Session 8 Facilitator Guide

WHYZMEN · FACILITATOR GUIDE · SESSION 8

The Strengths Portrait

What Am I Wired to Do?

CONFIDENTIAL · FACILITATOR USE ONLY · NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Wise Men Still Seek, Knowing Their Why’s

Purpose

Session 8 is the convergence session. Men arrive holding two assessment reports, the two core values they narrowed to at Session 7 (already checked once against their VIA top 5 in that session's Echo Check), and their own story from Sessions 5 and 6. None of it is new. What is new is that for the first time it gets laid side by side on one page, so that what repeats across five independent readings becomes visible.

The danger is the assessment results party. Four sequential debriefs will make the morning informative, flat, and forgettable. Everything you teach is in service of the Convergence — and if you have to choose, you cut teaching, never the Convergence.

Session Outcomes

• Men can distinguish what CliftonStrengths measures from what VIA measures from what a practical skill is — three different questions, not three flavors of one.

• Men understand that talent is not calling: an assessment names the shape of the tool, not the job.

• Every man has written one sentence in two clauses — The Signature (Charter 1.3) and the Contribution Hypothesis (feeds My Next Chapter).

• Every man has done the Crosswalk and the Skills Harvest in the room, and named one test action under two hours for Wilderness Week 3.

• Men understand why the sixth row of the Board is blank, and expect to fill it at Session 9.

Cold open. No welcome, no housekeeping, no prayer yet. Put the slide up and speak. Every man’s voice is in the room inside eight minutes, and the question the morning answers is on the table because they put it there.

WHAT YOU DO

• Let the laugh happen on the kitchen line. It is a real laugh and it is also recognition — that is why it works. Do not explain it and do not soften it.

• Go around the circle in seating order. Do not ask for volunteers.

• You go first, with one word. That sets the length.

• One word each. If a man gives a sentence, let the first pass; on the second offender say “one word” pleasantly and keep moving.

• Absolute silence between men. Do not nod approvingly, do not say “good one.” Any response you give one man becomes a standard the next performs to.

• Then a second lap, the Practice of the Week check-in (last line on Slide 4). SAY: “Tell us one moment with this week’s practice: Name the value you see.” One moment per man, no commentary.

• Only if you are ahead: Rule of Life seasonal check — one question, not a discussion: “Is the Rule you drafted in Session 4 still alive? What would you prune?” A practice that quietly died is information, not failure.

From Your Week (3 min, slide 5)

The Session 7 items, one short line each. Same circle, same order as the one-word round, one sentence now: “Read one of your two values aloud, and the sentence you wrote for it. No commentary.” The field report is gone: sharing a value became last week’s practice, and its moment was the second lap on slide 4.

WHAT YOU DO

• Then hands only, about thirty seconds: “§1.2 — two values written? CliftonStrengths Top 5 on the table? VIA top 5 on the table?” Done or not yet; both are honest answers. Spare theme lists and VIA lists are on the set-up list; men without results work the Crosswalk from the five they circle.

• Tell the men their two values go on the Board this morning, and the Crosswalk runs on them at 0:18.

• If you are behind, hands only for all of it.

Three teaching moves and one pairs exercise, then get out. You are not certifying strengths coaches — men can read their own report. Your job is the three things the report does not tell them. (r9: the one-in-33-million slide and the Knapsack callback are hidden; both are in the Participant Guide.)

1. The group skew (3 min, slides 7–9)

Sixty seconds on Gallup’s four groups (Gallup calls them domains), then have every man mark which group his five cluster in. Ask for a show of hands: three or more in Executing or Influencing? In a room of retired engineers, managers, and tradesmen, expect a lot of hands.

2. Talent is not calling (1½ min, slide 10)

This is the theological spine of the session and it protects everything downstream. Buechner’s line has two terms — deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger. The report in their hand is one term. Say so plainly, and tell them that in about forty minutes you are going to make them put a need on the table alongside their strengths, on the same page.

Callback: the men heard Buechner at the Session 3 Benediction. Say “you heard this in November” — the repetition is doing real work.

