We talked with Gretchen about:
- Talents versus strengths and how to turn a talent into a strength
- How overusing a strength can turn it into a “weakness”
- If you are giving away your strengths for free
About Gretchen Pisano:
As the CEO and co-founder of pLink Leadership, Gretchen Pisano focuses on executive coaching and leadership development, aiming to align individual and collective growth with organizational strategy. She finds joy in the challenge of guiding teams, likening it to steering an aircraft carrier—a hard but rewarding task. Her journey reflects the idea that no experience is wasted, as she believes her early career in graphic facilitation laid the foundation for her expertise. For seven years, she traveled globally, illustrating live conversations during high-level corporate meetings. This experience honed her ability to listen deeply—not just to what was said but also to what was left unsaid, across various cultural contexts. It led her to facilitate strategic conversations, where she noticed while organizations invest heavily in systems, they overlook the importance of changing how people think. This realization spurred her to pursue a master’s degree in applied positive psychology, combining her street smarts with evidence-based theories.
Featured Resources
- Gretchen Pisano on LinkedIn
- Gretchen Pisano on Instagram
- pLink Leadership on LinkedIn
- Clifton Strengths
Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:
- Reaching Gen Z: How Financial Services Companies Can Engage and Hire the Next Generation with Mary Wisniewski
- Tips and Trends for Hiring and Onboarding the Right Team in Financial Services Firms with Caleb Brown
- Using a Coach Mindset to Unlock Your Full Leadership Potential
Full Audio Transcript:
Lauren (00:05):
Gretchen, thank you for joining us today.
Gretchen (00:07):
Thank you for having me.
Lauren (00:08):
Yes. I was just reading again, your bio before you joined, and you have such an incredible deep background of working with companies of all different sizes and cultures and what have you. I think what really resonated with me, I actually have to read the lines about when you work with organizations, the outputs around really increasing revenues, establishing honest and inclusive cultures, aligning mindsets and behaviors that really impact and foster just a positive working relationship and culture within an organization. That is not easy to do. So there are so many components, emotional, psychologically to intermix with that, not to mention just org structures and all kinds of stuff. So I want to get into some of that today but I don't want to steal your thunder. I'd love just to hear from you a little bit more about your background and how you got into the really impactful work you're doing today.
Gretchen (01:08):
All right. Well, it's a story but aren't they all, and I think this is a great example of no experience is ever wasted, how it all kind of weaves together. So early in my career I did something called graphic facilitation. And in graphic facilitation, you're literally illustrating the conversation that's happening in the room. And so large organizations use this when they're doing large-scale meetings. And all that meant was I had seven years of literally traveling around the world in different companies, working with different facilitators at the time, and listening to the way the people think. And when you're illustrating a conversation, your back is to the room. And so you're really listening not just to what people say but also to what isn't being said and breathing patterns and how that differs when you're in North America or in Asia or South America.
And so that was, I really think about that as my 10,000 hours in relation to listening to how people think. And that led me directly into facilitating strategic conversations. I was naturally good at that. We're going to be talking about strengths. It was one of my strengths and I spent a lot of time with very senior teams helping them think through strategy. And I noticed people were spending a lot of time and money designing organizational systems and they were not spending the same amount of time or money helping people think and changing the way people think and the number one obstacle to successfully executing on a great idea is people, is human nature. And so that got me really interested in the field where I am now by passion and by project. So I evolved into a master's in applied positive psychology to help me partner up my street smarts with some good strong theory and evidence to understand that.
And then I scaled that into pLink Leadership, where we do executive coaching and leadership development that is designed to be an enterprise solution. And I just qualify that because sometimes when you think about executive coaching, it's like a one-off outside benefit. And the way we approach it is that this is integrated into your strategy and the goal is to make it all fit together so people are working both individually and collectively on the things they need to be working on to be able to advance the strategy. And it is hard. I mean, it's really fun and we love doing it. I love doing it and it is hard. It's like turning an aircraft carrier to get a whole bunch of people pointed in the same direction but hard stuff is worth doing and I love doing it.
Lauren (04:08):
It is. So tell us a little bit more about the strengths component. I know you were alluding to that too. How are you, when you're working with individuals and teams, really defining strengths? You talk about strengths versus skills and how do you define those two?
