You’ve seen the headlines. The Great Resignation describe a global awakening that what got us here won’t be around when we’re celebrating in the future. But this isn’t just about what attracts or retains top talent. Top talent doesn’t need your attraction. What if we stop trying to bar the doors, winning the game of keeping our best right where they are, and instead study them? I think you’ll find “they” aren’t a they at all. They’re you and me, and we want what human beings have always wanted. We want to be seen, be cared about, and be believed in—held accountable, challenged even, to becoming more of who we already are

Emma was exhausted. A seasoned leader with more than 30 years of experience in the corporate world, this was day 5 of her new job. Like so many highly talented professionals over the past 2 years, Emma made a brave career decision, and found herself in a brand new place, trading in her dry-clean only board room blouse for a trendy white hoodie, where she showed up to a new job virtually, where her two pandemic puppies played at her feet while she plugged in a new laptop from her kitchen bar.

One of the most frequent requests we get is for team workshops. Leaders want to unlock their team’s potential, understand the dynamics of relationships, and create an experience that helps their people feel seen and valued.

One of those things is much easier to accomplish than the others, and it’s the one that doesn’t get you very far.

Did you think about quitting your job in 2021? There’s a good chance your top talent did. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40% of working Americans considered leaving their employment at the start of the year, and by year-end, a record 24 million had quit. So it makes sense that the common headline on my social feed would be scarcity and panic. Keeping your employees through the certain threat of the Great Resignation is a hot topic. Many even call it the “war for talent.” But we’ve got it all wrong. It’s not a war, and treating it like one is hurting you.

Anyone can be a coach. As a professional who has dedicated academic, economic, and intellectual energy to the practice, the open and unregulated nature of “coaching” has frustrated me in the past. But as I release my grip on the beauty of the craft, I appreciate the promise that the open-ended definition of coaching offers. We cannot grasp so tightly something that so many need so deeply. The ultimate goal of great coaching is not just to help your clients succeed. It’s to shift the nature of conversation, creating greater links between our intuition and our action. Helping leaders reconnect with their strengths, transforming them top players of their game into coaches themselves.

I spent more than a decade trying to help my clients put names to what they need in order to thrive. Using the research-based CliftonStrengths assessment, I had a baseline–and a remarkably accurate one at that–understanding of what a person’s natural patterns of thought, feeling and behavior craved. I’ve called these needs, fuel, and individualized yearnings. Plenty of my interactions with clients have been short, not a long-term conversation. And far too often, I got the sense that while it was bright and clear to me what someone needed to do, ask for, or invest in based on their Strengths, they just didn’t see it or didn’t feel inspired to make a change. Today I realized what I’ve been getting wrong.

I’m going back to my roots. Literally.

I’ve been highlighting my hair for longer than I’ve had a driver’s license. And this week, without much thought or realization of the significance, I asked my stylist to match the top half of my hair to the bottom half. Under all that blonde, I’m apparently a natural brunette.

Under all that stuff, there is something for you to discover too. This week I’ve met at least half a dozen clients who needed to look below the layers they had accumulated in order to find some sense of direction, of solution, of respite…a reminder that they have the talent and instinct within them to succeed and thrive, but somewhere along the way, they lost touch with it.

“I am exhilarated! I want to do more of this. I’m cranking out more work, better work, faster work, and it’s like I don’t want to stop. I found what I want to be when I grow up!”

Today I took an unprompted client call, something I typically let go to voicemail because I’m unavailable during the day. I am so glad I hit the green button, because I tapped a direct line into the rare, powerful, and dizzying nature of talent.

You think Strengths are great? You should try aiming Strengths at Purpose. That’s what my client Marcus (not their name) has been working on all week, and I believe it has shifted the universe in a positive way.

You can read that CliftonStrengths report as closely as you want. If you’re searching for it, between the lines of description of success, you’ll interpret something that describes all your failures. What you’re too much of, why people haven’t loved you, a scientific validation that you simply don’t measure up. Hell, maybe you don’t have to look very hard.