3. Every theme has a basement (1 min, slide 11)

Light in tone, serious in content. The retirement-specific point is the guardrails: a deadline told Achiever when enough was enough, a colleague told Command to sit down, an HR department told Responsibility it was not his job. All gone at once, and nobody warned them. Read the four basements and take no answers unless you are ahead. The Barnabas Turn at the close is the same move, so the slide still earns its minute.

Sourcing note: “balcony and basement” is strengths-coaching community language, widely used but not official Gallup terminology. Use it freely; do not attribute it to Gallup if asked.

4. Pairs — paid for, or done for free (4 min, slide 12)

Pairs, not threes, and pair men who did not arrive together. Two minutes each way; call the switch out loud and firmly. The question is the whole exercise — say it twice before releasing them.

WHAT YOU DO

• Model it first. One sentence, thirty seconds: a theme your work paid for, and one you never got paid for.

• Circulate. Listen for the man who says “all five were the job.” Do not correct him in the room — note him. He most needs Round Two, and his partner may already have handed him the answer.

• Before you move on, make sure every man physically marks the free one on his report and on his Workbook Wiring page. It becomes a Board entry in twenty minutes.

5. Hidden · The Knapsack — Built to Carry This (slide 13, optional)

Hidden in r9 to make room for the Crosswalk; show it only if you are ahead, two minutes. Capacity, not just weight. Some heavy things are yours to carry; others were never yours. It lands straight after the paid-for/free question because the free theme is the one you carry well.

WHAT YOU DO

• Point to the knife: one tool, many uses. That’s a strength.

• ASK: “What’s one thing still in your pack that you were never wired to carry?” Two answers, then move on.

VIA is a confirming lens, not a second full debrief — and nothing in this block is new to the men. They took VIA before Session 7 and laid their top 5 beside their two core values in that session's Echo Check. The Crosswalk now happens here, in the Workbook (r9: it was thirty minutes at home). In the room: a thirty-second reminder, one distinction (one minute), a thirty-second callback, six and a half minutes of Crosswalk, and ninety seconds surfacing the finding. Give VIA equal airtime to CliftonStrengths and you will lose the Convergence.

The reminder and the distinction (1½ min, slides 15–16)

Thirty seconds of reminder, not orientation — the Peterson and Seligman origin, the six virtues and the 24 strengths were taught at Session 7. Re-say only the three markers of a signature strength (essential, effortless, energizing) and circle the energy marker verbally; it returns twice this morning. Then the distinction itself, which IS new, because it needs both reports in the room:

That last line matters for this room specifically. These men are leaving the projects behind. What is left is what VIA measures.

The callback to Session 7 (30 seconds, slide 17)

A callback, not a teach — men did this at Session 7. Say it once: "Last week you narrowed to two values and checked the road each one travels — the VIA strength that carries it. Same value, three roads: Kindness, Leadership, Humor. This morning adds the third thing: the report in your other hand tells you who is driving." The clean formulation, worth saying slowly: your values say where, your VIA says which road, your CliftonStrengths say how you drive.

The Crosswalk (6½ min, slide 18, added r9)

This was thirty minutes of home pre-work; it now happens here, silent, on the Workbook Crosswalk page. Say it once: “Your two values down the left, from §1.2. Beside each one, the VIA strength in your top five that carries it — and the CliftonStrengths theme that drives it. Draw the line. If a value has no strength carrying it, tick it and leave it. Do not fix it this morning. Six minutes.” Circulate; a man without his results works from the spare list. Call one minute left. Do not discuss — the next slide surfaces the finding, hands only.

The orphan value (90 sec, slide 19)

The Crosswalk was just done, in the room. Surface the finding and move. Ask who found a value with no carrier — hands only. With two core values, most men will find exactly one orphan; say so.

WHAT YOU DO

• Say out loud how many hands are up: “Look around. That is most of the room.” That is what makes it safe.

• DO NOT ask which value. Naming it in plenary turns a useful finding into a confession, and you will lose four minutes and some trust.

• Say the pastoral line even if nobody looks troubled: an orphan value is a gap in practice, not a gap in character.

• Circulate afterward and note privately any man for whom both values are orphans. That is a direct feed to Session 13 and to his §3.1 First Steps — and he will not raise it himself.

