Another Positive Audit + Strength Reframes
Looking for a summer splash of wisdom? Dive into this engaging episode where we splash around in the waters of leadership development!
We unravel the secrets of Dr. Martin Seligman's PERMA framework, a treasure map to flourishing as a leader.
We'll also dip our toes in the Global Assessment Tool, a military-style workout for your leadership muscles, exploring emotional, social, family, and spiritual fitness. Then, I will ask you to pause, floating on the surface and peering at our leadership reflections in the water. So, join me for this vibrant, sun-soaked journey into the depths of self-reflection, well-being frameworks, and value-driven leadership. Slip on your flip-flops, chill your iced coffee, hit play, and let's create some leadership ripples together!
On this episode, you’ll hear…
How to navigate leadership development through Dr. Martin Seligman's PERMA Framework
Introduction to the Global Assessment Tool: military-style leadership training
How personal core values shape our actions, decisions, and overall leadership experience
Resources
Ready for more?
Listen in:
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
All right, we are continuing on in our summer series where I wanted to look at ways to think about your development in quick and actionable pieces so that you can fit it in in the midst of pool days and boogie boarding and visits to see family time home with your kids. Funky schedules, whatever it might be that you are dealing with this summer, I want you to have some leadership development insights that are valuable to your reflection as a leader to how you find thriving and flourishing as a topic of conversation in your leadership so that when fall hits and routine comes back, you have an opportunity to feel like you didn't put everything on pause for the summer and you continued development and you were looking at it from an integrated approach of wellbeing and intention.
So we talked about wellbeing theory, we talked about the perma framework last episode, and there was a little audit. And I've been talking about Dr. Martin Seligman work on flourishing and that perma framework audit comes by way of his research in happiness. But I started thinking through how we continue to reflect as leaders and, end of last episode, I had you rank on a scale of one to 10, how you were doing in the five categories of the perma framework, which perma stands for positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement or accomplishment? And then I told you to take some time to think through what needs to change, what are you doing well. And the reality is, we have to begin to look at specific experiences. Reflection for leaders is so important, because we're basically consistently in debrief mode, right? We're constantly looking at decisions that we made, the outcomes of those decisions are gathering data where we can so that we can make better decisions in the future, right? That's a significant part of our leadership journey is we are constantly in the next iteration, we are constantly in refinement mode, and we should be constantly looking for growth opportunities.
So thinking through that Martin Seligman developed for the army, a GAT assessment, which stands for Global Assessment Tool. And they use this in the army with soldiers to look across a bunch of different categories of a soldier's life. So it's essentially a self report questionnaire that was designed to measure psychosocial wellbeing of soldiers. And they were looking at four domains when they develop this. And those four domains were:
1. emotional fitness
2. social fitness
3. family fitness,
4. spiritual fitness.
And they would use that assessment and that self reporting tool to help direct soldiers into different training programs. And these could be basic or advanced, and there was ways of evaluating the success of the programs. But really, they were looking at psychosocial well being and fitness of the army overall as a whole. And the questions are specific, right. So it, it looks at overall satisfaction by asking for a self ranking one to 10 from one being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied all the way up to 10 being very satisfied in some different areas, like my life as a whole, my work, my friends, my units, morale, my entire family. And really, they're asking all things considered, how satisfied Have you been in those parts of your life in the past four weeks, and so they take a four week snapshot of the soldier's life in those areas of life as a whole work friends, team morale, and family.
But aside from overall satisfaction, they then dig into strengths and weaknesses in the different areas, the four domains that I mentioned, but where I want to focus in on is Martin Seligman gives a sampling of the strengths category and the different prompts that were given to soldiers so that they could rank how they've responded to actual situations in the past four weeks of their life, thinking about strengths. And so I thought, let's pull out those assessment questions as a reflection moment for you here on the podcast today.
So I'm just gonna read through and if you hear a question that you want to take time to reflect on as a leader, you're gonna press pause, and that can be your question that you are reflecting on today, when looking holistically at your strengths and how you have acted in a scenario like the one I described in the past four weeks. Here we go.
Think of an actual situation in which you had the opportunity to do something that was novel or innovative. How did you use creativity and ingenuity in these situations?
Now think of an actual situation in which you had a complex and important decision to make. How often did you use critical thinking, open mindedness or good judgment in these situations?
