Improving Your Strengths

Last week I got an email from a good friend listing his five strengths and what they meant.

Hey guys, I want to pass along something I found reading psychology research that’s really cool.

It’s an online assessment that gives your top 5 personality strengths along with suggestions of how to use them better. It’s backed and validated by research studies. For myself, it’s helping to clarify what would be a good career for me as well as what strengths in others will complement me.

Spend the $12 and check it out. If nothing else, it’s nice to get feedback on what you’re good at rather than what you’re bad at.

Always up for an adventure in self help psychology, I eagerly jumped on the crazy train.  I popped $12 on to the end of my credit card bill and within 2 days Tom Rath’s latest book, StrengthsFinder 2.0, arrived in a brown amazon box.

With my interest still gently simmering on the topic, I cracked it open and breezed through the brief 30 page introduction.  When the author started criticizing famed big hearted athlete Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger for working way too hard to play a game he was no good at, I was sold on the strengths finder formula.  Using the access code found in the back of the book, Immediately I moved on to the quiz.

The format of the questions vaguely reminded me of the eharmony profile process.  Perhaps strengthsfinder would also get me a date I hoped.  35 minutes later, I had finished the quiz.  After answering some questions quickly and some with a brief pause to ponder whether I would rather be adored or respected, I had my results.  After all this work, I would have rather a handful of potential dates, but, alas, it was just my strengths.

An 11 page pdf report informed me that I have the following strength themes:

Activator
Strategic
Woo
Input
Futuristic

Each of these themes is then elaborated upon with succinct summations, quotes from key figures, and a list of action items to help build this strength.  In the end a few exercises designed to help solidify goals and create a desired outcome are offered in worksheet form.

One of the exercises was to ask people close to me to describe specific examples in which I have embodied my given themes.  A recommended instruction I will add is that you should not ask your ex-girlfriends for help with this.  You will probably just receive snarky remarks about how you hated their friends or were very strategic about moving on.  At least that’s how it worked with me.

The final exercise is to write goals regarding your three top themes for the next week, month, and year.  Using the action items listed previously as inspiration, I spent about 30 minutes coming up with some goals for my near future. As advised,  I then picked a goal sponsor to share my goals with and ask that he check up with me semi-regularly to inquire about my progress.

The book is worth the $12 cover price alone for the test in itself.  The message is an easily welcomed one, encouraging me to focus on my strengths and utilizing other people to make up for my weaknesses.

Links:
Strengths Finder 2.0