Common orphans in this population: Generosity with no Kindness or Love ranked high. Faith with no Spirituality. Courage named as a value with Bravery sitting at nineteen. Integrity valued with Honesty low.

The Skills Harvest from the First Mountain now happens here, in the Workbook (r9: it was forty-five minutes at home). It is still a harvest, not a brainstorm: asking men to invent skills cold produces “management” and “Excel” and nothing else. Reading your own story back with a pen is what works, and six silent minutes with §1.1 open is enough to do it.

The harvest (7 min, slide 21)

One minute to walk the sources: Charter §1.1 My Story — underline every verb you used about yourself; Appendix B My Forgotten Range, if he wrote it (optional) — the Darwin list nobody ever paid him for; and anything else he does uncommonly well. Then six minutes, silent: underline, then list the verbs on the Skills Harvest page. Call one minute left. A man without his binder works from memory and checks it against §1.1 at home.

The criterion (3 min, slide 22)

WHAT YOU DO

• Name the VIA callback out loud. It makes the two blocks feel like one argument rather than two exercises.

• Transfer now. Every man copies his three verbs onto the Trained Hand row of the Board. Do not let him carry them in his head into Round One.

This block sits between the two analytical stretches on purpose. Two cognitive blocks back to back and the room is flat by minute forty. It is also structurally load-bearing: strengths tell a man what he is capable of, and without a direction the Convergence degrades into a matching game. This is where he supplies the world’s-hunger term from inside himself rather than off a spreadsheet.

Slow your pace here. Lower your volume. The previous three blocks were briskly taught; this one is not taught, it is opened.

Carstensen (2 min, slide 24)

Do not name the theory unless someone asks — “Carstensen at Stanford” is enough attribution. Iceberg principle: the framework is yours, the experience is theirs. Open-ended horizon means optimizing for information, novelty, a wider network. Limited horizon means meaning, depth, the people you already love. The finding that makes it more than a truism: the trigger is horizon, not age. Younger people given a limited horizon re-sort the same way.

The reframe (1 min, slide 25)

This is the emotional pivot of the session. Deliver it slowly and then stop talking.

Three lines (3 min, slide 26)

WHAT YOU DO

• Two minutes writing, silent, in the Workbook. Prompt once, then be quiet: “Full sentences, not lists. And be specific — ‘my family’ is true of every man in this room and tells you nothing.”

• One minute reading. LINE TWO ONLY, around the table, one sentence each, no response from anyone.

• Say before releasing: “You will hear five sentences. You are not going to respond to any of them. Just let them be in the room.”

• Tell them line two becomes the Direction row of the Board, and the one Caring Shift line in §1.3 this week (the full paragraph is optional). It gives the writing a purpose and improves the quality noticeably.

Why line two and not line three: line three is often the most tender — a diagnosis, a death, a grandchild, a marriage that nearly ended. It belongs to the man and to his triad in the spring, not to the room at minute fifty. If a man volunteers it anyway, receive it warmly and do not invite the rest to follow.

Hidden · Working the Harvest (slide 27, optional)

A look ahead, not a teach. The Harvest Tree shows what each part is; this slide shows what a man does to bring the fruit to ripeness, in four steps. The Goal: choose the fruit and domain — where one value meets one domain, a goal is born. The Equipping: know your roots and trunk — CliftonStrengths Top 5, VIA strengths and personality are his path of least resistance. The Tending: do the daily work — skill-building (deliberate practice), small identity-based habits (Atomic Habits) and experiments run this week. The Harvest: gather the fruit — the ripe apple goes into his Harvest Charter. The eyebrow carries the frame: under the sun, Jubilee — the work is for rest, not endless toil.

Hidden in r9: the slide has no minutes in the spine. Show it for ten seconds only if you are ahead at 0:44; the four steps are in the Participant Guide.

The run of show — walking the room through the thirty-eight minutes

The three sections after this one give you the reasoning behind each round. This is the spoken spine: clock, instruction, and what you say, in order. Post it beside the timer. The stamps assume you released the Caring Shift at 0:44; if you are late, shift every stamp and keep every duration.

0:44 · Setup (1 min, slide 29)

• Board page open in every Workbook. Walk the six rows in under a minute; men are transcribing, not inventing.

