
  • Caring
  • Trustworthy
  • Authenticity-Spotters
  • Deep Connectors
  • Relationship-Focused
Red Flag Situations For Relator

These are the cultures, interactions, or situations that feel like soul-sucking drudgery to someone with the talent theme of Relator. 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 disengage on the job or become detached at work.

Here are two Red flags for Relator:

  1. Keeping Up Appearances.\xa0If you have the Relator talent and you feel that people are always Peacocking around to show off only the polished, perfect parts of their contributions at work, you\u2019ll probably be drained by the relationships at work because you think they\u2019re fake and superficial.
  2. Transactional. If you\u2019re in a role where there\u2019s no time or desire for building relationships over time, you\u2019ll be drained by it. If the sterile, fast, transactional exchanges are part of the expectation, you need to find other ways to fuel your need for care and friendships. Try challenging yourself to see how quickly you can drip in relationship-building anecdotes into a 30-second conversation (note: this doesn\u2019t mean superficial, talk-about-the-weather type of small talk). Activities like this will help you test it out to see if there\u2019s room for relationships in your organization.
3 Fresh Application Ideas for Relator

These are ways to apply the talent theme of Relator at work, even when the job duties on the team feel pretty locked in. If you\u2019re listening 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 Relator, put this talent to good use with one of these options:

  1. Nurture. When you need a deep relationship to develop over time, think of someone with the Relator talent to nurture it over the long term. For example, this could be someone who manages your most important account. Or it could be the person who onboards new hires as their first-year mentor. Or it could be a performance coach who helps a peer develop over time.
  2. Confidentiality. Sometimes you can\u2019t tell everyone about a decision or a product or a process change. Yet you need someone to be assigned to it. Often, people with the Relator talent are great keepers-of-confidences. Especially when they can tell it is important to someone else.
  3. Authentic. Imagine a situation where your team or your brand is getting dinged for being stiff, stodgy, and old school. You\u2019re afraid to swing too far into the informality that seems to be taking the world by storm. You still worry about professionalism, yet you need to attract great talent to your team. If you\u2019re trying to strike the balance, call on someone with the Relator talent to bring the authentic, professional personality of your team out to the world. This can be valuable for marketing your team and your company when you\u2019re hiring for the next opening.

So there you have it. It\u2019s a quick tour for building your career through the talent theme of Relator. 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\xa0our training page\xa0to 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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