CLIFTON STRENGTHS
I’m glad I took this test and recommend it for everybody, whether your job searching or not. In fact, a good place to start taking it is in high school. Students can take it online and get immediate results for their use only. Schools should start politicking for it. What’s good and beneficial for the students of today is that there is nothing negative about it. No downside. Nobody’s score is any better than anybody else’s.
Rather than working to cure your weaknesses find your strengths and develop those if you want to soar at what you do best.
There are 34 identifiable strengths traits that people successful in leadership roles exhibit. Anyone can take the test and benefit from the knowledge gleaned from your own simple answers about your simple preferences.
No preparation can be made for taking this test.
With the purchase of the book, I received a code that I applied to an account I opened on a website free of charge.
I took the test and obtained my FIVE STRONGEST STRENGTHS TRAITS. To receive the order of the remaining 29 I had to pay further, which I chose not to do. I already knew the tiles and descriptions of the remaining 29 traits from the book, and upon reading them saw myself in varying degrees in each of them.
My takeaway is that we all probably exhibit all 34 traits. The difference lies in the degree to which we exhibit each trait, which will be reflected in the order they present, based on our answers to the questions.
The good news is that there’s no judgment made regarding any of the traits aside from each being a strength trait.
Don Clinton, Father of Strengths Psychology and Inventor of CliftonStrengths focused on discovering and developing a person’s strengths, rather than working on their shortcomings, which makes perfect sense to me.
There’s no downside or poor result from taking this test. Everybody has strengths traits. It’s just a matter of which ones will emerge dominant in you based on the answers you give.
I took the test after Steve brought me home the book. These are the results:
Sharon Davies-Tight SURVEY COMPLETION DATE: 10-07-2018
Many years of research conducted by The Gallup Organization suggest that the most effective people are those who understand their strengths and behaviors. These people are best able to develop strategies to meet and exceed the demands of their daily lives, their careers, and their families.
A review of the knowledge and skills you have acquired can provide a basic sense of your abilities, but an awareness and understanding of your natural talents will provide true insight into the core reasons behind your consistent successes.
Your Signature Themes report presents your five most dominant themes of talent, in the rank order revealed by your responses to StrengthsFinder. Of the 34 themes measured, these are your “top five.”
Your Signature Themes are very important in maximizing the talents that lead to your successes. By focusing on your Signature Themes, separately and in combination, you can identify your talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy personal and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.
Your Top 5 Themes
1. Strategic
2. Analytical
3. Achiever
4. Positivity
5. Ideation
1. STRATEGIC
The Strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large. This perspective allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity. Mindful of these patterns, you play out alternative scenarios, always asking, “What if this happened? Okay, well what if this happened?” This recurring question helps you see around the next corner. There you can evaluate accurately the potential obstacles. Guided by where you see each path leading, you start to make selections. You discard the paths that lead nowhere. You discard the paths that lead straight into resistance. You discard the paths that lead into a fog of confusion. You cull and make selections until you arrive at the chosen path—your strategy. Armed with your strategy, you strike forward. This is your Strategic theme at work: “What if?” Select. Strike.
SHARED THEME DESCRIPTION
People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
YOUR PERSONALIZED STRENGTHS INSIGHTS
What makes you stand out?
Because of your strengths, you select the right combination of words to convey your ideas or feelings. In the middle of discussions, your vocabulary provides you with precise phrases and terminology. You probably express yourself with ease and grace. Chances are good that you can reconfigure factual information or data in ways that reveal trends, raise issues, identify opportunities, or offer solutions. You bring an added dimension to discussions. You make sense out of seemingly unrelated information. You are likely to generate multiple action plans before you choose the best one. Driven by your talents, you work diligently to invent alternative courses of action. You notice new as well as unusual configurations in facts, evidence, or data. Others, however, can see only separate, unrelated bits of information. You are fascinated by problems that puzzle, confound, or frustrate most people. By nature, you are innovative, inventive, original, and resourceful. Your mind allows you to venture beyond the commonplace, the familiar, or the obvious. You entertain ideas about the best ways to reach a goal, increase productivity, or solve a problem. First, you think of alternatives. Then you choose the best option.
