Better Together
As 2021 comes to a close, many of us are looking back and reflecting on the journey we have had. If you have read any other blogs I have written, you know that my son Mason (age 18) was injured last January while skiing and is now paraplegic and is learning how to walk again (that is the short story). Our family relocated to Colorado (Craig Hospital) for his rehabilitation for several months early last year and then again for much of the summer so he could continue to receive physical therapy.
As you may know, trauma and loss can really challenge relationships. In fact, for many of us, just being together under one roof through two years of a pandemic, while sometimes working from home, can really stretch us. As a Certified Gallup Strengths coach who has a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Counseling, I have personally discovered the power of starting with strengths to build a foundation of mutual understanding and shared language. Let me share a glimpse behind our curtain…
Before we get started, if you are not familiar with the Gallup (Clifton) Strengths assessment, it identifies our top five talent themes, based on the way we think, feel, and behave. Refining our talent themes allows us to spend more time doing what we love, to create action in our lives, and to feel more satisfied (and yes, happy). Additionally, it provides a common language that makes communication on teams and in relationships more transparent and easier to navigate. Gallup’s philosophy states that “differences are advantages” and that “people need one another”. In such an individualistic society, we might lose sight of this last statement. In the 15 years I have been coaching, I have seen countless people use their strengths as a step ladder to the personal success they have been dreaming of for years.
Many years ago, I shared the Gallup (CliftonStrengths) Assessment with my partner, Donn. He is a scientist and he would agree that he is a bit of a skeptic. Okay, quite a skeptic (but stay tuned). It took him quite a while to warm to the idea of taking the assessment, but when he did, he was sold. After all, Gallup continues to refine the tool and use data to inform the reports and continue to educate users. As we began to talk about our own top five together, Donn began to name, using the Strengths language, some of the tension points in our relationship. For example, he has Responsibility in his top five and I have it in my top ten. He noticed that we can get into responsibility competitions that don’t serve us around caring for our, then young son. I loved that he was utilizing the tool in such a pragmatic way that help to “get klear” about our own relationship.
As we have navigated the last year together and processed our own personal grief and feelings, it was easier to see our relationship through a deficit lens and to focus on differences. This is the brain’s evolutionary default. In fact, sometimes directing our frustration at one another seemed to temporarily relieve the pressure valve. Luckily, the strongest unifying trait that we all share is our sense of humor! As we focused on our differences, we were more likely to become competitive and stubborn and to forget that we were collaborators. Our turning point came when we began to see our differences as our strengths and to honor them within each other. Even our son Mason needed to adjust his focus to see how our individual differences were sources of strength as he adjusted to our different parenting/caregiver styles over the summer when we took turns staying with him in Colorado.
As an illustration, I use my Input, Ideation, and Strategic (in my top ten) themes to gather information and to research. The process appears invisible to those on the outside and when I make a decision, it can look hasty. Donn is our resident risk manager with his Deliberative and Focus themes that require him to have silence and time to process. This is also invisible to the other. In order to problem-solve together, we have learned that we need to honor the two different processes and agree on a timeline to bring our findings together. Some decisions must be made more quickly than others and we have learned to prioritize them. We also learned that we need to believe in one another’s “best intentions”. After all, we have been married more than 20 years and competitions just don’t last that long. Navigating the process of creating an accessible home for Mason, from a distance, was one of our biggest problems to solve and it was complicated and had many layers.
Needless to say, this was a messy process. There were tears, frustration, raised voices, and apologies. As our family looks back over the last year, we do indeed feel like superheroes. Hindsight allows us to see that it was because of our differences, our shared hope, and our sense of humor that we prevailed and are still holding tight to one another as we move into a new year that may be as uncertain as our last year.
If coaching is something you might be interested in, I would love to work with you!
P.S. This post was edited and approved by my partner Donn!
