First in a series explaining how Certified Practitioners help you process profiles
Often Christ-followers are unaware that their differences with others actually represent enormous strengths. The Leading From Your Strengths (LFYS) Profile is a tool that helps you discover your unique strengths and how to use them. This personalized, detailed 20-page report accurately describes your individual habitual patterns of behavior, thought, emotion, and communication, and includes action steps to help you use the information to blend with those around you.
How can you get the most from this sophisticated report? Certainly family members, friends, and team members can give you feedback. You can download and use the free Leading From Your Strengths Workbook to gain deeper insights about your individual report or work through the Leading From Your Strengths Team Building Discovery Kit with your team to identify which action steps to take.
Yet one of the most overlooked ways to get the most from your report is by working with a certified practitioner – either individually, as a couple, as a family, or as a team.
This series will examine a how a practitioner can help you process your profile to understand your unique strengths, value the strengths of those around you, and blend.
How a Certified Practitioner Can Help You
Certified practitioners are counselors, coaches, pastors, trainers, or consultants who have become qualified to interpret profile data – and then help you to use it.
Practitioners know how to explain the biblical foundation anchoring the profiles, interpret the four strengths areas, and then analyze your profile data according to those principles.
Once they walk with you through the report interpretation, practitioners then equip you to use the data. They are trained to help you identify life applications, using additional support resources to show you how to put your information into practice. Practitioners work in three areas.
1. A certified practitioner works from a biblical foundation.
The profiles, based on the Law of Differences, are grounded in God’s Word. 1 Corinthians 12:12-18 tells us that the body is one, but made up of many parts. Each part has a vital function. It is no less part of the body because it is different, but rather of immense value because it adds to the whole. Practitioners work from this foundation of God’s Word: your strengths, when combined with the strengths around you, complete each other.
2. A certified practitioner interprets data objectively.
The profile data is powerful. Its user perceived accuracy rate is 92.1%. A practitioner is equipped to evaluate the data and explain how you approach problem solving, processing information, managing change and facing risk in unique ways.
3. A certified practitioner points to multiple purposeful interactions.
In this step, your practitioner explains various actions steps you can take to use the objective data in practical ways.
The benefits of working with a certified practitioner are significant:
Clarity. Charts, checklists, Do’s, Don’ts … as you read your report it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material. What does it mean? What is most important? What is secondary? A practitioner can help you prioritize what you learn and understand the profile’s terminology. Your work together will give you a clearer understanding of your unique strengths.
Assurance. What you may once have thought was a weakness is often, in reality, a strength. A practitioner can help you understand how your profile data translates into behaviors. You will discover the value of your strengths based on biblical truth.
Direction. What environment allows your natural strengths to flourish? How does your current environment align with your strengths or challenge them? How can you cultivate your strengths and use them best? A practitioner is equipped to walk with you through that process, offering you strategies and tools to succeed along the way.
What a Certified Practitioner Cannot Do
One thing a practitioner cannot do is bring about change. Neither can the profile itself.
Both simply provide information. A practitioner offers support. The profile provides objective data. Both can be a powerful catalyst for change. But neither a practitioner nor the data are the most important parts of the process in building strong, Christ-centered relationships.
That role belongs to the Holy Spirit. He uses tools at His disposal – like a practitioner and the profile data – to change your heart, mind, and soul. But it is the Spirit Himself, rather than a report or a human being, who brings about lasting transformation in your relationships when you allow Him to work.
Certified Practitioner Series
Part 2: Independent or Interdependent? A Certified Practitioner Can Help You Know
Part 3: Four Ways You Are Unique
Part 4: Getting the Most out of Your Profile
Part 5: Now What? Three Ways to Put Your Profile Into Practice