January 6, 2017

Why focusing your organization on culture matters

“Culture is really all about people,” says Culture Counts CEO Whitney Walpole. “When you find a way to elevate, enhance, and expand your culture, you’re really elevating, expanding and developing your people so that they’re better, more effective, and more aligned with the kind of attitude you want them to have with each other … and with your clients.”

“And if your people are growing, then your business grows.”

At Culture Counts, we take culture and make it practical, tangible, and applicable. We help leaders like you get your mind around culture, talk about it, and understand how it drives your business, while helping you design practical initiatives that help you grow your culture and your business at the same time. One of the ways we do this is through a Sweet Spot assessment.

What is the Sweet Spot?

At Culture Counts, we practice a method much deeper than strength-finding or taking a test to discovering your personality traits. A Sweet Spot assessment determines an individual’s unique leadership DNA by assigning three talents an individual possesses and an individual’s masks within a set of seven archetypes.

Our team members use the Sweet Spot to effectively coach clients on how they can:

• Better understand their own strengths and leadership qualities that show up naturally;
• Increase their ability to focus;
• Recognize their own and others’ unique styles of communication, pacing, and decision-making;
• Increase their ability to connect powerfully with peers, clients and employees; and
• Organize their teams effectively to maximize collaboration, creativity, and production.

“When leaders understand why they are achieving their current results, on projects and with their people, it becomes much easier to see how to create change for the better,” Whitney says.

How the Sweet Spot assessment is different from other personality tests

Most assessment systems test for differences in creative skills, but the results are based on a person’s self-assessment. The problem with this method is that many self-assessments are based on what we call “masking” — ways of behavior that we have developed in our lives in order to please others, prove our value, and even to survive.

“Other methods can say what’s generally good about you, or what your strengths are, or what you’re really good at,” Whitney says. “But the problem with people’s self-assessment is that most of us have misconceptions about who we are. Because of our need as children to be seen and get approval from the adults in our life, we begin to imitate behaviors that aren’t as natural and authentic for us. We begin to believe that these learned behaviors are who we really are.”

Masking our true beliefs causes us to become tired and stressed, and leads to conflict with others. The Sweet Spot assessment uncovers these true beliefs and leads us to a higher revelation of who we are.

“I think the reason that the Sweet Spot was so good for me was because I was finally ready to be authentic,” says Eliza Prall, founder and CEO of Prall Marketing. “Other assessments can find your strengths, but they’re not applicable. They’re not put into action, even though they’re intellectually satisfying.”

Other tools like StrengthsFinder help people understand what’s happening in the present moment, Whitney says. But they don’t go deep enough into someone’s DNA to actually have a long term effect on the way a person leads and creatively engages life.

“When you work with the Sweet Spot all the time, it changes you,” Whitney says. “It changes you so deeply because you change your beliefs about yourself.”

Find your Sweet Spot today by calling 303.872.7926 to schedule an assessment with our team. Or you can visit us at http://culturecounts.biz.