1263: Authentic Strengths Advantage: Bounce Back Faster and Build Workplace Resilience with Founder, CEO and Author Fatima Doman

Robert Plank 0:04 Music. Welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast Fatima Doman is here. She is an author, speaker coach. Sees she's a CEO of authentic strengths advantage, and she's a senior consultant at culture partners. Fatima is passionate about coaching people to use their strengths for greater resilience, performance and fulfillment. She's worked successfully with organizations across five continents, and she has four books. She has authentic strengths, authentic resilience. She has whole life well being and authentic strengths for kids. And so we're here to find out about getting improved engagement, energy, success, finding out our strengths, leveraging those strengths and so many more things, because we all need this help with living authentically, undoing negative emotions and using it all to build the business of our dreams, to being our best self, to step up, to show up, to be a leader of people, to change lives, and all those wonderful things. It's a tall order. It's overwhelming to think about solving this problem yourself. So luckily, Fatima is here to set us straight, to help us out. So Fatima, glad to be speaking with you again. It's been a few years.

Fatima Doman 1:15 It has been a few years, and it's always a pleasure to see you. Robert

Robert Plank 1:21 likewise, and so I did my best to introduce you, hype you up for the audience, but in your own words, what has you super excited these days?

Fatima Doman 1:30 Well, I'm really passionate about resilience these days. I think the world needs it more than ever, and also building unity, you know, in teams, in organizations, in communities, in relationships. I think there's a big need for unity, and that goes hand in hand with resilience, people who live and participate in, you know, active and healthy communities and communities where people get along and and they find the ground of interdependence. Those are the, you know, those are the places where we thrive human beings, as human beings, we, we thrive in in relationship, and we it's not a solo journey for us. So I'm very interested to share some tools that come from the science of positive psychology that are rooted in over 1000 global research studies that are peer reviewed. And all of my books, all four of my books are based on the science of positive psychology. What I've done is I've demystified this big science and made it more practical and applicable to the average person. And also, since today, we're talking about work, how we can use these tools in our work as well.

Robert Plank 2:55 Sounds amazing, and we can all use help with this, right with some of these ideas like resilience and well being and happiness, and if we tried to figure it out on our own, the way that you're describing, it sounds like trying to invent algebra or calculus or trying to figure out how to, like, get a jet plane to fly with just one person doing it. It doesn't make any sense. It makes more sense to go based on the data and what other people have figured out, that we can just plug in to what's working. So as far as what we've set up here, right? You say that they're especially at work, or people building businesses that maybe they don't know how to leverage the strengths, or they hold themselves back, they self sabotage, like, what do you usually see what's the before picture when you come across these people that need help, what are they saying and what are they not saying? Where are they struggling?

Fatima Doman 3:50 Sometimes people don't understand that if they could discover their unique strengths profile, they could learn how to leverage their top strengths. We called them signature strengths in in positive psychology, because there is unique to us as a fingerprint. So everyone's strengths profile is that unique. There are over a sextillion possible combinations, so 50 of the world's most elite positive psychologists and psychologists from traditional psychology and also sociologists, came together with a million dollars of funding, and they created what's called the via strengths survey. And you can take it on my website, authentic strengths.com over 25 million people have taken it around the world now, representing every country on the planet. So there's a there's a tremendous body of research that we can draw from. And what we know now is that when people leverage their top strengths, they get more energy, more fulfillment and. Resilience goes up. The relationships flow better. They're they're just more engaged at work and in life. And who doesn't want that? So there's some very, you know, some very practical tools that we can use to leverage our strengths more consistently.

Robert Plank 5:21 And we want, yeah, we want this, right? If we don't know our strengths, we don't know how to apply that, it can it be really difficult to to kind of get through this. And so you're saying that, where you left off there, about how once we know our strengths, then we can kind of accomplish this. So like, what? How does this work? Someone goes to authentic strengths.com. They take the survey. And you know what I find about frustrating about some of these, like personality tests, like a Colby or Myers Briggs or whatever is I take it. I'm just like, okay, that's nice to have a value, but I don't know then how to apply it. So tell me about what it's like to then, once someone figures out these strengths, then what kind of change do they begin to make?

