John K. Coyle - Design For Strengths: Applying Design Thinking to Individual and Team Strengths

Advance Praise for Design For Strengths

In Design for Strengths , John K. Coyle lights the wick of some inspired thinking around strengthsthen brings it to a flashpoint with high octane insights and connections that allow readers from elite athletes to mere mortalsto supercharge their own potential.

NICOLE LOREY, Chief Communications Officer, Kaiser Permanente

In this fantastic read, John Coyle takes us on a journey into the world of design thinking through the lens of adventure, Olympic skating, competition and personal curiosity. This book does a great job explaining design thinking in a way that will resonate with any reader - particularly those thinking about career and life choices. I wish I had had it when I was younger to design my life ahead. Loved it!

MORAN CERF, Ph.D., Professor of neuroscience and business at the Kellogg School of Management and Alfred P. Sloan screenwriting Professor at the American Film Institute

Design For Strengths has brilliant insights on what it really takes to succeedeven for those of us who will never land on an Olympic podium.

LAURA VANDERKAM, Author, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

As an Olympic Bobsledder and businesswoman, I found that Design for Strengths gives an accurate insight on what it takes to be an athlete at the highest level, all the while presenting practical ideologies that can be applied to business, teamwork, and other facets of life.

LAUREN GIBBS, Silver Medalist, Bobsled in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games

A must read for anyone looking for a powerful framework to engage their insatiable curiosity and creative mindset in solving problems that make a meaningful difference in the world!

DR. DANIEL FRIEDLAND, Author of Evidence Based Medicine and Leading Well From Within , President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, and CEO of SuperSmartHealth

Get unstuck and potentialize your strengths and talents. Design for Strengths is a powerful masterpiece that will guide you into the journey of discovering and redefining yourself. Enter into the flow state and become the innovator and designer of your own life.

LAURA BONILLA, Head of Innovation Programs, CEDIM University, Mexico City & Monterrey

What if we were issued instructions at birth about how to design our lives to maximize happiness and success? I dont know about you, but thats not what I was instructed in my first few years--now we have a guidebook for how to design and curate our lives in a way thats in harmony with our strengths and purpose. A powerful and poignant read. Bravo!

CHIP CONLEY, author of Wisdom at Work and Peak , founder of Modern Elder Academy and Joie de Vivre, and former Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb

Praise for John K. Coyle keynotes and workshops

John is truly riveting his talent is weaving facts, examples and intellectual principles into engaging stories which bring his topics to life for his audiences.

LYNN COSTLOW, Senior Vice President, Customer Care at ADT

The question we asked on the survey that would be applicable is Which speakers did you enjoy most and Im not joking, EVERY SINGLE PERSON that filled it out mentioned John.

SARAH REICHARDT, Director of Events - Iowa Healthiest State

John is a fantastic speaker who inspires audiences, large and small, virtual and in-person, to take action.

DR. KIMBERLY JARVIS, CEO of All Career Matters, Inc.

While John is a dynamic speaker on stage, and a tremendous thought leader, he truly excels at connecting with people after the presentation.

JOHN GEHRE, VP GMM - General Merchandise, Global Sourcing, and Front End at HEB

Johns ability to grip an audience, to craft a business story on very human terms, to tie it back to the success of his teams efforts is one the best I have ever seen. His story was so compelling and well delivered that we continued to ask him to speak to audiences around the world.

DAVID ROSEN, Head of Digital Transformation, TIBCO Software

John is more than just a dynamic and memorable speaker. He will leave you with thoughts, tips and techniques that genuinely will change the way you live your life; giving you the ability to appreciate the moments of life that matter the most. If you work with John, prepare to be dazzled.

NIK NIELSEN, Vice President of Sales, GreatAmerica Financial Services

More available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkcoyle1

2018 by John K. Coyle and The Art of Really Living LLC.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by mechanical, photographic or electronic process, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or otherwise be copied for public use or private use without written permission of the copyright owner. For permission, contact info@theartofreallyliving.com.

For more information about special discounts on quantity sales or special editions, contact info@theartofreallyliving.com.

Printed in the United States of America

www.johnkcoyle.com

ISBN 978-1-7320942-1-5 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-7320942-0-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-7320942-2-2 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-7320942-3-9 (mobi)

IN DEDICATION TO THERON (MIKE) WALDEN.

I NEVER REALLY KNEW YOU,

AND I NEVER SAID THANKS.

NOW I DO, AND IN THESE

PAGES, I HOPE I CAN.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

F or long periods of my life, I walked around in a deadened shuffle with my head in a fog. In both sports and business, there were years, multiple years, where I was trapped in a daily and ever-present strugglean obsession to overcome my weaknesses. During those periods, the future receded, the present disappeared, and time sped up. Even though I didnt quite know it at the time, life was quietly miserable in the in-between. As Thoreau put it, The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. I was one of those men.

In the mirror of hindsight, and with significant introspection, I have realized that those periods of timethose with few memories, few highlights, and an inability to be presentwere periods in which I was focused intently and desperately on trying not to be a failure. With the sage words of some amazing mentors, and insights from some thoughtful authors (many of whom are in this book), I realized that the return to life, color, and happiness only happened when I finally let go of chasing weaknesses and instead turned toward, and leaned into, my native strengths.

The other day, I took the 6:00 a.m. train to the city and saw this same mass of men waiting at the station. It was a gray morning, and the gray train arrived, and I watched a gray line of workers shuffle forward with no smiles, no conversation, just another day at the office. The same was true on the ride home: a file of zombies with their minds elsewhere. Perhaps my favorite author, Antoine de St. Exupry, put it best in Wind, Sand, and Stars :

I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny. Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.