Month 4
CHARACTER STRENGTHS & ALIGNMENT
Identifying strengths, talents, and interests to find harmony in our roles.
PRE-WORK
If you are interested in plotting your leadership team on our MIBE Culture/Performance Matrix, utilize this worksheet to help you assess where your team currently stands. This is more for you and not necessarily something you will share with the group.
Here is messaging to send to your participants prior to Month 4. Feel free to modify to fit your personality:
We are excited for our next MIBE Meeting. During our next meeting on _______ we will be discussing our strengths and how they align with our roles within the organization. In advance of the meeting you will need to complete the following:
Go to the Via Institute website: Take the free character strength survey
Fill out the attached Character Strengths & Alignment Exercise with your character strengths, your talents and your interests and where they show up at work for you. I’m looking forward to a great discussion and gaining an even better understanding of our team!
**Please keep your results, we will be referring back to them in Month 8!
AGENDA
Intro from facilitator (2-5 min)
The Why: Use this opportunity to communicate with your team as one group. It’s powerful for them to hear the same message together and a great opportunity to recognize participants in front of their peers.
The How: Choose the things that are most relevant for your company to go over.
Suggestions:
• Welcome – Reinforce your mission/vision/values – Why do you exist as a company?
• Announcements
• Celebrations
Centering Exercise (5 min)
The Why: This exercise helps everyone to be present and focus their attention on the meeting. The quick-fire questions keep participants on their toes and force them to think about what they’re feeling right now.
The How: Go around the room and have everyone complete the sentence one at a time. As the facilitator, you should go first. You can reverse the order of who responds after each question if you want to mix it up. Remind participants that this is meant to be fairly quick and their first thought is often their best thought, so don’t overthink it and go with what pops into their head right away.
Examples:
• I’m excited about _________
• I wish _________
• This month I want to do less _________
Videos from MIBE® (10-15 min)
The Why: Anthony will provide an intro to the topic and give more information about the overall program. Each month, educational and inspirational information will be shared through this method. The video should make your job as the facilitator easier so you are not responsible for having to “teach” the lesson.
The How: Use the videos below (this month we have a bonus for you)! It will be helpful for you to view it prior to the meeting. You will just need to be prepared to show it on a screen to your team. We recommend testing ahead of time to help avoid streaming/buffering/internet issues!
Play the second video (below) immediately after the first video (above) prior to jumping into the meeting discussion. This video demonstrates how finding alignment at Footers Catering has led to employees loving what they do!
Discussion (45-60 min)
The Why: This is the opportunity for the group to share, collaborate and build trust. Ultimately the goal of these meetings is to move the people in your organization forward as leaders and improve your overall culture.
The How: As the facilitator it is very important that you seek participation from everyone at the meeting and that you create space for people to be open, honest and vulnerable. We will provide you with the content each month, it’s your job to facilitate the discussion around that content.
1) Review the ground rules for these meetings (2 min)
You don’t necessarily need to go over the post it notes, just review the rules and hang the poster in the room as a reminder to all participants. If there is something that needs to be added or modified, you can also do that at this time.
2) Worksheet Review (30-45 min)
Prior to diving into the worksheets, we recommend familiarizing yourself with the following resources from the VIA Institute. It may be helpful for you to share a few notes about this assessment with your team.
View and download Facilitator Resources for Via Institute Content
Review the worksheets that each person filled out. Have each person share their top five character strengths and an example of where 1 or 2 of them show up in their day-to-day job. Once they have shared, give others in the room an opportunity to share where they see that person use one of their top five character strengths. Then, you may dive deeper into the Talents/Skills and Interests section of the worksheet.
View and download Character Strengths & Alignment Exercise
3) Creating a Plan (10 mins)
Have each person write down a response to the following question:
What can you do over the next thirty days to get more alignment among these three areas (strengths/talents/interests) in your job so that you can find more enjoyment and fulfillment in your work?
Pair people up, have them share what they wrote with each other and encourage them to be accountability partners over the next month by checking in once/week on how they are doing.
Recap Video from MIBE® (5 min)
The Why: Anthony will close the meeting and summarize the content with an inspirational message. This is also our opportunity to share our post-meeting action items for participants.
The How: You will need to queue up the third video below. Again, it will be helpful for you to view it prior to the meeting and we recommend testing to help avoid streaming/buffering/internet issues!
