A Deeper Look at How a Strengths Strategies Coaching Certification Is a Smart Step
Leaders need a way to get the best of their people by creating an environment where they thrive, feel supported, and are committed to the organization's success. Strengths-based coaching approaches promote exactly that. Understanding and capitalizing on strengths helps teams name the patterns behind their best work, set norms that create psychological safety, and make small, durable shifts in how they plan, decide, and execute — like using strengths maps to choose roles before a high-stakes project. For coaches, a strengths approach is easy to explain, simple to adopt, and robust enough to move the metrics that sponsors watch.
Across organizations and industries, leaders are expected to increase engagement, retention, and performance while moving faster with leaner teams. Strengths awareness and strengths strategies speak directly to that mandate.
When people get to use their strengths every day, they're six times more likely to be engaged, 8% more productive, and 15% less likely to quit, according to Gallup's analysis of large, multi-organization datasets. Moreover, Gallup's review of 49,495 business units (1.2 million employees) shows that strengths interventions correlate with 10–19% higher sales, 14–29% higher profit, 9–15% more engaged employees, and fewer safety incidents – all metrics that matter to organizational leaders.
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How Organizations are Using Strengths
Southwest Airlines offers a recognizable example of strengths at enterprise scale. Years ago, a conversation about employee development set them on a path to embed strengths across the business. Gallup chronicled Southwest's aim to become the world's first strengths-based airline, and Southwest received the Don Clifton Strengths-Based Culture Award for its expanded access to strengths-based assessment and strategies for leaders and employees. In practice, this means onboarding with strengths, team conversations that normalize differences in working styles, and manager routines that keep strengths language alive in daily operations. These are practical approaches that promote a service culture in a demanding, complex environment.
In financial services, Ameritas demonstrates how a regulated company can incorporate a strengths management approach without adding bureaucracy. Senior HR leaders have described how they made strengths adoption simple and universal ("every employee, every manager"), incorporating CliftonStrengths knowledge in manager check-ins and engagement measures. The effect is a cultural shift. A common language is developed for what each person does best, and they use it for staffing, collaboration, and development decisions. Those insights resonate with sponsors because they target the friction that slows execution — misaligned roles, unclear expectations, and avoidable conflict.
In higher education, West Virginia University shows what scaling strengths strategies look like in a complex, multi-stakeholder system. They integrated CliftonStrengths into orientation, workshops for students, faculty and staff, and one-on-one coaching — promoting the language of strengths across academic life and campus operations. Their university credits their investments in incorporating strengths approaches in student-success programming with improved outcomes, including WVU's second-highest first-year retention (81.4%) and a 14% rise in four-year graduation rate over eight years.
For organizational coaches, it's become clear that strengths stick when they are widely integrated, such as through onboarding, team meetings, and development conversations.
Why Coaches and Organizations are Leaning into Strengths Strategies
Here are three reasons why organizational buyers are interested in utilizing coaches and consultants knowledgeable in using strengths approaches:
- It's a credible method to boost performance, not just a morale booster. The meta-findings such as improved profit, sales, engagement, and psychological safety — connect directly to the metrics that leaders are trying to increase. You are not asking managers to be "smarter or more productive;" you're giving them a proven strategy to align roles, expectations, and collaboration with what people naturally do well.
- It scales because of an easy-to-grasp shared language. The four strengths domain categories make it easy for teams and cross-functional groups to talk about "how we help and hinder each other." That lowers the difficulty of hard conversations and speeds decisions.
- It promotes retention and career satisfaction. When each person gets to do more of the work that fits, they stay longer and contribute more.
How College of Executive Coaching Prepares You to Deliver Outcomes with Strengths
Many coaches don't yet use strengths assessments, and most of those who do stop at report interpretation — but to get more value for individual clients and the organization, they need a thorough approach that works with teams and departments. Our Strengths Strategies and Strengths Group Techniques Coaching Certification equips you with strategies and tools that other workshops and certifications don't teach — so you can move from "interesting insights" to measurable changes in how teams perform.