2. ANALYTICAL
Your Analytical theme challenges other people: “Prove it. Show me why what you are claiming is true.” In the face of this kind of questioning some will find that their brilliant theories wither and die. For you, this is precisely the point. You do not necessarily want to destroy other people’s ideas, but you do insist that their theories be sound. You see yourself as objective and dispassionate. You like data because they are value free. They have no agenda. Armed with these data, you search for patterns and connections. You want to understand how certain patterns affect one another. How do they combine? What is their outcome? Does this outcome fit with the theory being offered or the situation being confronted? These are your questions. You peel the layers back until, gradually, the root cause or causes are revealed. Others see you as logical and rigorous. Over time they will come to you in order to expose someone’s “wishful thinking” or “clumsy thinking” to your refining mind. It is hoped that your analysis is never delivered too harshly. Otherwise, others may avoid you when that “wishful thinking” is their own.
SHARED THEME DESCRIPTION
People who are especially talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation.
YOUR PERSONALIZED STRENGTHS INSIGHTS
What makes you stand out?
Depending on the order of your themes and how you responded to the assessment, some of your themes may share identical insight statements. If this occurs, the lower ranked theme will not display insight statements to avoid duplication on your report.
Because of your strengths, you sometimes enjoy thinking independently. Perhaps you can arrive at valid, true, or reasonable conclusions without anyone’s assistance. Chances are good that you sometimes rely on reason to make sense of facts, events, people’s behavior, problems, or solutions. You might outmaneuver certain individuals when comparisons are being made between your results and theirs. Instinctively, you take pains to uncover how and why things happen as they do. You share your discoveries with partners, teammates, and friends. You typically streamline your explanations. You cover only the essential facts. Most individuals can easily grasp what you say. Listeners probably appreciate you giving them less detail so they can understand the main points. By nature, you sometimes take time to reflect on what people say, reaching conclusions only after thoughtfully weighing the information, rather than reacting to the moment. Your practicality might have a sobering effect on certain types of discussions. Now and then, you intensify your own or other people’s capacity to consider “the bigger picture.” Driven by your talents, you sometimes think like a detective. You might search for and find obvious and not-so-obvious clues. You might determine which ones link together. Now and then, you notice gaps in your investigation. Some of these cannot be explained using reason alone. You may feel comfortable accepting what is unknown and unknowable. Why? To some extent, you trust that everything, everyone, and every action is somehow intertwined.
3. ACHIEVER
Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. Achiever describes a constant need for achievement. You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself. And by “every day” you mean every single day—workdays, weekends, vacations. No matter how much you may feel you deserve a day of rest, if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small, you will feel dissatisfied. You have an internal fire burning inside you. It pushes you to do more, to achieve more. After each accomplishment is reached, the fire dwindles for a moment, but very soon it rekindles itself, forcing you toward the next accomplishment. Your relentless need for achievement might not be logical. It might not even be focused. But it will always be with you. As an Achiever you must learn to live with this whisper of discontent. It does have its benefits. It brings you the energy you need to work long hours without burning out. It is the jolt you can always count on to get you started on new tasks, new challenges. It is the power supply that causes you to set the pace and define the levels of productivity for your work group. It is the theme that keeps you moving.
SHARED THEME DESCRIPTION
People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.
YOUR PERSONALIZED STRENGTHS INSIGHTS
What makes you stand out?
Driven by your talents, you probably set goals regarding the amount of recognition you give your coworkers. You aim to lavish them with compliments. Why? You want each person to feel valued and appreciated. Recipients of your abundant praise usually are eager to please you again. They often are willing to help whenever you ask. It’s very likely that you are an enterprising person. You effortlessly launch new ventures. You are likely to measure your progress on a regular basis. This information probably inspires you to work even harder. By nature, you might have more staying power than some of the people with whom you interact. Perhaps you choose to expend your physical or mental energy on selected issues, chores, projects, or activities. Instinctively, you might be exhilarated when the demands of work keep you physically active. Perhaps you are known for your capacity to labor longer and harder than some people could or would. Because of your strengths, you ordinarily take time and exert extra effort to comprehend what you are reading. You probably refuse to rush through written material. Why? You likely intend to commit to memory as many facts and concepts as possible.
