S01 Ep23: Leveraging Your Strengths to Achieve Individual and Team Goals with Jordan Bramhall, LGPC

EntrepreneurshipSelf-Improvement

Apr 16

Written By Melissa Wesner

Many of the people I talk to have difficulty recognizing their strengths, or they assume that others have the same strengths they do. Jordan Bramhall, LifeSpring therapist, however, has specialized training in helping people recognize their strengths and in understanding how they can make those strengths work for them!
In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Two strategies you can use to identify your strengths
• How knowing your strengths can help you achieve your goals
• Ways that knowing your teams’ strengths can help the team work together more effectively and efficiently
• How Jordan incorporates the concept of strengths into her therapy work with clients
Follow Jordan Bramhall, LGPC:
Website: www.lifespringcounseling.net
Instagram: @lifespring_md
Marylanders only – Schedule an online therapy appointment with Jordan: www.lifespringcounseling.net/jordan-bramhall
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (00:02)
Welcome back to the Dreaming and Doing podcast. I am super excited about the conversation we're about to have today. I am here with Jordan Bramhall, who is a therapist at LifeSpring Counseling Services. And Jordan was previously trained as a CliftonStrengths facilitator. And so she's gonna be here with us today talking about strengths and why it's important for you to know what they are. So welcome Jordan.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (00:32)
Hi Melissa, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (00:37)
This is your first podcast, Jordan.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (00:40)
This is my very first podcast, Melissa, but I'm excited that it's your podcast that I'm kind of breaking into the podcast world with.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (00:46)
Hehehe
Yes, awesome. So tell us what exactly are strengths? When you think about strengths, when you're talking about them, what are strengths and why are they so important?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (01:04)
Yeah, so kind of just to give a little bit of background as to where I'm coming from with my like strength-based approach and how I view strengths is most of the work that I do how I view strengths is based on the work by Don Clifton and he is considered the like founder of strengths-based psychology. So when we're thinking about strengths from that lens, strengths are really the result of an equation.
And so that equation is your natural talents times investment equals strengths. So your talents are the things that you are naturally good at. They are natural ways of thinking, being, doing things, things that are just an innate ability for you. And the more that you invest into those talents, the more that you practice them, the more that you intentionally put effort into using your talents.
the more that they become a strength. And a strength is like this near perfect way of doing things. It is a talent that you are so inherently good at. It's something that comes so naturally to you, something that you've put a lot of practice into. And that is how you get a strength. And why strengths are so important is because in life, there is a million ways to do all the things that we do. There's a million ways to study for that exam you have coming up.
There is a million ways to go about getting a job. But what's the best way to do that for you? And that's by focusing on what your strengths are. So we know what our strengths are. We know the best way to go about achieving our dreams.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (02:49)
So in my experience Jordan, and maybe this is yours as well, but for example, when I'm working with people in one-on-one therapy, a lot of people have a really hard time recognizing their strengths. Sometimes even when other people point out their strengths, they have a hard time receiving them or they just really genuinely don't know what they are. So how can someone find out what their strengths are? If they are like, I don't know what they are. I just don't see what you see.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (02:51)
Okay.
Yeah, I think to your point, Melissa, one thing I want to say is that something that I've really noticed is that people have such a hard time talking good about themselves. People have such a hard time knowing what they're good at and accepting that they're good at that. They want to be humble. They think it's selfish to talk about themselves, talk about their strength. So first things first is I want to say like, it is a okay to know what you are good at and to own it.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (03:28)
Mm-hmm.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (03:50)
Um, but so how can you know what your strengths are? I see that too. Clients with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, they don't know what their strengths are. They don't think they're good at anything. So first thing that I recommend anybody doing is to go online, Google a list of strengths and their definitions. And it's just to read through that list and see if you have any sort of like gut reaction to one of those strengths.
maybe a handful and see, okay, maybe there's something there. Maybe, maybe I am good at this. So that would be one route is to see if you can come up a list on your own. And maybe you don't fully believe it's a strength, but you know, you can pinpoint that there is one way that I, I use that strength. I use that ability. You can also talk to a friend, talk to a family member.
Ask them, what do you see in me that I'm good at? What do you view as my strengths? And like you mentioned, that won't land for everybody. They don't always believe it, but that's a good place to start, is asking somebody else what they see in you. What strengths do I have? You can also mention it's your therapist. Your therapist knows so much about you and is likely able to help pinpoint a few of what they view your strengths as.
