Strengths coaching.
Your talents, named. Then read against your life.
A CliftonStrengths debrief with a coach who is completing Gallup’s Global Strengths Coaching certification (September 2026). Three sessions, one to one, in San Diego or on Zoom. You leave with your top themes understood, the places they overreach named, and a one-page map of what to do with them, in your own words.
Three sessions
Sixty minutes each, two to three weeks apart. You take the assessment before the first one; it takes about half an hour online.
$500 · $300 · $150
Professional, community, reduced (student). You choose the rate; no proof asked. The assessment code is about $60 and you buy it yourself.
A vocation map
One page: your top themes, the evidence from your own history, where each overreaches, and the next role or decision read against them.
One session, one grid
A cohort, a staff, a team reading its combined strengths together. Priced by conversation; see below.
What CliftonStrengths measures, and what it doesn’t.
The assessment was built by Donald Clifton and Gallup on a question most psychology had not asked: what is right with people. It sorts thirty-four patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour, which Gallup calls themes, into the order that is most natural to you, from the one you reach for without thinking to the one you would have to work to use at all. The themes fall into four families: those that get things done, those that move others, those that build relationships, and those that take in and work with information.
Two distinctions carry the whole thing. A talent is a natural pattern; a strength is that talent invested in, with knowledge, skill and practice, until it produces near-perfect performance. The assessment finds the first. The second is your work, and the coaching is for it. And the report is a ranking, not a score: it says nothing about how you compare with anyone else, only about the order inside you. That is why the bottom of the list is as useful as the top. It is design information about what you will need from other people and from structure.
Clifton’s own clues for spotting a talent, before any assessment, are worth knowing: what you are drawn back to, what you learn unusually fast, where you lose track of time, the moments you surprised yourself, and the things that leave you asking when you can do that again. The three sessions go looking for those in your history, so that the report is checked against a life rather than taken on faith.
My own readout, read the way we would read yours.
- 1Learner
- 2Individualization
- 3Belief
- 4Connectedness
- 5Ideation
- 6Strategic
- 7Responsibility
- 8Arranger
- 9Input
- 10Futuristic
- 11Analytical
- 12Achiever
- 13Context
- 14Intellection
- 15Command
- 16Activator
- 17Restorative
- 18Focus
- 19Woo
- 20Communication
- 21Significance
- 22Self-Assurance
- 23Deliberative
- 24Maximizer
- 25Relator
- 26Empathy
- 27Adaptability
- 28Developer
- 29Competition
- 30Positivity
- 31Discipline
- 32Consistency
- 33Harmony
- 34Includer
What the themes say when you read them as a sentence.
Learner, Individualization, Belief, Connectedness, Ideation. Taken one at a time they are a list. Taken together they describe a person who cannot stop learning, who sees each person as particular rather than as a type, who works from conviction and cannot fake it, who assumes everything is joined to everything else, and who generates ideas faster than he can use them. That is a fairly exact description of someone who studied anthropology, spent years inside several religious traditions, and ended up in a chair asking other people questions. The first session does this with your five: it finds the sentence, and checks it against what you have actually done.
Every strength has a shadow, and the shadow is specific.
Learner without a purpose goes down rabbit holes and calls it work. Belief, unmanaged, hardens into judgment of people who do not share it. Ideation starts ten things and finishes three. Connectedness can excuse a lack of boundaries as a philosophy. In the second session we go looking for the evidence: the projects that ran long, the relationships that cost more than they should have, the decision you keep not making. The point is not to fix the theme. It is to see the pattern in advance, so that the next time it starts you recognise it.
What you lack is the most useful thing on the page.
My last four are Discipline, Consistency, Harmony and Includer. There is not a single influencing theme in my top ten; the first one, Command, arrives at fifteen. Read honestly, that says: this person needs structure from outside himself, works best beside someone who keeps the rhythm, and will underweight the room in favour of the idea. It also explains why I am drawn to rules of life, circles and rituals: they supply from outside what the list says I do not carry inside. For a student choosing a first role, or anyone choosing a partner or a team, this is the reading that saves years.
From a report to a map.
The sentence
You have taken the assessment. We read the top ten, one at a time and then together, until the sentence they make is one you recognise as yours. You leave with your five in your own words, not Gallup’s.
The evidence
Your history against the report: the five clues, the moments of excellence, the projects that went wrong for reasons the list predicts. Where each theme overreaches, named. What the bottom of the list means for the people and structure you need.
The map
The decision or the role in front of you, read against all of it. You write the one-page vocation map: what you are for, what you need around you, what to say yes to next and what to stop. Mine to hold you to; yours to keep.
For some people the map is the end of the work. For others it is the beginning of the longer work, which is the Ninety-Day Arc. I will say which I think it is, and the choice is yours.
People at a fork, and teams that have never read themselves.
Students and early career
The major, the first role, the graduate programme, the offer you are not sure about. Strengths give you a vocabulary for interviews and a way to choose between good options that is better than the salary.
Mid-career, and not at home in it
Successful by every outside measure and restless anyway. The readout often shows a person working for years from their sixth to tenth themes because the role rewarded it. The map is the beginning of the correction.
Teams, cohorts and offices
A leadership cohort, a residence-life staff, an athletics team, a small company. One session reading the team’s grid: who carries what, where the team is thin, and what that means for how it divides the work. Individual follow-ups for anyone who wants one.
Three rates. You choose yours.
| Format | Shape | Professional | Community | Reduced (student) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chemistry call | 30 minutes | No charge | ||
| Strengths and Vocation | 3 sessions + CliftonStrengths 34 (about $60, bought by you) | $500 | $300 | $150 |
| Team session | One 2-hour session reading a team’s grid, up to 12 people, codes bought by the team | By conversation; no charge for a first pilot with a USD office | ||
| Follow-up | One 60-minute session after a team session | $180 | $110 | $60 |
You choose your rate. Professional is the full rate. Community is for people paying out of their own pocket. Reduced is the student rate, and it also covers nonprofit and public-service staff and anyone for whom community is a real barrier. No proof asked. USD students and staff: reduced rate.
The assessment is bought directly from Gallup; I never mark it up. Take the full 34 rather than the top five: the bottom of the list is where the useful reading is.
Strengths are the seed. They are not the soil.
A readout tells you what you are made of. It does not tell you what to do about a chapter that has ended, a decision you are avoiding, or a self you have outgrown. That is the longer work, and it is what the rest of the practice is for: the three kinds of coaching and the method underneath them. Strengths coaching is the shortest door into that house. It is a good one to start at, and for many people it is enough.
CliftonStrengths and Gallup are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. I am an independent coach, completing Gallup’s Global Strengths Coaching certification (September 2026), and not employed by or affiliated with Gallup. The readings above are my own; the assessment and its reports are Gallup’s.
A chemistry call. Thirty minutes, no charge.
Bring the question you are actually facing. If a strengths readout is the right first move, I will say so and send you the link to the assessment. If it isn’t, I will say that too.