- If you were asked to list your five greatest strengths, could you do it?

Life Coach MaLinda Perry says, we have 34 strengths as individuals, and learning them in sequence can be an important part of living a productive and healthy life.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

(upbeat music) What if people embraced a self-help strategy that focused on capitalizing what we're good at rather than improving what we're not so good at?

Life Coach MaLinda Perry of Gillette thinks that's a great idea, and she makes a living helping individuals do exactly that.

You categorize yourself as a strengths coach.

I have a feeling we're not talking about bench presses and squats in the locker room.

What strengths, what do you mean by strengths?

- Gallup strengths is an assessment we run.

Everybody has 34 strengths.

- Everybody?

- Everybody.

- Perry is trained in the well-established Gallup strengths assessment, also known as the CliftonStrengths or StrengthsFinder, developed in 1999 by PhD psychologist Donald Clifton, chairman of the famed Gallup Research Organization.

It's long been used in business to evaluate employees and job applicants as well as by colleges, universities, professional sports teams, and government agencies, including the Wyoming Department of Education.

Nearly 40 million Americans have taken the Gallup assessment, but overwhelmingly in employment or institutional settings.

MaLinda Perry's job is helping individuals do it on their own.

- Dr.

Clifton decided many years ago, he said, what would happen if we focused on what was right with somebody instead of what was wrong with them?

And he took all his clients and developed an assessment and found out that between all of the people he ran this through, thousands, that everybody had 34 strengths, and they're all learned except for one.

And so you start learning them as young as two years old.

And by the time you are, you know, by the time you're done baking, so guys, 28 years old, somewhere around there, and girls, 24, your strengths are pretty much where they're gonna be the rest of your life.

- Well, I can tell right now we have a lot to talk about.

(MaLinda laughs) I am reminded of a phrase that I think we've all heard and maybe almost everyone has used, which is you just don't know your own strength.

And it tends to be used when something unexpected and maybe even unwanted has happened.

But I think from talking to you, that's very, very close to what you're talking about, isn't it?

Knowing what strengths are and what the best way to use them is, once you do recognize.

- Right.

And I think for myself, I only knew my top five going into my certification.

Everybody in the class opened up their assessment to see what their bottom strength was, of course.

And mine was discipline.

And I spent my whole childhood, my dad saying, there's no discipline in you and you have no discipline.

And I opened it up.

Sure enough, number 34 was no, I have no discipline.

- And by this time you've gone through a process where you weren't surprised at least when you learned.

- I wasn't surprised, you know, I was relieved.

It was like, oh, thank gosh, I don't have to do this anymore.

I spent so many years trying to be the perfect military daughter.

There were these qualities that I just felt like everyone had expectations of me to be this perfect girl, the perfect cheerleader, the perfect student, you know?

And it was exhausting, like, I had an eating disorder, and I was tired of being this, trying to be this perfect person.

And when I got my assessment, opened it up, and saw discipline at number 34, I laughed hysterically.

And they were like, what's so funny?

I said, oh, thank gosh, I don't have to be that girl anymore.

- That's interesting.

I have a feeling if I opened up that list and I saw something in listed at the bottom, I think an initial reaction for lots of people would be, what?

I better get to work on that right now and move that up the list.

- Right.

- Yes or no?

- No.

- No.

- Everybody wants to do that.

I need to make it better.

But what we have found is your top strengths already make you incredible.

I liken it to the strengths at the bottom.

To work on those is like pulling an oak tree up from the roots.

How much work would it take you to pull that tree up from the ground to win?

- And then where would you be?

- You would only be here, and you'd only be like this far off the ground.

And if we've focused on your top strengths and grow them, they're gonna go through the roof, and pulling from the bottom, it just makes you mediocre.

And I'm pretty sure you weren't made to be mediocre.

- Not everybody needs to be disciplined.

- [MaLinda] No.

- In other words.

- [MaLinda] No.

- It's okay if you aren't.

- Exactly.

- Especially if you know what your strengths are.

Okay, what are your top five?

What have you learned?

- My top five are strategic, adaptability, so it runs amuck all the time, and let's say achiever, positivity, and ideation.

- Ideation.

- I think outside the box.

Yep.

I tell people it's like that head icon and you see the head and then you see all the little icons around it, the light bulb and all of that.

That's how my brain works.

So with strategic and ideation, my mind moves really fast.

So I tend to make people a little crazy sometimes.

- You've turned this into a fair to say it's a business, right?

- Yeah.

- But it's called what?

- MaLinda Perry Consulting.

