Saturday, November 03, 2012

Finding Your Strengths

Have any of you done the Myers-Briggs personality test?  If so, you'll know what I'm talking about if I tell you I am an ENFJ.  You?  Do you think your assessments were accurate?  I am about to embark on another journey to find my strengths.  At my age, I think I'm already pretty tuned in to what my strengths and weaknesses are, but I'm sure I've more to learn.

I am a board member for a non-profit organization.  We've decided, as a board, to each go through an assessment of our strengths. We then will try to learn ways to use our strengths.  That's the key, don't you think?  For instance, it does little good to learn that you are good at leadership if you never take a leadership role.  We are using a book by Tom Rath, called Strengths Finder 2.0 to do this.  I've not yet taken my online assessment nor have I read the book, but I've done a little sneak preview.

In the introduction of this book the author speaks of working with a team of Gallup scientists.  They began with a goal to "start a global conversation about what's right with people".  OK.  He went on to explain that they wanted to do something different than focusing on ways to fix people.  What they learned was that people have more potential for growth if, rather than trying to correct deficiencies, they were encouraged to use their time investing in their strengths.


So, now we kind of know the premise of this book.  Are any of you familiar with it?   I decided I wanted to document what I THINK my assessment will show before I even start.  I don't yet know how this program categorizes or what terminology is used, but I am going to say what I think are my top three strengths.  I believe I have a strengths in empathy and communication.  For the third spot I'm debating between peace-making or encouraging others. Hmmm.... oh wait!  It's my blog so I can make the rules.  I guess that instead of my top three I will list my top four.  However, top four seems weird so I'm changing my rules again (I didn't put consistency as one of my strengths).  I will add another to make it a top five list.  My fifth strength is loyalty.

So, in no particular order my top five strengths are...

  •  loyalty
  • communication
  • empathy
  • encouraging others
  • peace-making
I will let you know what I find out.

How about you?  What do you think are your top five strengths (or three or twenty or whatever number you wish to list)?

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