The other thing, if you're looking for like a very assessment, research based way to find out what are my strengths is Don Clifton, who I mentioned, I have my foundation and strengths with kind of him and his philosophy is he's developed an assessment that individuals can take that give you a list of what your top four or top five talents are. And so this is called your Clifton strengths assessment. This is an assessment you can take.
and it will lay out exactly what your top five talents are, how they apply to you, ways that you can use them, and just definitions, just different ways that they might show up in your life that you might not necessarily view or have insight that that's how you use them. So those are kind of three different ways that you can figure out what your strengths are.
And then you can, I also encourage people to sit down and, okay, say, say this list says that my strength might be empathy. I encourage people to sit down and reflect, really genuinely reflect, like, how have I used empathy in the past two weeks? And I guarantee you, you can come up with an answer. Maybe it's how have you used empathy towards yourself? How have you used empathy towards somebody else?
But I guarantee you there is a way that you have used that strength, that talent without even knowing.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (06:52)
Awesome. Well, I love those recommendations and I hope that people will follow through. I've also assigned homework after a session to interview friends and family or colleagues to find out what someone's strengths are. And sometimes people are a little bit hesitant to do that because they feel a little bit awkward.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (07:10)
Thank you.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (07:10)
So I usually say, you know what, you can blame me. Blame someone else for doing the exercise. But I do think that people find the exercise to be really meaningful. They're getting perspective that they wouldn't have received otherwise.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (07:15)
I'm sorry.
Yes, exactly. I love that.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (07:28)
So right now we are recording in January. A lot of people right now have New Year's goals. Some people might have already given up on their goals. And I'm wondering how can people use their strengths when they're setting out on a new endeavor? Maybe it's I have a New Year's resolution or I have a new goal that I'm working on. I want to do this new business. I have this new idea. How can people make use of their strengths?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (07:39)
Thank you.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (07:59)
Or how can they use it to achieve their goals?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (08:03)
Yeah, so I'm not sure if you are talking about like smart goals in a subsequent session, but smart goals are a great way to, excuse me, Melissa, smart goals are a great way to kind of set goals for your New Year's resolution. How am I going to achieve them? How am I going to accomplish this?
And so I won't totally dive into smart goals today. Maybe that's another session. But when you're looking at steps to actually follow through with that small goal, smart goal, I think using your strengths are a great way to start by doing that. So I can kind of give a personal example. So Melissa, I don't know if you know this about me or not, but I am at my core a negative person about myself. So when it comes.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (08:59)
I never would have guessed that Jordan ever never in a million years
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (09:05)
Mm-hmm. Yup, I own it. Being positive is not one of my strengths. It is not something that I am naturally or inherently good at. Maybe a bit more so for other people, but for myself, definitely a glass half empty kind of person. So being positive has always been a goal somewhere where I want it to go for myself.
Um, and so actually last year I set a goal for myself was to be more positive. That's a really, really vague goal. And knowing that positivity is just not naturally something that I exude. Um, but what is something that I naturally am pretty good at, something that I consider to be one of my strengths is responsibility. If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability.
Melissa, if you give me a task to do, I am going to put my all into it. And so thank you, Melissa. And so, you know, how does responsibility relate to being positive? I don't know. You know, when I really sat down and thought about it, I was like, there's no way that positivity relates to responsibility. How, how am I going to be a more positive person?
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (10:05)
I will love that about you, Jordan.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (10:29)
And so what I did was I really broke down like, okay, what works for me about being responsible, having tasks, having that to-do list to check off. And so I know I'm naturally not going to be that positive person. I'm not going to wake up and be a ray of sunshine. And so I reframed what positivity meant to me. I reframed that Jordan, it is your responsibility to create that positivity for yourself.
If you are not naturally going to be that positive ray of sunshine, then you're going to make it your job to create that positivity for yourself. And so that led me to create a mantra for myself that I repeat to myself every morning when I am, when I was driving to school, when I was driving myself to life Springs office, I get in my car and I say, you are responsible for your positivity today. And that mantra,
It sounded really silly to me at first, but it has made the world of difference. And maybe it's just because we met halfway through last year that you haven't seen the negative side of me, that I've been able to show up with that positive energy, that smile on my face. But by reframing that just because you have an area of your life that you want to be better at.