4. POSITIVITY
You are generous with praise, quick to smile and always on the lookout for the positive in the situation. Some call you lighthearted. Others just wish that their glass were as full as yours seems to be. But either way, people want to be around you. Their world looks better around you because your enthusiasm is contagious. Lacking your energy and optimism, some find their world drab with repetition or, worse, heavy with pressure. You seem to find a way to lighten their spirit. You inject drama into every project. You celebrate every achievement. You find ways to make everything more exciting and more vital. Some cynics may reject your energy, but you are rarely dragged down. Your Positivity won’t allow it. Somehow you can’t quite escape your conviction that it is good to be alive, that work can be fun, and that no matter what the setbacks, one must never lose one’s sense of humor.
SHARED THEME DESCRIPTION
People who are especially talented in the Positivity theme have an enthusiasm that is contagious. They are upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do.
YOUR PERSONALIZED STRENGTHS INSIGHTS
What makes you stand out?
Because of your strengths, you might describe your life in favorable terms even when obligations force you to keep working until a particular goal is reached. By nature, you sometimes feel quite good about what life has to offer. Perhaps your attitude helps others be more optimistic and upbeat, too. Instinctively, you may declare life is good when once in a while you can take a chance. Perhaps you need fewer guarantees of success than some people require. Chances are good that you might be more fascinated with future possibilities than with past events. Keeping the two time frames separate may allow you to invent entirely new ways of finding personal happiness or professional fulfillment. Driven by your talents, you may feel upbeat about life when your desire to acquire knowledge or skills is regularly satisfied. You might grow increasingly unhappy with a job or assignment that fails to challenge your mind. Being forced to do the same thing day after day is sometimes depressing. Even when individuals in positions of authority reward you or tell you how much they value your performance, you may eventually have difficulty disguising your dissatisfaction.
5. IDEATION
You are fascinated by ideas. What is an idea? An idea is a concept, the best explanation of the most events. You are delighted when you discover beneath the complex surface an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. An idea is a connection. Yours is the kind of mind that is always looking for connections, and so you are intrigued when seemingly disparate phenomena can be linked by an obscure connection. An idea is a new perspective on familiar challenges. You revel in taking the world we all know and turning it around so we can view it from a strange but strangely enlightening angle. You love all these ideas because they are profound, because they are novel, because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, because they are bizarre. For all these reasons you derive a jolt of energy whenever a new idea occurs to you. Others may label you creative or original or conceptual or even smart. Perhaps you are all of these. Who can be sure? What you are sure of is that ideas are thrilling. And on most days this is enough.
SHARED THEME DESCRIPTION
People who are especially talented in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
YOUR PERSONALIZED STRENGTHS INSIGHTS
What makes you stand out?
By nature, you occasionally generate novel ideas for campaigns, business ventures, initiatives, or special events. Driven by your talents, you may consider yourself an idea person. Perhaps your job, studies, or life, in general, feels a bit more exciting when people ask you to think up novel assignments, activities, or campaigns. Instinctively, you may have more innovative concepts to suggest to the group than some of your teammates. Perhaps you use methodical reasoning to explain your proposals and present your ideas. Maybe people take seriously what you say if your forethought and preparation are apparent. Now and then, your ideas have such importance that they can influence or impress particular individuals. It’s very likely that you sometimes have more innovative ideas or original suggestions than others in a group. Perhaps you are delighted to participate in forums where you can present your creative concepts. Some individuals may share your desire to improve things. This might explain why they welcome your suggestions. Because of your strengths, you might search for new and fresh ways to make upgrades or enhancements. When you suspect there is a better way to do something, you might make certain revisions or test specific innovations.
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