- Would you classify what you do as being on this very broad spectrum of mental health from petting your dog in a quiet time to seeing a psychiatrist who's an MD, among other things and everything in between.

- Right.

- Where do you see yourself and your field slotting into that gamut?

- Oh, I love that question.

We're not therapists.

Coaches aren't therapists.

I don't care where you've been.

I don't care what your past has dictated.

I care, but it's not part of the equation.

I want to see where you're at now and push you forward.

All of your strengths, all of your greatness, all of your, I want you to see yourself through my eyes.

- The word coaching has connotations, for better or for worse, often are associated with sports, I suppose.

- [MaLinda] Right.

- I've witnessed people who are trained, and in your case, like your case, certified, meet with resistance.

And the resistance comes from this.

Who are you to tell me how to live?

What's so great about you that you can tell me how to live my life?

I bet you experienced that.

- A little bit.

Not as much as what most people think.

By the time people come to me, they decided that it's time to make a change or I need to do something different, or maybe I just need somebody in my corner for once, and that makes a big difference.

- What if my transmission needed to be overhauled?

I don't know how to do that, but I can find someone who does.

And I guess take it further into the world of the sports coach.

I've seen a lot of coaches talking and they're telling that talented young athlete to do something, but that coach couldn't do it a million years.

- [MaLinda] Right.

- But he knows what to do, she knows how to teach it.

And that's what you do.

- Right, that's exactly what I do.

And hopefully by the, I look at all my clients as they just become part of like, I feel like their family, you know?

And a lot of people would say that crosses the line.

But when you work with a coach and you get to know, as a coach, I get to know their family and their dynamics, and I care about your Thanksgiving.

I care about, you know, what your kids are doing, and how they're moving forward.

I truly embrace you as a person, which gives me that insight as to what makes you just along with your strengths, but what makes you, how you use them to get you over the hump strategically help you make a plan that moves you forward faster.

And who wants to stuck, get, stay stuck, or sit on the pity potty for too long?

No.

- How many people have you encountered who don't even realize that's where they are?

A lot.

- A lot of people, I even say coaches need coaches.

I have coaches that help me get over that hump or move forward.

I think we can all use, sometimes it's just great to have an accountability partner to say, I want to, this is my goal for this year.

Help me get to that end goal.

And we do a little bit of that too.

- I was a newspaper man for a long time.

I used to write a particular editorial around New Year's, and I said, make those New Year's resolutions.

Because even if you don't meet them, you're starting out with good intentions.

- Right.

- And that's the place, that's a good place to begin.

- If you're not dreaming or growing, you're dead.

Our whole lives, people give us these barrier labels.

My dad gave me my Disney-esque gratitude, didn't know what it was.

- Gratitude?

- [MaLinda] Disney-esque.

- Disney-esque.

- Disney-esque.

And I thought it was because I collected Disney.

And so he'd always say, your Disney-esque gratitude's gonna get you in trouble.

My big military captain dad.

And I'd say, I don't know what that means.

And so when I got my strengths and I understood what that was, oh, my positivity shines brighter than everything else.

My positivity, people have asked me, positivity is like a floppy strength.

No, my positivity is my lifeline.

I know you can put me in any situation at any time, anywhere, and I'm gonna come out just fine.

And that's what he failed to see.

So I think a lot of times people see our strengths, but they don't see 'em as a strength because we might be using them wrong.

- I'm sure most people would think, would say, I wanna be more positive.

What if I take my strength as you put it, get them listed and my positivity is number 34?

- Right.

- Does that, is that it for me?

I can't- - No.

I wouldn't say let's work at it until you get it 'cause that's just gonna be like doing everything with your opposite hand like pulling up an oak tree by the roots.

But knowing your strengths can, we say, when you understand your strengths, the outcome is profoundly different.

And that came from a high school student.

And what it meant was, what he meant was, I now know what my strengths are, but because I know them, I know how to pair them.

I know how to make them hold hands.

So because you don't have positivity up here and it's down here, you might have developer, you might have belief, or you might have these other amazing strengths that are futuristic that comes across as positive.

And knowing how to use that, you can always bring that sense of positivity.

- Positivity follows.

- [MaLinda] Exactly.

- Connect to an extent.

- [MaLinda] Right.

- What are 34 strengths?

I'm not asking to list them all off here.

It's not a memorization concept.

What are some others?

- So all 34 fall under four leadership domains.

There's heart strengths, which are blue, and they're color coded in the assessments.