that it is not a deficit. There are ways for you to use your strengths to enhance those areas of your life where you wish things were better. So I know that totally didn't give you a set equation on how to do it, but I learned best from personal examples. So that is the best way for me to answer your question is kind of with my own example of how I was able to do that for myself.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (12:23)
I love that example. And I love how you were able to make that connection, even though we might say, what in the world do responsibility and positivity have in common? You were able to find it. You were able to find how to connect it. So I think that that's a great example. One of the things that I find is that sometimes we can take our strengths for granted.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (12:30)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (12:47)
And I sometimes see this in people who maybe want to be business owners, for example, they might want to have a business, but they're like, I know how to do copywriting. Like everybody knows how to do that. That's not special. That's not such a big deal. Or whatever their thing is. And so sometimes we just take it for granted because we know a lot of people in our industry and so we think that it's not so special. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how we can
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (12:53)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (13:15)
not take our strengths for granted or not just assume that because it's familiar to us or because it's that something is easy for us that it's not valuable to other people.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (13:18)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, definitely. Um, I saw that a lot in college since I was working with where they'd say, me and my friend have the same exact strengths on this Clifton strengths assessment. Like, okay, big whoop. Um, and we are more than just one thing. We are more than just good at copywriting.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (13:42)
Mm-hmm.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (13:51)
You have so many different strengths. And I, I love this statistic from the people at Clifton Strengths. It's, oh, I don't want to get the number wrong, but it is something like there are one in 33 million odds that somebody has this exact same top five strengths. One in 33 million odds that somebody is just like you. So how can we sit here and say like,
I'm just another number. I'm just another copywriter. You are more than that. You might have that skill as a copywriter, but you are also empathetic. You might also be analytical. You might also have that positivity that Jordan so wishes she had. There is nobody else like you in the way that you show up every single day. And so I'm a big research numbers person.
So if you're like me, that one in 33 million odds, like there truly is nobody like you. That would...
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (14:59)
And that's really interesting. Jordan, I was thinking, well, surely, you know, with the strengths finder, it's helpful to understand your strengths. And I had maybe incorrectly assumed that people would find lots of other people who matched their profile. And you are saying that is not correct.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (15:18)
Yeah, I mean, you might meet somebody who just for reference, my top five strengths are empathy, responsibility, futuristic discipline and individualization. So I might meet somebody else who is empathetic, who is responsible. But they have all of these other strengths that aren't my strengths. Their number one strength might be.
Um, woo, winning others over. Woo is not, not one of my strengths. So the way that my empathy shows up for somebody is going to be so different than somebody who is positive, somebody who, who is that socializing butterfly. The way that our strengths show up. We might have the same label, but the way that our strengths show up are going to be so different from one another.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (15:56)
Hehe
I love those examples. So I'm wondering if you have any other thoughts, right? You know, we have a natural tendency to focus on our weaknesses, to focus on things that are negative rather than our strengths or rather than things that are positive. How can someone use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses or turn a weakness into a strength?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (16:46)
Yeah, that's a really great question, Melissa. And I think it's kind of a misconception that we can turn our weaknesses into our strengths. And when I'm talking about using our strengths to achieve our dreams, I am really talking about focusing on our strengths. I am not so much talking about, like, oh, let me focus on my weaknesses. Let me be better at XYZ because I know I'm not naturally good at them.
I encourage people to focus on your strengths. How do we hone in on them? How do we do the things that are really hard by focusing on what's right with us, on the things that we're good at? There's this question that Dawn Clifton posed, and it was, what would happen if we focused on what is right with people, as opposed to what is wrong with people?
And I love that question. I think it leads to such a more positive mindset. It leads to us having more positive beliefs about other people, more positive beliefs about ourselves. And so I guess all in all, I try to stray away from the weaknesses, focus on the positive, focusing on how do we hone in on our strengths in different ways.
different ways than what we thought were possible to achieve those goals.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (18:16)
Yes, and I'm thinking about this book I'm reading right now, which is also from like, like the Clifton people. I'm on my third book. They've come out with three books recently that are all really great about the workplace. And so they've done a lot of recent research on management and workplace trends. And I can't share too much because they have some very strict guidelines about what you can share from their books. But if anyone is interested, I recommend that they read them. But they also talk about strengths in the workplace and
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (18:23)
Oh my goodness.
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (18:46)
the importance of focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. And so they seem to carry that theme through.
And so I'm wondering for you, Jordan, since you provide therapy, how do you implement strengths as a therapist?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (19:09)
Yeah, I definitely think it is a very fine balance. Because people come to therapy because there are difficulties in their life. They are going through some really difficult things. And so in no way do I want to try to force positivity on my clients. I want there to be that space to stick with those sad emotions, sit with the hard things.
Um, so definitely don't go straight for the strengths based approach. Um, but I think that there are ways to help clients shift their mindset on things, there is a time and a place for. The sad emotions, the uncomfortable feelings, and how do we move forward from there? How do we figure out coping strategies that work best for us? How do we.