0:45 · Round One — The Solo Build (9 min, slides 30–31)

• 0:45 — FILL, four minutes, silent. The Crosswalk and Skills Harvest rows are already on the Workbook page. Circulate. Say nothing about anyone’s page.

• 0:49 — CIRCLE, two minutes. Recognition, not analysis. Say it in those words.

• 0:51 — THE NEED QUESTION, three minutes. Read it twice, slowly. Normalize the stall before they write. Then be quiet.

0:54 · Round Two — The Witness (18 min, slides 32–33)

• Sixty seconds on the rule before you release them. Leave slide 33 (Where. Who. Never Why.) up for the whole round.

• Six minutes per man. Call the switch out loud at 1:00 and 1:06 — every time, no exceptions. The third man is the one who needs it most.

• Circulate for advice-giving. “Not advice. Observation and one question.” Say it three times if you have to. A Why becomes “try that as a Where.”

• For the man who stalled on the need question, the other two offer a candidate, not a solution: “From what I heard, I would guess it is ___. Am I warm?”

1:12 · Round Three — The Sentence (10 min, slides 34–36)

• 1:12 — One minute: the sentence and its three rules (slides 34–35). Constraints, not suggestions.

• 1:13 — WRITE, five minutes, silent. Circulate for past tense and for “serve the church.”

• 1:18 — THE ONE WORD, three minutes, thirty seconds per man (slide 36). Enforce one word warmly and hard.

• 1:21 — The “not yet” line, then straight into the Test (slide 37). Do not debrief the round.

Setup (1 min, slide 29)

Everything on the Board has already been generated this morning or in a previous session. Men are transcribing, not inventing. Say that — it lowers the resistance considerably. Then walk the rows fast.

Men will ask about the blank row. That is the design working. A document a man revises once is a document he owns; a one-and-done worksheet goes in a drawer.

Round One — The Solo Build (9 min, slides 30–31)

WHAT YOU DO

• FILL (4 min, silent). Circulate. Men without materials work from memory and transcribe at home.

• CIRCLE (2 min). Say the instruction is recognition, not analysis — or the engineers will build a correlation matrix. “Look at it the way you would look at a photograph of someone you know.”

• THE NEED QUESTION (3 min). Read it aloud slowly, twice, then be quiet and let them write.

He reads his Board aloud, top to bottom, including his need line if he has one — sixty to ninety seconds. Then the other two do exactly two things, in this order.

Job one — name the pattern he did not circle

This is the Reflected Best Self principle out of Michigan’s Ross School: men reliably underweight the trait they are most consistently described by, because to them it is just Tuesday. A man who has spent forty years making other people capable does not experience that as distinguishing. Two outside observers see it in ninety seconds.

Coach the form: describe what you SAW on the page, do not diagnose the man. “Three of your five entries involve other people getting better” is an observation. “You are a natural mentor” is a verdict, and verdicts get argued with.

Job two — one question, “Where” or “Who,” never “Why”

WHAT YOU DO

• Leave the Where/Who slide up for the whole round. Men need to see it while they are in it.

• Circulate constantly. What you are listening for is ADVICE — men will start solving each other. Intervene immediately and lightly: “Not advice. Observation and one question.” You may have to say it three times. Say it three times.

• If you hear a Why, reframe on the spot: “Try that as a Where.” The moment a group catches on, the quality of the round doubles.

• For the man who stalled on the need question, the other two hand him a candidate, not a solution: “From what I just heard, I would guess it is ___. Am I warm?” Warm/cold keeps him in charge of the answer.

Proverbs 20:5 is the frame if you want to name it: the man himself often cannot reach his own depths, and someone else draws them out. That is not a weakness in him — that is the design, and it is the whole argument for the triads formed at Session 10.

One sentence, two clauses, two tenses, two destinations. Explain that briefly — men who understand why the sentence is built this way write better sentences. Clause one is The Signature, Charter 1.3, present tense, derived backward from the Board. Clause two is the Contribution Hypothesis, forward-looking and provisional, and it becomes the seed for My Next Chapter over the break.

That framing removes the pressure to be right, which is the single biggest obstacle to a man writing anything at all at minute seventy-five of a hard session.

