Meaning and Engagement

Strengths Alignment
Overview
One of the most significant and practical themes of strengths work is that your top strengths
can be consciously aligned with any activity, conversation, task, or routine in day-to-day living.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the workplace. Workers can deliberately connect their
signature strengths with their work task to reach outcomes employers are interested in, such
as employee engagement, employee sense of calling, and employee productivity.

Purpose
Improve energy and engagement at work; discover more meaning and sense of calling at
CSI 20
work.

Steps
1. List the five tasks that you do most frequently at work (e.g., filing, leading team meetings,
emailing clients, making sales calls, etc.).
2. Review your Top 5 strengths in your character strengths profile from the VIA Survey.
3. Write down one way you can use any one of your top strengths with each of the five work
tasks (e.g., using creativity to lead a team meeting by ending it with a new quote each
time; using creativity to offer different perspectives when making a sales call, etc.) Explain
how you will bring the character strength forth in the given task.
4. When you are ready, repeat Step 3 with a different top strength. Repeat until you go
through all five of your signature strengths.

Research
This exercise (described in Littman-Ovadia & Niemiec, 2017) examines current work tasks and
the potential of greater signature strengths use when engaging in these tasks. The interven-
tion was studied in a controlled trial of workers who specifically used four of their signature
strengths with work tasks over 4 weeks, which, relative to a control group, led to significant
improvements in calling 6 months later and life satisfaction 3 months later (Harzer & Ruch,
2016). This research draws from other research finding the use of signature strengths at work
is important for building a calling (Harzer & Ruch, 2012), as well as the relevance of character
strengths for vocation irrespective of the content of the strength (e.g., whether it’s creativ-
ity, prudence, or hope that is signature) (Harzer & Ruch, 2013). Other character strengths
researchers are drawing many important connections between the use of strengths, espe-
cially signature strengths, at work as they relate to performance (Dubreuil, Forest, & Courcy,
2013), organizational citizenship behavior and less counterproductive work behaviors (Lavy &
Littman-Ovadia, 2016), flourishing (Hone et al., 2015), and ambitious work behavior (Gander
et al., 2012). In addition, perseverance has been found to be a key character strength in the
work setting (Littman-Ovadia & Lavy, 2016). Research in organizational psychology refers to
this type of activity as “job crafting” in which employees make proactive changes that are
physical, relational, cognitive, or emotional to improve their jobs, and it has been associated
with various positive outcomes, including improved job satisfaction and greater meaning at
work (Wrzesniewski et al., 2013).

This page may be reproduced by the purchaser for personal/client use. From R. M. Niemiec: Character Strengths Interventions. © 2018 Hogrefe Publishing and VIA Institute on Character

101027_00492_ADHOC.indd 183 18.05.2017 11:20:42