Strengths form the foundation for effective coaching and mentoring. In this session, we explore participants' strengths in the context of team performance and then dive into how to improve individual performance through effective coaching.

1. Building a High‐Performing Team
Team
Diverse Strengths & Shared Values

2. The Research: Which Puppet Would You Choose?

3. We Tend to Gravitate Towards People
Who Are Just Like Us . . .

4. It Happens in the Workplace Too . . .

5. Common Ground is Important . . . So
is Diversity
Shared Values
Diverse Strengths

6. “We wanted to come up with committable core values
and by committable, meaning we're actually willing to
hire or fire people based on whether they're living up to
those values, completely independent of their actual job
performance.“
‐‐ Tony Hsieh, Zappos Founder
Do Values Really Matter?

7. Zappos Hiring
Process . . .
How can you find out what their
values are?

8. Values & Motivation
“Man is so made that when anything fires his
soul, impossibilities vanish.”
‐‐Jean de la Fontaine
Passion =
Values in
Action

9. How Can We Get Them to Bring
Their Values to Work?

10. A Word About Strengths
• Is it just something that you’re good
at?
• Is it different from a skill or ability?
• Traditionally we would define a
talent in terms of the output
• Strengths theory defines it in terms
of energy and engagement

11. Know Thyself
“A leader needs to know his strengths as a
carpenter knows his tools, or as a physician
knows the instruments at her disposal. What
great leaders have in common is that each truly
knows his or her strengths – and can call on the
right strength at the right time. This explains
why there is no definitive list of characteristics
that describes all leaders.”
‐ Dr. Donald O. Clifton

12. How do I identify my strengths?
• What is working well and how can I do
more of it?
• What things energize me?
• Do I feel a sense of yearning or
inevitability?
• Would I do this even if I weren’t getting
paid?
• VIA and SBL surveys

14. Gallup Strengths Framework

15. Your Strengths . . .

16. Net Energy Yield

17. Compounding . . .
Small, Intentional Tweaks

18. Change the Frame

19. Why Focus on Strengths . . . What About
Weaknesses?

21. Focus On Strengths

22. Not Weaknesses

23. Strengths in Overdrive

24. How Well Do You Know Your Team?

26. Why Should I Get to Know My Team?
• Can’t they just put their heads down and do their
work?
• This is a fast‐paced work environment. We focus
on results. We don’t have time for personalities.
• I’m not your therapist. We have a job to do, so
let’s do it.

28. Strengths and Motivation
What works for one employee may not work
for another. The approach needs to be
tailored to each team member.

29. A Tale of Two Staff
Executing
Relationship Building

30. Personalize
We’re all unique (no this is not photo shopped)

31. Build a Common Vocabulary
Strengths
assessments are a
doorway to a
conversation . . .

32. Build a Common Vocabulary

33. What are you doing
to develop the
talent you have?

34. What separates truly
great performers from
everyone else?

35. Deep Domain
Knowledge

36. Willingness to Repeat Hard Things,
Even After Initial Failures

37. Push Themselves Just
Beyond Their Current
Capabilities

38. "Organizations tend to assign
people based on what they're
already good at, not what
they need to work on."
‐ Geoff Colvin

39. Developmental Goals
"The best performers set goals
that are not just about the
outcome, but about the process
of reaching the outcome."

40. Deliberate Practice

41. Talent Development & Coaching
“If we treat people as
they are, we make them
worse. If we treat people
as they ought to be, we
help them become what
they are capable of
becoming.”
— Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe

42. Separate Coaching
from Mentoring

43. Structured
Coaching

44. 3‐3‐1 in 15 minutes
•What’s working?
•What’s not?
•One goal

45. Coaching Tip: Ask Good Questions
• What’s the one thing that you could do now
that would have the biggest impact on your
future success in leadership?
• What's the one thing you could do that would
have the biggest impact on your relationships
with members of your project teams?
• What relationships should you be cultivating?
• What are you doing to stretch yourself from a
technical perspective?

46. Coaching Tip: Practice Reflective
Listening
“What I hear you
saying is . . .”

47. It’s Not About the Nail

48. Mentoring
“Not everyone at your firm is
likely to be an effective
mentor. Good mentors are
typically a scarce
resource at firms.”

49. What would happen if
everyone at your company
knew where you were going
and why?

50. How do we create clear linkages between
my job and the company goals?

51. Embrace Radical Transparency

52. Dan Griffiths, CPA, CGMA is the Director of Strategic
Planning at Tanner, LLC, a Salt Lake City‐based professional
services firm with 115 team members. Prior to merging his
practice with Tanner, he co‐founded Proficio Services Group
to provide strategic & business planning, leadership
development, and business coaching services. Dan is a
graduate of the 2010 AICPA Leadership Academy and in
2011‐2012 served as the chair of the Young CPA Network
Committee for the AICPA. Dan has also been very active
with the UACPA and in 2011 was recognized as the
Outstanding CPA in Business and Management. He was
recently selected to serve as Utah’s elected member of the
AICPA Governing Council. Dan is an avid flyfisher,
backpacker, and gardener. He and his wife Bibiana just
welcomed their fourth child to the family.
Contact Dan at: dgriffiths@tannerco.com
Or connect with him on LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com/in/dangriffithscpa