The three rules, delivered as constraints (1 min, slide 35)

• PRESENT TENSE. Men default to “I was the guy who…” because their identity is filed under a job that ended. Catch it — past tense turns the Signature into an obituary.

• A REAL VERB AND A REAL PERSON. This is the rule they will resist. “Serve the church,” “give back,” “help people” — all noble, none testable, none startable on Tuesday. Push: “If I handed you your sentence and a car, could you drive somewhere with it?”

• “SUSPECT” STAYS. Some men will want to strike it and write a declaration. Do not let them. The hedge keeps him from over-committing to a first draft and it protects Session 11 — a man who declares his mission this morning has nothing to do in February.

The one word (3 min, slide 36)

He reads. The other two say one word each — the strongest word they heard. He writes both down. Next man. Thirty seconds each, and the speed is part of the design.

Why one word: it is the smallest response that still carries information, and smallness is the safeguard. A sentence of feedback becomes encouragement, which is pleasant and tells him nothing. One word forces a choice, and the choosing is the signal. Men consistently discover the word carrying their sentence is not the one they laboured over.

If a man cannot finish clause two

Let him write clause one only and mark clause two “not yet.” That is an acceptable outcome and far better than a manufactured answer. Tell him so out loud, so he does not experience it as failing.

The test (1 min, slide 37)

Under two hours, before Session 11, written on the Board. No lap this morning unless you are ahead; collect every man’s test action by text this week. It is Wilderness Week 3 work, not this week’s: the homework slide names it that way so it does not sit on top of the Naming the Gift week. Public commitment moves completion rates substantially. The constraint is chosen deliberately: two hours is small enough that no man can honestly claim he does not have it, and small enough that it requires no decision. He is not committing to a ministry. He is making one phone call.

Note the fourth example out loud — “volunteer once. Once, not commit.” Men here either over-commit immediately or avoid entirely for fear of being roped in. Naming the single instance with no obligation releases both types.

Hidden · The Two-Hour Clearing (slide 38, optional)

Optional now (r9): the clearing moves to §3.1 First Steps at Session 13 and sits under Going Deeper on the homework slide. Show it only if you are ahead: one minute, no lap. Frame it as arithmetic, not discipline.

WHAT YOU DO

• One lap, out loud, one sentence each. Specificity is everything: “less TV” is not an answer. “The Sunday afternoon golf I do not actually enjoy” is.

• The man who cannot find two hours has just produced the most useful diagnostic of his fall. Do not shame him — note him, and bring it to his triad in the spring and to Session 13.

Naming the Gift (90 sec, slide 39)

Frame the homework, do not teach gifts. The one sentence that has to land: this is not a test and you will not score yourself. There is no inventory and no website — the Workbook has a card of eleven words and an evidence rule. For every gift not crossed out, name an instance: who, and roughly when. No instance, no claim.

Homework (1 min, slide 40)

Slide 40 is the one closing list, with minutes. Required: §1.3 Strengths & Gifts with The Signature (35) — CliftonStrengths Top 5 and VIA top 5 recorded there, the three kept skills, the Signature in two or three sentences, and the Caring Shift as one line · Naming the Gift, the card and evidence page (20) · Practice: The Barnabas Turn (3 · Speak Truly & Encourage) · Bring the Board and the Gift page (0). About 55 minutes this week. Optional · Going Deeper, only if it calls to you, not counted: a full Caring Shift paragraph, the two-hour clearing, the books on slide 41. Not this week: the test action is Wilderness Week 3, before Session 11. Do not read the list item by item — men have it. Emphasize one thing: the Naming the Gift page is not optional, and next week does not work without it.

Reading (30 sec, slide 41)

Point, don’t teach. No required reading this week — Naming the Gift is the work. Mention Going Deeper once, lightly: any time, pick one; never assigned. Slide 41 now has two cards: Books (a month) and Shorter Readings (an evening): Discover Your CliftonStrengths, VIA Character Strengths, The Caring Shift and Fink’s Six Dimensions, all in the Going Deeper folder. Point at The Caring Shift if line two stirred something; it is the reasoning behind this morning’s three lines. Fink’s partner, Bloom’s Taxonomy, comes at Session 12.