How do we manage our mental health issues? And I think going back to the, what is right with me, so much of what we think of with modern day psychology is focused on what is wrong with me. What is the diagnostic label that I deal with? And so shifting that mindset from being in such a negative space, helping clients find that positive mindset, finding what's right with them instead of focusing 100% of the time of everything that's going wrong for them.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (20:21)
Mm-hmm.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (20:38)
just to help give them that glimpse of hope that things can be okay, things are okay. I am good, I have strengths, I have potential to use these strengths. So really helping clients to shift their mindset, shift perspective, find hope. I think that has been the place for me as I've started doing some of my professional clinical work is using strengths as a perspective change.
as a shift in mindset, as like a reframe for clients.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (21:13)
Awesome. So strengths are not just for individuals. We can look at strengths as they relate to teams and groups. And so how can strengths help in a team or group setting?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (21:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I think it's so important to talk about when it comes to achieving our dreams, because yes, they are our dreams, but likely in some way or another, you're going to need some help from somebody else. Whether it is getting advice from a friend, whether it is talking to a loan officer about the loan you need to open your own business or building. And so what I really like to help clients.
individuals in general shift their focus from is that they don't need to be a well-rounded individual. Their team, the people that they surround themselves with should be well-rounded. I was talking to somebody at some point during one of my trainings through grad school that I did with Clifton Stregs, and I was talking about being in a classroom where everybody was a therapist, everyone's strength was empathy.
And conversations got nowhere because it was, oh, but how do you feel about this? No, go ahead. You share, you share. If that was the environment for a team where everyone solely honed in on their strength and empathy, it wouldn't be very productive. There has to be that person that can move the team forward to help make decisions. So we want our groups, our teams to have different strengths.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (22:31)
Hehehehehehe
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (22:56)
to use their strengths in different way. If everybody is a clone of the same exact person, we're not gonna get anywhere, just like we didn't get anywhere in that group conversation. So finding team members that have different strengths and knowing that it's okay that their strength is different from there, from yours, and to delegate tasks to people whose strengths best suit that task.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (23:05)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (23:22)
Giving tasks to individuals who you know that their skill set is going to thrive on that, that task. Being okay that my skill set, I might not be the best person for that job. And I have somebody on my team who is so well equipped for that, for that task, for that problem, for whatever is coming up while you're achieving your, your dreams, your goals. So knowing that it's okay to not have every single strength in the world.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (23:22)
Yes.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (23:49)
and to know that you've got people around you, to surround yourself with others who have those abilities, who have those strengths.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (23:58)
Yes, I love that example. And you know that I am looking forward to us doing our own strengths work internally. So I'm looking forward to that. So one of the things that I'm asking people as they are on the show is, what is a big dream that you have?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (24:00)
Okay.
Mm.
That's a great question, Melissa. I feel like you've caught me at like such a transition in my life. My dream growing up was to always be a mental health therapist. So check that one off the list. It's used within the past few months. I think overarching the dream for me is to have my own family, to have my own dogs. That's kind of the overarching dream. But in terms of...
like another dream that kind of replaces the career dream for me. I'm definitely still in that transition period where I'm figuring out what next, what is next for me? What do I want next for my life and how am I going to use my strengths to help me get there?
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (25:04)
Well, I will cheer you along the way when you meet those, those new, those new goals. If you get a dog, let me know. Cheer you on.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (25:09)
Thank you.
I will. I will. You will get all the pictures.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (25:18)
Well, Jordan, if anyone is like, I'm really interested in Jordan and what she had to share. How can people find you? How can they get in contact with you?
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (25:29)
Yes, of course. So best way to find out more about me, to get in contact with me, would be through the Life our website, or our Instagram page. I can't remember the Instagram name off the top of my head, but just search up LifeSpring Counseling Services and you'll find me.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (25:48)
Absolutely. And for anyone who's like, oh, I bet she's a cool counselor. Just remember, we can only work with people who are located in Maryland, but you can read more about Jordan on our website. So thank you so much, Jordan, for joining us and sharing about your expertise and strengths.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (25:56)
Yes, correct.
Yes, thank you so much for having them. Lissa, it was a pleasure talking with you on this snowy Monday.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (26:13)
Yes, I'm so excited about the snow. It did finally start snowing.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (26:18)
Wow.
Melissa Wesner, LCPC (26:21)
All right, well thank you Jordan.
Jordan Bramhall, LGPC (26:23)
Thanks so much, Melissa. Have a good one.