So the blue strengths are heart, they're like harmony, empathy, developer, positivity, adaptability.

They tend to be, they're not all warm, fuzzy strengths.

Like, my adaptability is not warm, fuzzy at all.

And then there's green strengths, and they're your mind strengths.

They come from the mind, strategic thinking.

They would be ideation, strategic, futuristic, context.

They're the input learner, so they come from the mind.

Then there's action strengths, which are coded purple.

And they're the doing strengths.

There's how you get things done.

So consistency, belief, responsibility, that one is a killer for everyone.

That frustrates everyone.

So those are a couple.

And then there's influencing strengths.

They come from the voice, and they tend to be very loud and commanding.

They tend to enter the room before most people do, before the strength center room, before they do.

And those are command, communication, self-assurance, very strong and powerful.

- Isn't anything physical enter into it as being six foot six strength?

- No, but there are, Gallup's done research for 60 years.

And I was really shocked.

I've been told my whole life that I was too intimidating.

And I'm like, I'm just a munchkin.

How can I be intimidating, you know, where's that even coming from?

And then when I started looking at my strengths, I started seeing that I do have a lot of orange strengths in my top 10.

So that would be, a lot of that intimidating.

But then what I found out was Gallup did a research, did research on predominantly male strengths that show up more in males, and strengths that show up more in females.

90% of my top 10 are all male dominant strengths.

And so yeah, on a girl, that would be, especially a tiny girl, that would be a little more intimidating.

- What if someone said, bullying is my strength?

- Oh.

- And I don't know if anyone would say it in exactly that way, or maybe you've encountered that.

- I have encountered that.

- Is that legit?

- Yes, it is.

When I talk to clients, I tell 'em, you can use your strengths from the balcony or you can use them from the basement, right?

And if they're in the basement, you put 'em there or somebody else put 'em there.

Bullying is generational.

Nobody's born a bully.

And it's a learned behavior.

Yes.

It also can be something that is your strength being in the basement and when your strength's being naughty, then we have to look at what is the strength that's doing that?

And how do we bring it to the balcony so it shines pretty?

- Is ambition a strength?

- There is a strength that, there's a couple strengths that look like ambition.

Yes.

But the word ambition is not a strength.

- How about caution?

- Nope.

There's consistency.

I like to say, we had a big debate one time on the consistency strength, and it's a purple strength.

So it's a doing strength.

And people who are consistent do things consistently.

They're the reason policies and procedures are in place.

They like that consistency.

They treat people consistent.

And so we had this big debate years ago on whether consistency was Batman or Captain America.

And we came to the conclusion that consistency, people who have consistency in their top strengths, I call it their tool belt, are more like Captain America.

They're, everything's fair, right, true, just, and fair.

And I learned a long time ago, don't ever play monopoly with somebody who's got high competition and somebody who has high consistency.

- Competition.

- [MaLinda] Yeah.

- Ambition.

Competition is one of them.

- It is.

It's an orange strength.

And my son, so I, my competition's number 33.

Oh, strengths aren't genetic.

And so yeah, your kids won't have your strengths and you don't have your parents' strengths.

That's kind of what makes parenting so hard is where we try to parent to our strengths.

And our kids are nothing like it.

And my youngest is high in competition, and everything was an argument.

Like every, they have a tone and they have, and so strengths actually saved our relationship many years ago because I learned from his competition strength that I could say, this is not a competition, it's a conversation.

So I need you to put your competition aside for a minute.

Nobody's gonna win here.

We're just gonna have a conversation.

And he will tell you that the reason he graduated school and was able to get through a master's program was because he aimed his competition, not just for the benefit of himself, but for the benefit of his classmates and the people he was going to school with.

- So that's one of the objectives once you have the assessment, work your strengths are, now, what do I do?

- First, you name 'em.

So I have competition.

What is that?

What does that look like?

And then we claim it.

So then we, my thing as a coach is I really want you, I can give you words all day long, but until you can tell me what your strength looks like in action, then I know that you're starting to understand.

And then we're gonna go into aiming it.

And then we learn how to, I teach you how to aim those strengths to make a difference.

When you know that, you can literally go into a meeting and go, I know these people in this meeting.

I wanna get this done today.

These are my strengths I'm going to present to them in order to have a positive outcome.

It makes a big difference.

- You said before we turn the cameras on, there are no failures.

Is that just you talking?

Is that your training talking and this method of coaching?

- We learn something from everything we do.

So if we are not looking at what we're learning, then yes, it's always gonna feel like a failure.