Practice of the Week — The Barnabas Turn (1½ min, slide 42)

WHAT YOU DO

• Read the practice: The Barnabas Turn. Name its skill and section: “It is section 3, Speak Truly & Encourage, in your Toolkit — the card is the menu, the Toolkit is the kitchen.” Then one minute, in pairs, right now: The man beside you names one thing he is hard on himself about; hear it, turn it over, hand it back. Then swap. Out of time? Each man names the one person he will try it with this week. The tracker is weekly, not daily: “Tried it this week ☐” and one moment line on the card. Rooted in Acts 4:36 (Barnabas, son of encouragement) and Clifton’s shadow side of strengths. This morning’s basement slide is the same move: every shadow points back to a strength. The three steps are printed on the back of the card.

• Session 9 check-in: “Tell us one moment with this week’s practice: The Barnabas Turn.”

Handoff and Benediction (1½ min with prayer, slides 43–44)

Then the handoff, and stop: you have named what you are wired to do; next week we ask who wired you, and what He assigned. Read Ephesians 2:10 slowly. Poiema — workmanship, a made thing, crafted on purpose. The wiring was prepared and so was the work; neither was self-assigned. Close in prayer: gratitude for the wiring, petition for clarity on the assignment, blessing on the tests just committed to.

These belong in your understanding, not on a slide. Iceberg principle: analytical architecture in the kitchen, experience on the table.

Why five instruments and not three

The convergence exercise only produces signal if the rows are genuinely independent readings. If two rows measured the same trait, every repeat between them would be an artifact of the instrument rather than a fact about the man. Five independent sources converging is evidence; two correlated sources agreeing is arithmetic. That is why the Skills Harvest never touches CliftonStrengths or VIA — it comes entirely from the man’s own narrative.

Why the Caring Shift sits in the middle

Strengths give capacity; caring gives direction. Buechner’s equation has two terms and an assessment supplies only one. Placed at the end it would be an epilogue; placed in the middle it supplies the second term just before the Convergence needs it — and it breaks the cognitive register between two analytical blocks.

Why spiritual gifts are not in this session

CliftonStrengths and VIA describe natural wiring. Spiritual gifts describe divine commission to a body. Debrief all three in one block and you quietly teach men they are three flavors of the same thing — which is the most common error in Christian vocational work. The separation is doing theology, not just managing the clock.

Why an observation exercise instead of an inventory

Self-report gift inventories reward admiration over evidence — men score high on gifts they wish they had. And every published list has already taken a position on the sign gifts before a man answers question one. An observation-based exercise self-limits to what is actually visible in a Monday-morning men’s group, which means the format takes the position for you and the cessationist question never arrives at the door.

Sourcing notes

• CliftonStrengths: 34 themes in four domains (in the room: “Gallup’s four groups”). The one-in-33-million figure is Gallup’s published estimate for an exact top five in order.

• “Balcony and basement” is coaching-community language, not official Gallup terminology.

• VIA: Peterson & Seligman, Character Strengths and Virtues (2004). 24 strengths, six virtues.

• Carstensen: socioemotional selectivity theory, developed since the early 1990s; general-audience account in A Long Bright Future. If a man asks for a source, that is the pointer — do not go further.

• Buechner: Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973).

• Reflected Best Self: University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.

• Epstein, Range — the Darwin illustration behind Charter Appendix B, My Forgotten Range.

Cut in this order. Never reverse it.

If the room will not engage the need question

• What do people thank you for that you did not think was a big deal?

• What makes you angry in a way that is actually about something being wrong, not about you being inconvenienced?

• Where have you found yourself explaining something twice because nobody else would explain it?

If a group goes quiet in Round Two

• Read his Trained Hand row back to him. What do you notice about the three verbs together?

• Which row surprised you most when he read it?

• If you had to guess the one thing he does that he does not know he does — what would you guess?

If a man says the whole thing feels like navel-gazing

He is not wrong to be suspicious, and the answer is not reassurance. Point at the test action: “Fair. That is why nobody leaves this morning without a phone call to make. If the sentence is wrong, the phone call will tell you inside a week.” Men who resist reflection usually respect a falsifiable claim.

WhyzMen · Rewire Retirement · Session 8 Facilitator Guide · Confidential

Wise Men Still Seek, Knowing Their Why’s

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.