The Program Includes Four Live, Skills-focused Workshops (all virtual, 1:00–5:00 PM PT)
November 18, 2025 — Facilitating Group Strengths Awareness (Aashi Arora, MHA)
You will model strengths discovery; teach participants to interpret their reports; run interactive team activities; create visual strengths maps to reveal collective patterns; and set norms that build psychological safety — so teams can discuss differences productively.
December 2, 2025 — Applying Strengths to Real-World Team Challenges (Melanie Proshchenko, MA)
You will learn how to diagnose how styles contribute to friction and resilience issues. Learn three practical levers to improve effectiveness on team challenges and coach individuals to see how they both help — and sometimes hinder — team success.
December 9, 2025 — Strengths for Collaboration, Change, and Inclusion (Melanie Proshchenko, MA)
Learn how to use a capability-focused language to bring more voices into complex work. Explore why change and inclusion can be harder for some themes, then guide teams to define ideal behaviors, self-assess, and make commitments without forcing people to mimic others.
December 16, 2025 — Sustaining a Strengths-Based Culture (Ed Nottingham, PhD)
You will learn how to address skepticism and resistance; practice tools you can teach to managers; integrate strengths into one-on-ones, stand-ups, and performance conversations; and build a plan leaders will use.
Plus
Six hours of strengths-specific video programming and a brief mentored strengths project to help you solidify your learning.
Continuing Education Bonus
The program is also approved for ICF, HRCI, BCC and APA purposes for 24 continuing education hours.
Strengths Success Stories You Can Share with Decision Makers
Based on the research I have shared, here are three vignettes based on actual organizational successes you can use as convincing examples of effectiveness for strengths approaches when promoting your services:
"Service at Scale"
Dana Williams, Director of Marketing and Communications at Southwest Airlines, reported how the leadership team needed to rebuild reliability and morale after a tough season. By rolling out strengths in onboarding and manager training, flight operations and customer teams got a common language for managing situations under pressure. Leaders talked candidly about their own Top 5 strengths and where they needed partners. Over time, strengths showed up in almost every staffing conversation — who thrives on rapid triage, who patiently solves downstream problems — which supported the airline's broader culture goals. This is how Southwest describes why it became a strengths-based culture.
"Simplicity Wins"
A Chief Human Relations Officer at a national insurer wanted enterprise adoption, not another pilot. She hired a certified coach and organizational consultant specializing in using strengths to help standardize a process where "everyone completes the CliftonStrengths, every manager uses it in one-on-ones," then pairs it with engagement check-ins. Within months, teams reported fewer avoidable conflicts and clearer expectations. That's the Ameritas story: widespread strengths assessment plus manager training.
"Purpose Plus Strengths"
A public university weaved strengths into orientation, advising, and faculty workshops through a Purpose Center hub. Students and staff learned how to leverage a strengths vocabulary for success, and the institution credited investments in purpose-and-strengths programming with improved retention and graduation rates.
What You Will Be Ready to Do After the Certification
- Facilitate strengths discovery for teams and cross-functional groups — moving quickly from reports to strategies you can use with groups, teams, and departments
- Map collective strengths to spot collaboration opportunities, blind spots, and resilience risks
- Coach through friction with the three-lever framework to shift behavior on live issues
- Support change and inclusion with language that invites contribution from every style
- Build manager capability to highlight, sustain, and leverage strengths in one-on-ones and stand-ups
- Show ROI by linking interventions to the outcomes sponsors already track — engagement, turnover, safety, sales, and profit
If your clients expect clear, research-based outcomes — not just an inspiring workshop — this certification gives you the structure, tools, and credibility to deliver. Because the approach aligns with how Gallup positions CliftonStrengths® — simple to adopt, scalable through manager routines, and tied to business outcomes — you will be ready with a method sponsors recognize and value. I have found that if you give teams a strengths assessment, provide strategies for the managers, and promote a culture of incorporating strengths into management practices, the impact will be both positive and enduring.
Explore Approved Strengths Coach Training
Ready to take the next step? Learn more about our Strengths Strategies and Strengths Group Techniques Coaching Certification and improve your competence and marketability.
