A Strong Week Plan is a strength habit I was taught in my strengths-management training certifications with the Gallup Organization, and I have incorporated it into the Managing with Aloha organizational culture via Key 7 of my 9Key Concepts. In 2007 Marcus Buckingham brought awareness of this habit to the business book genre when he published Go Put Your Strengths to Work.

When the book was released, employee engagement expert David Zinger and I did a community reading and learning project at Joyful Jubilant Learning on strengths management, with Buckingham’s book one of two we used. This was the first post, and there is a full index at JJL with more. I know you are a JJLer, and you will see the index on the category drop-down menu there in the Sidebar.

Essentially, the Strong Week Plan is an approach where you proactively schedule those activities you have identified as strength-aligned for you into your week – and you do so each and every week, building the lifelong habit of living and working on your strengths, so that your weaknesses become irrelevant to your more significant goals.

A Strong Week Plan is a great habit – it DOES strengthen you, making you feel much more confident and effective. I highly recommend Buckingham’s book, for it is done in a self-coaching, self-paced format: I regularly recommend it within my coaching programs – and you will continue to hear me talk about it here!

And I love the examples you shared on open versus closed questions. We hear that advice a lot, but the examples given are often too simple, and not with the nuances you have given us – thank you so much.

In that posting I talked about framing:

Questions are sort of like paintings: There is a vast array of different ones, and though the painting stays the same once the paint has dried and set completely, the painting can look completely different to you depending which frame you put it in —or if you use one at all. Good questions come from good intention: Once you ask a question, the words which ‘paint’ it are said. But how did you frame them, and why?

So, in keeping with this exercise this morning, I would frame my questions with the giving or receiving part I mentioned in mind, tailored to the person I want to engage in conversation.

Personally I think about my Strong Week Plan: Who am I enrolling in the goals or objectives of my present projects, and how do I want them to be involved – as my giver, or my receiver? Then I would try to frame the question in the way that the context is immediately meaningful to them.

If I was simply looking to have a great conversation with someone I admire, I would likely go right to the heart of the matter, saying something like, “I am so intrigued by the work you are doing with ________. What triggered it for you to begin with?” or “Where do you plan on taking this next?” I would want to discover their Why [connects back to this for me: Leadership is Why and When and discovering how they are feeling about their own self-leadership.]

Mahalo nui for the question Ka‘imi, for I feel like we have just had our own virtual conversation here!