These are hard, right? They really get you thinking and reflecting. Next Step.
Think of actual situations in which you experienced fear or threat, embarrassment or discomfort? How often did you use bravery or courage in these situations?
Think of actual situations in which you faced a difficult and time consuming task. How often did you use persistence in these situations?
Think of actual situations in which it was possible for you to lie, cheat or mislead? How often did you show honesty in these situations?
Think of your everyday life. How often did you feel and show zest or enthusiasm? When it was possible to do so?
Think of your everyday life. How often did you express your love or attachment to others, either friends or family members, and accept love from others when it was possible to do so.
Think of the actual situations in which you needed to understand what other people need or want? And how to respond to them accordingly? How often did you use social skills or social awareness or street smarts in these situations?
Now think of actual situations in which you were a member of a group that needed your help or loyalty? How often did you show teamwork in these situations?
Think of actual situations in which you had some power or influence over two or more other people? How often did you use fairness in these situations?
And think of actual situations in which you were a member of a group that needed direction? How often did you use leadership in these situations?
Think of actual situations in which you were tempted to do something that you might later regret? How often did you use prudence or caution in these situations?
Think of actual situations in which you experienced desires, impulses or emotions that you wished to control? How often did you use self control in these situations?
Now you're thinking you might need to go back and listen to all of those right and press pause after all of them. But that list is in Martin Seligman book flourish. And I love it because it is a clear reflection tool where we can audit how we're doing and we are given a prompt to think about specific situations to look at to dissect. And to think about the ways we connected that to good leadership competencies, right? When we're looking at those, they were setting us up with scenarios where it may have been that we didn't do well, in that actual situation, right?
I'll go back to question number three, think of actual situations in which you experienced fear, threat, embarrassment or discomfort? Looking back in the past four weeks, I can think of a few examples there. And then the flip side question to that is how often did you use bravery or courage in those situations. And the beauty of that reframe, for thinking about our experiences, our lived experiences in the last four weeks when we were taking if you were taking this global assessment is that it helps you to refine the ways that you think about your strengths in that moment. Right. And that's why I love this as we're looking at the strength side of our response.
And so the GAT, the global assessment tool was not developed to just simply use it as an audit and then move on. It's meant to use as an audit and to reframe our actions and behaviors. To create movement and see that we have control of how we respond and move forward. And that's significant when we're talking about leadership development and growth. Because if we can begin to always think that way, right, that we're always in this life debrief and audit moment, like we're auditing or debriefing, we're looking at what we did well or didn't do well. And reframing for growth and learning. We can move so much faster into the next iteration of who we are how we are behaving and what we are doing as a leader.
And so, if you need to go back and listen to all of those questions, and think of how you be they've done those actual scenarios, I would highly encourage you to do that. But pick one, pick one and really focus in on it, journal, write it down, and focus on it for the coming week, because then you can figure out growth opportunities.
On the flip side, think about how you would write your own questions for your own leadership. Think of the actual situations that you are facing as a leader, right now in this week? And how often did you use your individual core values to respond in those situations? So think about it tactically, for me, I'm thinking of the actual situations I've paced faced in the past week, I'm thinking of areas where I was given an opportunity to speak up or I was given an opportunity to collaborate. And so then I can ask myself, how often did I use honesty and authenticity and loyalty and transparency? Which are four of my core values, personal core values? How often did I use those? In those moments? Where did I use them? Why didn't I use them? If it's a scenario where I rank low and give myself a one in that scenario?
So think about that for yourself to think of the actual experience, situation or experience that you've had recently? And how often did you use your core values in those situations, because that helps guide us to that helps us to become a leader who is making values driven decisions in the scenarios we are facing. And a values driven decision, as a leader will always hold up. When we're debriefing, whether we succeeded or we failed. When we succeed after making a values driven decision. It's confirmation that we made the right decision, right? And we're like, okay, that worked. That was great. When we fail, after using a values driven decision, we can decide that we will learn from the failure and make changes moving forward. But we can know that even in the failure, we were moving in the right direction because we were aligned with our values and our purpose. That's a significant one to think through when you're thinking about decision making, and when you're debriefing your experiences as a leader.
So hopefully this was helpful over this cup of coffee. We'll talk next time cheers