Gretchen (04:26):
I mean, we go back to the theory on that—we are not the original authors of the strengths theory. Really that would be the CliftonStrengths, which roots back to Gallup. And so they are really the preeminent experts in this area. So they define a strength as a talent plus knowledge plus skill plus time invested. So what's important about that is that a talent is a naturally occurring way of thinking and feeling and doing. It's something you don't have to think hard about doing. You're just sort of drawn to it and maybe you are naturally good at it but it doesn't become a strength unless you flank it with knowledge, flank it with skills development, and then invest the time. So you can have raw talent that never becomes a strength. A strength is when you've invested that time in; it just becomes a part of who you are in terms of your thinking, feeling, and doing. And that trio is important because behavior we know is motivated by emotion, and emotion is driven by thought. So it all kind of works together to make us very good at something with less effort and a lot more enjoyment. Like the act itself delivers satisfaction, not just the output. And that's a strength, that's a strength in action. And then a skill, you can be really good at something that is not a strength. The distinction is that exercising a skill consumes energy. Exercising a strength produces energy even while it's putting it out.
Lauren (06:15):
That's such a great way to think about it sort of in simple terms. So can you maybe share some examples for how you've been able to pull out strengths among teams or skills among teams? How do you kind of slice and dice that when you get involved with an organization and being able to pull out those nuances?
Gretchen (06:36):
So it's important to know that people cannot make change successfully if they're not standing on firm ground. So we always start with helping people be sure they have a clear understanding of who they are in their current context. And that's important because context shows change. You can take a great leader in one context, change their context, meaning they go to a different company altogether or maybe their role completely changes, and all of a sudden they're starting to get negative feedback or the other way around, they're struggling over here, they get lateral and they just bloom and bloom. So the context is important. We help them to really understand who they are in that context. Strength is a big component of that; so are values. So is how you see your future best self. And so we use the CliftonStrengths assessment to get a baseline and we tell people going in, this is not truth; it's a doorway to insight. And we ask them to read through the strengths insight report and say, which of this feels most true to you? Give a blank version of your guide to somebody who knows you well and ask them which things in here stand out for you as being true, and then work with that. And then from there, we help them to think through which of these ones that feel most true—I know this would be true about myself for as long as I can remember.
And then we really move forward from there to help them understand what does that look like when it's in excellence, meaning it's serving you really well and you're using it in the way that makes sense and is productive and where might you be overusing it. I think this was one of my early really big insights, which is that oftentimes an area of development or what people refer to as a weakness. I don't like to use that language because it implies it's an inherent flaw in us when really a weakness is just something other people don't like. Just like a weed is still a plant. It's just a plant growing in a place you don't want it.
So I like the notion of an area of development or an area of opportunity, and we have these areas of development we hear all the time—you're honest to a fault or why don't you ever sit down? Or how come it's so important to you to be the architect of what's going forward? And we hear it so many times, and it's connected to one of our strengths in excess because we have to remember when we're using a strength, it feels fulfilling to us. It feels natural to us, it leaves us rewarded but sometimes we can overuse it and other people experience that as a flaw.
And so then they give us that feedback and they tell us, you shouldn't be like this. But then we tell ourselves, well, how can I not be like this? This is who I am. So then if we start to understand it's about volume, we are like, oh, we just have to learn how to modulate the volume. So if I have the strength of ideation and I love to throw ideas around when I'm hanging out with other people who also have the strength of ideation, we're speaking each other's language and we can go to town with that. But if I'm in a room full of people who maybe are in charge of making the plan real, they're more of the executing strengths. I need to temper my ideation because I'm just thinking out loud. But to them, they become overwhelmed with all the different directions something can go or how would we make that real?
Lauren (10:45):
I see that as well oftentimes, or can frankly just get off track from a strategy that's preset and making sure we are aligned, right?
Gretchen (10:56):
Totally innocently, they don't even know. We don't even know we're doing it unless we've done the work to understand our strengths and what they look like in excellence. We just pop off with an idea and then we're shocked when other people don't love that we're contributing an idea. And somebody else might say, Gretchen, we're 10 days down the path on this. We're not going to change right now.
Lauren (11:21):
Right. So when you're going through and doing these strengths assessments, are you doing this across the team or is it just within a department or a leadership team, or is it sort of case by case with the engagement?
Gretchen (11:34):
Yeah, I was going to say yes. And so if we're doing individual coaching it’s part of every coaching package but it's also not uncommon at all to start this way. If you are bringing a team together for the first time, or say you have a new leader to a preexisting team, it's a great opportunity to do a strengths inventory to understand who's on the team and help people have the conversation with each other about which of the strengths they see most present in their leadership style, in their current context, what they lean into when they need courage or when they're making a decision. We have a conversation where we ask people to share what they see as their superpowers in kryptonite. So it's not like you say, oh, my superpower is futuristic ideation maximizer. That doesn't mean any sense to anybody. It's like, wait, how does that even translate? But if you're able to say, my superpower is in really helping people figure out where they can make their contribution, or my superpower is in seeing around corners, or my superpower is in helping us think about a different way of doing something, then people are like, oh, okay, I get it.
Lauren (12:53):
I get it. It feels more tangible or real or what have you.
