Issue No. 501 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks if you are born to build? This first issue of 2022 spotlights a book and an online assessment from Gallup that rank orders 10 entrepreneurial talents. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my 2021 Top-10 Books and Book-of-the-Year.
“Gallup has found that there are three key players in the development of any organization…” Are you born to build?
You Need All 3: Rainmaker, Conductor, Expert
“People will ask you throughout your life, ‘Where do you work?’ and ‘What do you do?’ They never ask you, ‘What are you building?’ When conversations change to ‘What are you building?’ the world will change.”
Clifton and co-author Sangeeta Badal, Ph.D. (Principal Scientist for Gallup’s Entrepreneurship and Job Creation initiative) make a compelling case for the importance of identifying the entrepreneurial people on your team, in your family, in your church, and in your community. And, says Gallup, the “born to build” genes are God-given. And by the way, did you know that your children or grandchildren can test pilot their entrepreneurial talents at the annual Lemonade Day in the U.S.?
And good news! Similar to Living Your Strengths and StrengthsFinder 2.0: Discover Your Clifton Strengths, this 2018 book from Gallup, Born to Build, includes a unique (one-time use) code so readers and leaders can access the online “Gallup’s Builder Profile 10 (BP10™)” assessment. BP10™ will identify your innate talents and motivations and show you how to make the most of your talents to build something.
And more good news! You can postpone reading the book and go right to the online assessment, but I’m guessing if you read the first seven pages, you’ll be hooked. Just 150 pages (plus a huge appendix) with helpful charts and graphs, you’ll hit paydirt on pages 28-29. (Just three pages past my “page 25” standard of getting to the meat and potatoes, or just the potatoes if you are a vegetarian.)
The three-column chart on pages 28-29, “Pathways From Personality to Business Success,” lists Gallup’s highly researched findings of the “10 talents that are specifically linked to entrepreneurship.” Once you complete the online assessment, you’ll discover the link between Talent, Behaviors, and Likely Business Outcomes. For example:
One of the 10 talents is DISRUPTER, an entrepreneur who can “think outside the box” and “imagine possible futures.” That will enable your enterprise to move in a new direction with “market disruption.”
The other nine talents: Confidence, Delegator, Determination, Independence, Knowledge (“you constantly search for information that is relevant to growing your business”), Profitability, Relationship, Risk, and Selling. The selling talent includes people who are “ambassadors and evangelists,” who can “persuade others easily,” and “communicate clearly.”
NOTE! According to an email I received from a Gallup team member—in response to my inquiry—Born to Build is the new-and-improved version of their 2014 book and assessment, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder. Read my 2014 review here—and note the additional nine entrepreneurial books and resources I included in that issue.
ARE YOU A BUILDER?
Whether you’re called to be an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur (inside your organization), I’d urge you to read Born to Build and take the assessment. Or, if maybe your top talent is Delegator…well then, we already know you’re going to assign the reading and reporting back to someone on your team, right?!
WHAT’S NEW? Are you a builder—and how do you fit in? Three labels (new to me, but very helpful) are introduced, based on research. “Gallup has found that there are three key players in the development of any organization, whether it’s a new enterprise, a new division within a company or a nonprofit.” The authors predict that when the following “three alphas” combination exists in an organization or on a team, “the likelihood of it breaking out and booming grows exponentially.” The three:
• The alpha RAINMAKER. “…has unusual drive and persistence—rare grit. Obstacles and failure actually increase a Rainmaker’s determination. An enterprise virtually never works without this player.”
• The alpha CONDUCTOR. “…has management ability. This is the operations person or manager who knows how to get all players on the team—or in the ‘orchestra’—to work together seamlessly. This person holds the whole organization together.”
• The alpha EXPERT. “…provides differentiating expertise to the core product or service. Whether it is an analytic services startup’s brilliant statistician, a new restaurant’s star chef or a software firm’s best programmer, virtually every successful startup has an alpha expert who highly distinguishes it from the crowd.”
Are you an alpha builder? “The trick is knowing how you fit in. This book will help you determine which alpha role is best for you. It will tell you from which role your God-given strengths will develop most.”
WARNING! Clifton and Badal warn that “building is a high-degree-of-difficulty task, but natural builders want the impossible assignment. They prefer the messiness, the problems, the barriers, the absence of supervision, the improvisation and the rush of a new customer breakthrough.” They add, “Builders are made differently than the rest of us. They are born and put on earth to build.”
8 TOOLS! Once you complete the online assessment, you’ll have access to eight tools—integral to Gallup’s four keys to building an enterprise (nonprofit or for-profit). Key #1: is “Creating Self-Awareness.” The tools include: an internal map of your personal characteristics, how to build your “personal board of directors,” tips on creating a “purpose journal” and (for the second key) an “opportunity journal.” Plus, four more tools to help you analyze the viability of an idea, how to test hypotheses, mapping team talents, and assessing your wider network.
I’m not an alpha anything, but I leveraged my Delegator talents and inspired my son, Jason, to take the Born to Build assessment for a test drive. His BP10™ results delivered his 10 builder talents in rank order. Gallup recommends that you focus on your top four talents because “they provide the best opportunity for business success.” No surprise, “Disruptor” was in Jason’s top four. (Gallup says that Jason is “brimming with new ideas” and thinks of “novel ways to move things forward.” Bingo! I agree!)
Are you a builder? Read the book, take the assessment, and download the helpful tools from Gallup—or delegate this to a builder on your team.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Born to Build: How to Build a Thriving Startup, a Winning Team, New Customers and Your Best Life Imaginable, by Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Badal, Ph.D. And thanks to Gallup Press for sending me a review copy.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Born to Build quotes David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather (and also known as “The Father of Advertising”): “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” Who on our team ranks high on the BP10™ in Selling?
2) Do we have all three critical alpha players on our team? Who is our Rainmaker, our Conductor, and our Expert?
3) Do we understand the critical role of the Conductor (the alpha manager)? Let’s delegate this Gallup book and assessment to: _______. Begin by reading this review of It's the Manager: Gallup Finds the Quality of Managers and Team Leaders Is the Single Biggest Factor in Your Organization's Long-Term Success, by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter.
Inspire your team to begin a buckets refresh over 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, or (if you’re young enough!), 20 years! Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.
Buckets Countdown:
The Meetings Bucket (#20) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.
The Meetings Bucket Core Competency: “We design meetings like an architect designs buildings. We have high expectations that our purpose-driven meetings will enhance team-building, accountability and our commitment to results. We value Holy Spirit-led meetings. We reject boring meetings.”
In addition to other book recommendations on the Meetings Bucket webpage here, check out Resource #20.4: "My Annual Professional Development Plan" form. Download the one-page PDF and use it as a template when coaching team members to take responsibility for their own professional development. Note the Bronze, Silver and Gold levels and the opportunity to create a perks point system.
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Inspire your team to begin a buckets refresh over 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, or (if you’re young enough!), 20 years! Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.
JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Start the new year off right with an outside assessment of your strengths and opportunities. Do you have all three key people on your team: Rainmaker, Conductor, and Expert? We can help you identify talent and coach them. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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