Fatima Doman 6:04 Right so, and by the way, it's authentic strengths plural and S at the end of strengths.com and it only takes about 10 minutes, some people maybe 15 minutes, to take the survey, and you'll get a free two page report at the end. Now if you want to get a more comprehensive report that coaches you through your strengths and how to leverage them. You can pay for that, but you can also use one of my books to help you leverage your strengths. It's really important to understand what your strengths profile is, what your top strengths are, because if you know what those are, it's kind of like, you know, gives you permission to to really spend more time in that area. For example, strengths, I'll just list off some of the strengths. Just off the top of my head, there are 24 and scientists went around the world. They studied the wisdom literature from around the world. They visited most cultures, and they distilled, what do human beings really value? What did they consider to be human virtues, human strengths? They're things like leadership, teamwork, honesty, perseverance, humor, kindness, uh forgiveness, uh prudence, um gratitude. So there are 24 of them, and when we use them, especially at work, I mean, let's, let's just get real, we spend most of our lives at work. So if we want to infuse ourselves, I call it a, you know, a stress inoculation, really, to get on what we call the positive upward spiral in life. If we want to infuse ourselves with this positivity, what better way than to tap in what into what we value most, and what we enjoy doing and using the most, and where we bring our strength to the table. That's why it's so energizing, because we feel good when we use these strengths. So they're part of our unique psychological profile, and if we can discover what they are and intentionally find ways to use them more in our work processes, in our tasks, in our daily lives, the science shows that anxiety and depression go down, engagement and and goal attainment and so many things are boosted for us,

Robert Plank 8:43 wonderful. So I can see how this it can be very helpful. And I love the visual of the upward spiral, because it is like both, like circular, recurring plus linear progress, kind of energy, right? A lot of the things that we do in life and in business are from the repetitions, but then, if it was just repetitions, we just be going around in a loop in a circle. That's no fun. And we don't want the downward spiral. We want the upward spiral to, like, continuously be making this progress, and I imagine, and this is just totally a guess, but like, let's say someone takes this test and they figure out some of these strengths, right? You mentioned things like leadership, gratitude, wisdom, and I imagine that maybe they've been doing a few things, right, maybe they've been kind of clashing and trying to make their weaknesses work as strengths. And then there's also this idea of like, well, there's what you think are your strengths versus what the test tells you, and that's just kind of like first impressions. And so I'm curious what you think of that. And also I'm curious about like, your own personal results, like when you took this test and figured out your own values, like, Were you shocked? Was it not what you expected? Or was it like, were you like, okay, that's exactly what I thought about myself.

Fatima Doman 9:59 Yeah you know, it was pretty dead on. And I have to say, I'm also an executive coach, so I work with a lot of people. I teach this in workshops, you know, I've worked with 1000s of people on this, and I I'm curious, generally, to see, okay, how did it feel? You know, I usually have them raise their hands in the workshops. And when you took your survey, did it? Did it reflect? Did you feel that it reflected the real you? And by and large, people say yes, and I always give permission. I say, if there's a top strength that doesn't feel like a top strength for you, that doesn't seem authentic, you know, feel free to to look at maybe some of your middle strengths and to call one of those one of your top signature strengths, because the the inventory isn't perfect, but in general, people say that it is very, very accurate. And that was the case for me. It was very accurate for me.

Robert Plank 10:59 Well, I love it, and so are the results all over the map. Like, you know, you think of how there's like a, you know, people have different blood types, but there's like one that shows up more than another, and sometimes you see the way that populations are clustered. You see like more common of this, and rare of that. As far as the strengths that people find, are there some that are like, close to universal? Are there ones that show up a lot? Or is it like, evenly distributed?

Fatima Doman 11:29 You know, it's pretty distributed, really, like I said earlier, the signature strengths, the top strengths. We call them signature strengths because we say that they're like a fingerprint. I mentioned earlier that there are over a sextillion possible combination. So every human being really is very unique, and that's why it's so important to spend the time to get to know yourself very well and to understand what truly motivates you, and also to learn these tools and practices of how to leverage your top strengths. Now that doesn't mean that you can't build, you can't raise one of your lower strengths. The inventory does not measure weaknesses at all. It only measures strengths. So let's say, for example, someone as one of their you know, bottom strengths, one of their lower strengths on the list of 24 might have honesty there. It doesn't mean that that person is a dishonest person. What it means is that they don't get as much energy from using honesty as they would. Perhaps maybe gratitude as their number one strength, or social intelligence might be their number one strength. So again, the inventory does not measure weaknesses. It measures what you enjoy using and where you get most of your energy and motivation. So it's a positive look at you and how you show up. And I think it's really interesting, too. When I use the science of positive psychology in my workshops, I talk about a solution focus rather than a problem focus. So that's another thing that we know from the research that I think is really profound, and that is that when you're being coached, or you're coaching yourself to achieve a goal, if you focus on solutions rather than problems, goal attainment, some research studies have shown it goes up by 80% that's a really big number. So why? Why do you think? And I'm going to ask you, Robert, why do you think, when we focus on solutions rather than on problems, that we tend to achieve our goals so much quicker?

