Fixing weaknesses feels productive, but doubling down on what you are already good at is usually what actually moves the needle.

This episode explores the case for a strengths-based approach to work, using Gallup's CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly known as StrengthsFinder). It unpacks how the tool sorts thirty-four themes into four categories — relationship building, strategic thinking, executing, and influencing — and why the order those themes rank in for each person matters more than any individual score. Ben revisits his own results from 2002, the year he first took the assessment, and the conversation traces how understanding a low-ranked strength (in his case, analytical thinking) reframed what he actually enjoyed about a job built entirely around data and troubleshooting.

The conversation then moves from individual reflection to team application. It covers an example from a leadership team where everyone's top strengths were put on cards with the names stripped out before staffing decisions were made for cross-business projects, removing unconscious bias from who got picked. It also looks at smart partnering, the practice of pairing people whose strengths cover each other's gaps, and a case where reassigning two team members to swap roles turned a frustrated manager's team around within months. For anyone who builds or leads teams, the throughline is practical: strengths data can replace guesswork in who does what, who gets picked for what, and why.

**In this episode:**
- [00:00] — Intro and welcome
- [02:11] — Susie's background: Microsoft, StrengthsFinder accreditation, Red Book Consultancy
- [05:40] — What CliftonStrengths is: Gallup's 34 themes and why rank order matters more than any score
- [17:28] — Ben's 2002 results: top five and bottom five
- [21:56] — Reframing a low-ranked strength: Ben's old job in technical support
- [27:39] — Blind card-sorting to remove bias from staffing decisions
- [29:27] — Case study: swapping two team members turns a team around
- [38:07] — Smart partnering: pairing complementary strengths
- [40:20] — Where to find Susie

**Guest: Susie Harding**
Susie runs the Red Book Consultancy. She spent seven and a half years at Microsoft, where she was chief of staff to three general managers and accredited in StrengthsFinder when Gallup first rolled it out across the UK subsidiary. Twenty years into running her own business, she works across technology, gaming, pharmaceutical, and sports organisations, helping leadership teams turn strengths data into decisions about roles, teams, and where people are genuinely likely to thrive rather than just get by.

Connect with Susie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-harding-a9b2a74/
Red Book Consultancy: https://www.theredbookconsultancy.com

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Listen to the full conversation above, and subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

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Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts
Elevated You: https://www.elevatedyou.live

Change management often fails for one simple reason: nobody diagnosed why people are actually resisting before throwing more training and communication at the problem.

Matt Quinn, SVP of Sales and Go to Market at IFS Industrial Intelligence, joins the show to unpack how leaders diffuse resistance to disruptive technology, using the ADKAR framework (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement) as a lens for figuring out where a change effort is actually stalling.

The conversation covers why leadership style has to shift depending on how competent someone is at a specific task, not their general reputation, and why pairing a vision led leader with a detail oriented "bad cop" tends to make change stick where either style alone would not.

The episode also digs into a part of the AI conversation that gets less airtime: the 70 percent of the global workforce who do not sit at a desk. Quinn talks about what it takes to bring AI into industrial settings like production lines and field service, where the disruption looks very different from the desk based AI tools most tech media covers.

He and Ben also talk about reward structures, the risk of mandating change without addressing the fear underneath it, and why looking before you leap beats jumping straight to a training rollout.

Matt Quinn is SVP of Sales and Go to Market at IFS Industrial Intelligence, where he works on embedding AI into established ERP and field management systems. He previously worked at Oracle and Microsoft and has founded startups of his own, giving him a view of change management from both the big tech and founder side of the table. He is only a few months into the role, but the questions he is wrestling with are not new to him.

He talks about the ADKAR framework he leans on repeatedly, the difference between coaching a beginner and coaching someone who has just been made a beginner again, and why he deliberately built his own leadership team around people who think nothing like him.

Show notes:

Listen and subscribe:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts
• Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com
• Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts
• Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals
• Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations
• Connect With Matt Quinn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattquinn-aistrategy/

A tough job market rewards the people who can say, in one sentence, why they, and not the other thousand applicants, should get the role.

This episode turns into a live coaching session. Dr. Kyle Elliott, a tech career and executive coach, walks Ben through the exercise he uses with senior leaders across Silicon Valley: gathering feedback from people who knew you as a child and people who know you now, then finding the overlap. That overlap, in Kyle's language, is your fabulousness, the specific and provable things that set you apart from everyone else with a similar background.

The episode moves from theory into practice quickly. Kyle coaches Ben live, drawing out how Ben's own friends describe him, then pressing for the proof behind each trait: not just positive, but the specific week a deal fell through and Ben kept going anyway. That gap between a personality trait and a concrete story is where resumes and LinkedIn profiles usually fall flat, a problem Sales Engineers, Technical Consultants, and Customer Success leaders run into constantly once a market tightens.

The conversation also covers the part of hiring nobody agrees on right now: how much AI is actually reading resumes, and how much a candidate should let AI write theirs. Kyle's answer, drawn from clients inside Google, Amazon, and other large tech companies, cuts against the assumption that bots decide everything. He also unpacks his cake and frosting framework for balancing the qualifications a role demands against the individuality that gets someone remembered, and how to talk about weaknesses in an interview without hiding them or handing the interviewer a reason to say no.

Dr. Kyle Elliott, is a tech career coach and executive coach at CaffeinatedKyle.com, working with senior managers, executives, and job seekers across Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry. He is a member of the invitation-only Forbes Coaches Council and a consultant with the Myers-Briggs Company, and his coaching has been featured in Business Insider, Fortune, and the Harvard Business Review.

Show notes footer:

Listen and subscribe:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts

Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com

Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts

Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals

Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations

Dr Kyle Elliott: https://caffeinatedkyle.com/freebies/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecromerelliott/