Publications

Your business needs you to be the best you can be.

Do you know what your real strengths are and how to develop them further? These are the strengths God has given you to use to achieve the plan and purposes He has for your life.

Many, in fact most, people are not clear what makes them excel at what they are good at. Think about your business and the success you have had and want.

What are the strengths which have brought you this far and through which you can make the very best of yourself?

We genuinely and personally recommend to you Living Your Strengths: Discover Your God-Given Talents and Inspire Your Community by Albert L. Winseman, Donald O. Clifton and Curt Liesveld which can be obtained via Amazon or other retailers.

This book is based on many years of research by the Gallup organisation into strengths identification and development and allows you access to Gallups on-line strengths identification system which has now been used by nearly 3 million people worldwide.

This will identify for you your top 5 of 34 key talent themes and explain to you what those strengths are and also how you might use them in Christian service. They are also the natural abilities which will help you develop your business to its fullest potential and help you make the maximum impact for God within your Church.

The chances are that across the Crosslink Ministries Business Network all 34 key talent themes fall within the top 5 of those present. If we know our strengths and make them available to each other we really are “Linking you to Success”. We make the most of how God has made us. Brilliant!

The Crosslink Team have each been through this process and we are now trying to use our own different strengths purposely as part of developing Crosslink Ministries.

Frank Bennett is a certificated Faith Strengths Performance Coach in Gallup’s system and the example below shows how strengths identification came together for Barrie Townsend of Crosslink and how Barrie has been better able to understand himself as a result and can now focus on those strengths which make him the best he can be.

Barrie is a very experienced manager of vehicle service departments for car or van and truck dealerships. He has been able to increase profits for the companies he has worked for and in his last Service Manager role at a large van and truck service operation, Barrie was able to virtually triple profits in less than 3 years. As I was about to coach him in relation to faith strengths, I asked him how he managed to achieve this profit increase. He could only really say that he is a positive person who sets a target and then achieves it - but he could not clearly and accurately identify the underlying ‘talents’ that have enabled him to achieve the results that he consistently has achieved. I encouraged him to take the online assessment and his top 5 came out as Arranger, Futuristic, Ideation, Positivity and Individualisation. As he read these and we talked through them and applied them to what he had done to triple profits he was really pleased to be able to identify that when he first took on the job:

• 1. He left his office and surveyed the entire service area and began to visualise what the department would be like if it was working at its best, he identified that it could be servicing cars as well as commercial vehicles, it would be tidy – like the best of car workshops, that the staff would be happy, fulfilled and motivated and that there was a great opportunity to raise productivity, profitability and vitally - customer and staff satisfaction levels. He now understands what his Futuristic talent theme is, and how he has used it as the starting point every time he took on a new service department or other project. The starting point for him is to visualise ‘what could be’.
• 2. He recognised that in order to increase the profits he would have to spend more than his initial budget allocation and would need to get his own manager to sign up to a spending increase. He also had to persuade staff who said “we have never done it that way before” to take on change. Barrie was positive about the results he could produce and was able to get the full backing of the General Manager and the staff to make changes. He now understands how his Positivity talent theme contributes to his success.
• 3. He arranged individual meetings with all his staff members. These informal chats, some of which lasted an hour or more, would bear much fruit. In these ‘one to ones’ he asked his staff what they were good at, what their aspirations were and sought their views on how the department could work better. Barrie also asked them each to tell him as much or as little as they wanted to about their families and outside interests - which all seemed happy to share. Once he knew what they were good at and wanted to do, he modified each of their roles to get the best from them. This increased motivation and made the staff feel valued. He now understands how his Individualisation theme contributes to his success.
• 4. A further strategy was to hold regular ‘Profit Clinics’ to which staff were invited. Barrie used these to encourage ideas from the team on how the department might improve and further develop. He was pleased to implement the best suggestions and also used the opportunity to test the viability of his own ideas. He now understands how his Ideation theme contributes to his success.
• 5. Barrie realised that the service department needed to be turned-around quickly so he orchestrated a considerable number of changes at the same time, rather than use a sequenced plan. Although it brought more pressure he was able to bring about the profit increases more quickly by allowing his supervisory team to bring about the changes in line with his vision. He made sure that his team knew that they were supported but did not interfere in the detail of the changes; rather he let them use their own skills and experience to make the changes work, therefore getting vital ‘ownership.’ He now understands how his Arranger talent theme contributes to his success.

Barrie now understands how he achieved what he achieved and can now explain this to others. He now looks at new challenges and plans to tackle them by specific use of each of his top 5 talent themes. The Crosslink Team try to structure the way we work in such a way as will allow these top 5 to make maximum impact.

Knowing and using your top 5 in your business can work the same for you. Give it a try - after all, God knew what He was doing when He created you in your uniqueness.