But if we can take that, what we think is a failure and say, well, really it was just a speed bump, it's the lessons I learned to make me stronger, better, to get me through the next hurdle.

And so there are no failures.

Like, we are not failures.

- It can be pretty easy to hang your head, can't it?

- It can, and I've done it.

And then I have to sit back and go, wait a minute, what was the lesson?

What did I learn from this?

Good, bad, or ugly.

- I think, again, there is a typical type of resistance, something that everybody has, but some people do a sort of fighting against, sort of stiffening against this idea, kind of self-help.

- Fear.

- And that's fear.

- I think it's fear.

Yeah.

I think it's a fear-based decision because what if I told you there was something wrong with you?

- That's how I'd react, I guess.

- You know?

Yeah, that's fear.

You're afraid I might tell you something wrong, but I don't.

So I had a client once, who worked in an industry he didn't like, he didn't enjoy, he'd been in there 30 years and we did his strengths.

We only did his top five.

I said, you have amazing strengths.

And he said, I understand what you're saying.

I have not seen those qualities of myself for over 30 years.

I was broken for him.

Why?

And he said, I've hated everything.

I've hated my job.

I've hated my work.

I've hated, he goes, I guess I just figured if I hated everything that bad, there was nothing about me to like.

- [Steve] So?

- I felt that was really sad.

He is thriving now.

He is doing really well.

He had some wonderful life things that brought him out of that industry and he's doing really well.

- Do you think everybody ought to do this?

- I think everybody should have, yes.

Absolutely.

I think it gives us a new perspective on who we are.

And it also keeps us from believing all those barrier labels people tell us, you know, that barrier label you're carrying from the time you were 15 and somebody told you, oh, you're never gonna be this or don't, like, I had a teacher tell me once as a barrier label, don't expect to be any kind of an author.

Well, I've co-authored, a monk co-authoring my fourth book, and I'm doing my own book right now.

And so yeah, don't believe the barrier labels.

So the assessment is, it's something I would do first myself.

- Right.

I would send it to you.

It's online and it's clearly, don't think about any of the questions, assessment you wanna answer from your gut.

I'm like, and tell you how long it is, 'cause then you'll say, no, I don't wanna do the assessment.

- The answers aren't always easy.

- They're not.

It has a question and it'll have two answers on either side.

And so you pick which side you're at, or it'll have a question here or a question here.

And you pick which one is more you.

We want to get you as many answered and as more true to your gut reaction as we can.

- A lot of times when I've said, when people have asked me, what's your favorite and what do you like to, often my answers are like, well, I've really thought about it in that way, I guess.

- I would tell you that you probably have a lot of adaptability somewhere.

I guess if you think you're gonna go through, and suddenly click, click, click, click, click, click there.

Now, I'm strong.

It involves some work.

- It does.

I think it involves some self-work.

- I spent years thinking people saw me a certain way or had expectations of me.

It wasn't until I truly understood what I brought to the table that the pressure was off my back.

I don't have to run up 5K anymore or a half marathon.

I don't have to do that.

It's not who I am.

It's not what I'm strong at.

I'm gonna focus on things that make me feel great about who I am and embrace my Disney-esque attitude that my dad gave me.

- What constitutes success for someone who comes to you?

- I think success is relative to what you wanna achieve.

And whether it be at goals or relationships or, I had a client, example, who's had issues with her mom for years.

And when she understood her strengths and what they bring to the table, she started working on that.

I just got a text message a few weeks ago that said I was able to have a conversation with my mom, not a long one, but able to have a conversation with my mom and without any fighting, without any regret.

And it was enjoyable.

To me, that's success.

- What strength was she bringing to it that she didn't bring to it before, do you think?

- Belief.

Yeah, belief.

There's a strength called belief, and it's not, doesn't have anything to do with religion.

I'll tell you that it's probably one of the heaviest strengths because your core values and my core values are different.

But with belief, are you carrying around beliefs that no longer serve a purpose?

And I think a lot of people do.

Well, I always give you a homework.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Like you're always gonna have things to work on, but that's where growth comes in.

So I have command.

it's just what it sounds like.

It's bossy, right?

I've told all the time, you're so bossy.

I'm like, I know.

Isn't it great?

We're gonna get so much done today, 'cause this bossy little munchkin, we're gonna work hard and get it done.

- Hey, I appreciate hearing about what you're doing.

You're serious about it.

You get serious results, important results, and it's important work.

- Oh, thank you.

- So MaLinda Perry, thanks for doing all that, and for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle - Thank you so much.