Accenture's Employee Development with CliftonStrengths - Called to Coach S5E17

Dhanya has been an HR professional for 17+ years and currently the Director of Talent Strategy, Human Capital, and Diversity at Accenture. Developing talent strategies for Accenture in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka by partnering with senior team management. Recognized as one of the 50 most influential HR leaders in Tech in 2016. Dhanya’s experience with StrengthsFinder: Individualization, Responsibility, Relator, Maximizer, Arranger Accelerated Coaching Session in 2015 Provided a framework to better understand herself better Provided a personal aha moment because there were things she thoroughly loved in life that the CSF results allowed her to make peace with or reconcile. For example, with Relator as #3, she always knew she valued deep relationships and preferred to not engage in large groups or networking opportunities that only offered broad, surface-level relationships. While her role demands strong relationship building and networking, CSF made her realize why she resisted the broad-based networking and that she needed to make it work for her natural preferences. Another example is how she uses her Maximizer. The status quo has never worked for Dhanya as she was always looking for the next big thing or make something even larger and better. CSF helped her to understand why her motivations were different from others and helped her to better lead her team. Accenture, Performance Achievement ratings, and incorporating Strengths: A profound shift from performance management to performance achievement Performance management does have its benefits, but it has a lot of pitfalls. Something that should motivate and energy people was used, instead, to look backward at what didn’t go well and what could’ve happened rather than what could happen in the future. We’ve been on a journey to put the employee back in the center and redefine our approach to support their development. Performance Achievement stems from the belief that great performance happens when you do what you love, having the strengths/abilities to do what you love, and working with a variety of people in complementary ways that facilitate collective achievement. A framework (like CSF) was necessary for people to look at their strengths and identify what they love. This also required a shift away from managing to developing in order to achieve performance for the organization. Our journey is not complete as we still need ongoing training and development to use this framework, but it’s been an amazing journey thus far. Gaining buy-in for CSF: People were relieved and happy they no longer had to conduct performance management and, instead, focus on the uniqueness of individuals and forward-looking approach. Thus, the buy-in was easy due to the logical nature of focusing on future improvement, development, and achievement. Accenture already had a core belief that diversity is critical to the way we succeed with our clients. Thus, to value the individual nature of our employees was already part of our culture and philosophy. Anchoring CSF to a core or cultural belief within an organization assists with the buy-in of a framework. Helping people understand the term of “strength” in the Gallup context is essential. Learn more about becoming a Certified Strengths Coach at the Gallup Strengths Center: http://on.gallup.com/1i5OXhq. Gallup's Called to Coach is a live Webcast that targets current and prospective coaches to interact with Gallup experts and independent strengths coaches who have found success in strengths-based development.