Gretchen (12:56):
Yeah, it's like what you see every day. So that's how a team would use it when you're first coming together and building a foundation.
Lauren (13:04):
So fascinating. So you've given the example earlier about ideation. You'd be in a work setting and there's maybe someone who's in more of a senior leadership role, a CEO or what have you, it's just they're an ideator. But sometimes those situations where they're perhaps over indexing and their strength innocently comes out in just natural ways. What role do you play—I don’t know if the right word is intervene—but to be able to help kind of coach teams along the way, and those things that are just naturally coming up through the day. Is it those one-on-one conversations? How do you be that fly on the wall to help guide the teams?
Gretchen (13:48):
Yeah. Well, I think that is different by engagement. It really depends on what they're asking you to be in there for. But the initial meeting we do, typically it's a one-day session where you've got a team together either virtually or in person, and you're doing both values and strengths to lay the foundation, and you're helping them to have that conversation with each other. We give them an artifact afterwards so they can see how the team lays out. It would also be really important for me to say out loud that just because something's not your strength doesn't mean you're not really good at it.
So a common mistake, we see people being like, this is so great. I want everybody to have a placard with their strengths, and we put that outside their office or their cubicle. And this is a terrible idea because it's like you wouldn't say, hello, Lauren. Lauren doesn't have any strategy strengths. We're just not going to invite her to this conversation. Just boxing people, boxing. And that's also not how it works. The strength piece of it is that you are more naturally good at it and you're going to be drawn toward wanting to do it. So that piece of it is different and it's going to energize you doing it. Typically, you'd also say people have a higher, faster rate of learning when they're in a strength. And people by virtue of knowledge and skill and time invested can become very skilled at something and how they recharge afterwards. That's none of our business. So I think it's really important to make sure people are clear that as an individual, it's your decision point about how you want to navigate your role and where you want to be investing yourself. What I'll say as a coach with many years of experience is that it's not uncommon to see people build entire careers on their skills because we believe we deserve to be paid for what feels hard, and we give away what feels easy.
Lauren (15:54):
Interesting.
Gretchen (15:54):
So people volunteer in their area of strength, people discount their services in their area of strength. They give it away for free in their area of strength, and then they're like, this is where I'm going to charge. And then you end up creating a structure, a lifestyle portfolio of services or clients and then you're like, why am I doing this? I'm not enjoying it. I'm really good at it, but I don't enjoy it.
Lauren (16:19):
You look around and you go, gosh, not everyone's as good at doing what I'm doing.
Gretchen (16:25):
Right. The other things. Yeah. So I would just offer that. So going back to your question, our goal would be to equip the team to talk to each other about the strengths and then to be able to do some one-on-one coaching with, for example, the more senior people to help them to understand where they might be habitually. Part of our workshop is understanding which of the ones that you might have a habit of over-indexing on and what might trigger that.
Lauren (16:56):
Yeah, super interesting. So it sounds like bringing not only self-awareness but not boxing that self-awareness, and then along the way, helping to coach individuals so they can flourish where they might not have recognized strengths before.
Gretchen (17:14):
Yeah, so I think in organizational development, the hardest part is you're thinking on three levels all the time, like an individual team and then let's call it mission. So you kind of have to be thinking about that all as an individual. How do I want to think about my own strengths as a leader? How do I want to capitalize on the strengths of my team? And as a person has responsibility for the mission and the vision? How are we doing moving toward that and who might I need to move around or what responsibilities might I need to move around to make that journey easier?
Lauren (17:50):
So fascinating. Oh my goodness, Gretchen, this is such a deep topic and it's so important and impacts all of us and the workplace, and so I really appreciate you sharing your insights and depth of perspective and working with teams, especially all different sizes. Are there any other final thoughts or takeaways you'd like to share with folks as well?
Gretchen (18:15):
I guess what I would end with is that we spend so much time at work. We spend so much of our waking hours at work, so why wouldn't we want that to be as enjoyable as possible? And some of that is about other people interacting with us and what we can manage and what we can't manage. But a lot of it has to do with the work we do. And so if we job craft ourselves, we don't even have to change jobs. If we just craft ourselves into a set of responsibilities that tap our strengths, it not only makes our outcomes better but it changes our quality of experience.
Lauren (18:58):
Mindset lifts up.
Gretchen (19:01):
So at the end of the day, you're like, oh, I feel filled up. That was so good, as opposed to just feeling wiped out and drained.
Lauren (19:09):
Yes. So well said. Well, Gretchen, thank you again for your time. We'll make sure to include links as well to your bio and website and what have you but so fascinating. So many great nuggets to take away. So thank you again.
Gretchen (19:21):
Good. You're welcome.