Robert Plank 13:52 I think because it's future focus, and that solving the problem is more exciting. You get to the other side, it's the problem, just the start of it, right? It's what gets your attention. But if you live there, if you get held there, then you're basically wallowing, you're treading water. And so I think focusing on the solution after the problem is a lot more fun because it's hey, here's getting to the finish line. Here's getting to the reward the end result.

Fatima Doman 14:24 Yeah, it's so much more motivating and hopeful, rather than when you focus just on the problem and how to fix a problem, you know, you're the language is so problem oriented that people start to feel mired in the problem. They get stuck, and also your body will cascade net negative chemicals. The more you focus on a problem that really stresses you out, you tend to get stressed out. You know physically, that means that your brain is not functioning at optimum, whereas when you're focusing on solutions, you get hopeful and motivated. Related, and it this is connected to what positive psychologists call the broaden and build theory. And that is that the more you focus on you know, the the solution or on positive aspects, the more you broaden your capacity to see connections and puzzles, your brain works better you build upon you know, one idea will build upon another, build upon another. Solutions start to cascade. So because of that, you know, we are our mental focus and and our mental capacity works much better when we're focused on solutions than on problems.

Robert Plank 15:43 It's a much better way of operating and thinking and just living to be thinking about okay, now that I know what the situation is, let me think in the better language and Fauci and kind of think about, okay, well, what's the outcome? And so what I find also fun and interesting about what you have set up is that it also works with Team synergy, doesn't it? When you know what everyone's strengths are, then people can work together as a team. And so like you said, there's been a lot of work that's gone into this strengths survey, and a lot of people have taken it, and you've helped a lot of organizations. And so do you have a fun story to work in here in these last few minutes about the group, the organization, and how they take the test, they see what the lay of the land is, and then they apply some kind of transformation, like what has happened, as far as a change in some of these teams?

Fatima Doman 16:42 Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, just yesterday, I was coaching an executive and we talked about the positive contagion, how to be a positive contagion at work. And this is an organization that's going through tremendous change, and the executive team has has just taken on four new people. I mean, this is big change, right? And so this person is talking about how how they can impact the team, and how can you know they're new to the team, and that sometimes they feel a little uncomfortable asking for more guidance, because they know everybody's so busy and it's just hard to get the mentoring that they need. So we talked about how to come at it from a solution focus, and talk about how this would benefit the team and and the way we speak and ask for our needs, the way we interact with others is really important. So I coach this person with some positive psychology principles on how to make the language all solution focused, and get on that positive upward spiral with the team and and with their superior as well. So that's that's just one little anecdote. I'm also working with it, an organization that has me coming in to do team building, and what I'm going to have them do, first and foremost is to get a really clear understanding and also appreciation, to gain an appreciation for their colleagues, unique strengths, skill sets, because if they start to really appreciate the character strengths in their colleagues, even though they're very different from their own, they'll start to see that everyone is playing a vital role in what we call the team strengths culture, and the more diverse that culture is of strengths that you know that the stronger the team is because it helps to eliminate blind spots on the team. So that's a real power for teams, is to gain that understanding of their team strengths culture.

Robert Plank 18:54 Well, great. It sounds like a recipe for unstoppable success when you have these teams that are diverse, that have all these various strengths. And so as far as this concept that you have it, so it almost sounds like a job interview question, but like, what am I not asking you? Like, in this conversation we're having, talking about teams and helping your organization thrive, and everything that goes along with that, what's the missing hidden question in our conversation today that I just don't know to ask you.

Fatima Doman 19:24 Well, I would say maybe today just more more questions around resilience, and why resilience, building resilience, is so important, and why these, these science based tools to build resilience, can be game changers that work because people are reporting higher levels of stress and anxiety and depression than ever. And although building resilience is not, you know, the silver bullet. I mean there, there are many, many ways that that we can show up at at work with greater energy and excitement and well being. Build our well. Being, but this is one aspect of it, using these positive psychology tools to build our resilience. And let's just define maybe resilience. That's another question you could ask. Let's define what resilience means. It's the ability to bounce back from setbacks and challenges. So all of us, I think, have, I think you'd be hard pressed to ask anyone that you ran into today, do you feel that there are challenging things in your life right now, or things that worry you and stress you? And so if we were to give people tools to bounce back from those stressors, those challenges, those setbacks, how, how, how, very important and helpful that would be.

Robert Plank 20:50 I think it would be. And this idea of stress, I always think, Well, I definitely don't want a life without stress, right? We want to achieve a lot. We want to have some kind of struggles, but then it sometimes it just seems like it's unnecessarily hard, right? And we can use a little bit of help to figure out how to get this resilience, how to get this kind of bounce back factor. And so in our last couple of minutes here, just since we're wrapping up this topic of resilience, do you have any just quick words of advice for someone out there who they feel like they're they're more overloaded, more stressed than ever before, and they're looking for help with resilience and everything that you've seen, all your books, all your travels, do you have sort of just one, one last, final nugget of like, a tip about resilience and bouncing back?

Fatima Doman 21:40 Yes, I do actually. Let's all learn to shift from what's wrong to what's strong. Let's discover our unique strengths and how to leverage them, moving from what's wrong to what's strong,

Robert Plank 21:57 wonderful, moving from what's wrong to what's strong. And what that tells me is that we don't, we should, probably shouldn't be seeking the easy solution. We should be doing what's right. And sometimes you say, Well, I've got this pile of work in front of me, I've got these problems to solve, I've got all this stuff to do, and I could just quit. That would be the easy way out. But instead, I need to stick to my commitments. I need to be a responsible person. I have to follow up, follow through. And so as far as some next steps here, I know that you have your excellent book, authentic resilience, and you have your YouTube channel, and you have your website. So can you tell us if someone was super impressed and excited with what you had to say today? What should someone look into next. Where should they go?

Fatima Doman 22:42 So they can look up some of my very brief, three to five minute videos. They're they're quick teaches on some of these practical tools. They can find me on YouTube, Fatima Doman, and they can go to my website, authentic strengths.com, I and find some resources there as well. There are some blogs. There lots of videos that they can watch. They can take the free strengths inventory. Just scroll down the landing page and click on the blue button that says, Take free strengths survey. That's a starting point. And of course, there are several books behind me that I've written, so if they like authentic resilience, there are other books that they can look into. And I've even written a children's book just to help educate kids in a really fun way that rhymes on their unique strengths.

Robert Plank 23:41 Very nice, so fun for all ages, right? Everyone needs to know about this. And if we aren't aware of our own strengths, we might just be making our own life and our own workplace and our own business and career just harder than it needs to be. It helps to be informed. It helps to have these tools. So we said authentic strengths.com. That's plural. That's the website where we can take the survey. And then that book is authentic resilience, bringing your strengths to life on Amazon by Fatima Doman. And then go on Facebook and subscribe to Fatima Doman, which is a positive psychology channel that will bring out the best in you, and in those you seek to positively influence. And there's no downside to that. The downside is

Fatima Doman 24:28 the channels on YouTube. Just look me up on YouTube, Fatima Doman. Channel.

Robert Plank 24:33 Fatima Doman, that's F, A, T, I, M A, D, O, M, A, N, and get tuned into some of the stuff, because it's important. You need it. People need you. And any final words before we sign off and send people to YouTube and authenticstrengths.com

Fatima Doman 24:49 I guess, the last thing I would say is learn to spot strengths in others as well, especially youth. If you can start with kids and start spotting strengths in them and helping them to discover their strength. Is, you know, just think of the positive impact that would make on future generations.

Robert Plank 25:06 I love it, the ripple effect. Well, so much food for thought. Here, great ideas, and thank you for educating us today. Fatima about this concept of authentic strengths, your YouTube, your book and your website, where people should go right now to take that free strength survey, understand your unique profile to empower your personal and professional life. Go ahead, do it right now and go there and Fatima, thank you so much for showing up, stopping by and helping us out and giving us some great advice.

Fatima Doman 25:34 I really appreciate it always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Robert.

Robert Plank 25:41 This is Robert Plank from the marketer of the day podcast, which you can find at marketer of the day.com for more episodes and d f y podcast.com, forward, Slash Free. If you want to know more about running your own podcast or running a better or more fun or easier or less time intensive podcast, go to dfy podcast.com/free, to find out more. Write this instant you.